NATUFIANS
Natufian art
The Natufian culture refers to mostly hunter-gatherers who lived in modern-day Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria approximately 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. Merging nomadic and settled lifestyles, they were among the first people to build permanent houses and cultivate edible plants. The advancements they achieved are believed to have been crucial to the development of agriculture during the time periods that followed them.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica: Mainly hunters, the Natufians supplemented their diet by gathering wild grain; they likely did not cultivate it. They had sickles of flint blades set in straight bone handles for harvesting grain and stone mortars and pestles for grinding it. Some groups lived in caves, others occupied incipient villages. They buried their dead with their personal ornaments in cemeteries. Carved bone and stone artwork have been found. [Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica ]
Matti Friedman wrote in Smithsonian magazine: Natufians were linked by characteristic tools, particularly a small, half-moon-shaped flint blade called a lunate,. They also showed signs of the “intentional cultivation” of plants, according to Ofer Bar-Yosef, professor of prehistoric archaeology at Harvard University, using a phrase that seems carefully chosen to avoid the loaded term “agriculture.” Other characteristic markers included jewelry made of dentalium shells, brought from the Mediterranean or the Red Sea; necklaces of beads made of exquisitely carved bone; and common genetic characteristics like a missing third molar. [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
See Separate Article: NATUFIAN LIFE AND CULTURE (14,500-11,500 YEARS AGO) africame.factsanddetails.com
Good Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com; Live Science livescience.com/ ; Food Timeline, History of Food foodtimeline.org ; Food and History teacheroz.com/food
Natufians More Widespread Than Previously Thought
A study, published in Nature Scientific Reports by a team of scientists and archeologists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot and the University of Copenhagen, rejects the long-held “core region” theory that argues that the Natufian culture spread from the Mount Carmel and Galilee region and suggest instead the Natufians had far more diverse and complex origins. [Source: Daniel K. Eisenbud, Jerusalem Post, December 7, 2017]
Daniel K. Eisenbud wrote in the Jerusalem Post: “According to the researchers, the study is based on evidence from a Natufian site located in Jordan, some 150 km. northeast of Amman. The site, called Shubayqa 1, was excavated by a University of Copenhagen team led by Dr. Tobias Richter from 2012-2015. The excavations uncovered a well-preserved Natufian site, which included, among other findings, a large assemblage of charred plant remains. The botanical remains, which are rare in many Natufian sites in the region, enabled the Weizmann-Copenhagen team to obtain the largest number of dates for any Natufian site yet in either Israel or Jordan.
Utilizing an accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS), that can reveal the amount of carbon-14 in a sample as small as a single atom, Prof. Elisabetta Boaretto of the Weizmann Institute, was able to accurately date the charred remains. “To ensure the highest accuracy, the team selected only samples from short-lived plant species or their parts – for example, seeds or twigs – to obtain the dates. “Over 20 samples from different layers of the site were dated, making it one of the best and most accurately dated Natufian sites anywhere,” the Institute continued. “The dates showed, among other things, that the site was first settled not long after the earliest dates obtained for northern Israel.”
Natufian skull
Based on the findings, the researchers concluded that either Natufians spread very rapidly into the region, or, more probably, that the settlement patterns emerged more or less simultaneously in different parts of the region. “The early date of Shubayqa 1 shows that Natufian hunter- gatherers were more versatile than previously thought,” said Richter. “Past research had linked the emergence of Natufian culture to the rich habitat of the Mediterranean woodland zone. But the early dates from Shubayqa 1 show that these late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers were also able to live quite comfortably in more open parkland steppe zones further east.” Richter noted the researchers determined that a portion of the Natufians’ subsistence appears to have relied heavily on the exploitation of club rush tubers as well as other wild plants, and the hunting of birds, gazelle and other animals.
According to Boaretto, the “core area” theory may have come about, in part, because the Mount Carmel sites have been the best preserved and studied – until now. “In addition to calling into question the idea that the Natufians originated in one settlement and spread outwards, the study suggests that the hunter- gatherers who lived 15,000 to 12,000 years ago were ingenious and resourceful,” said Boaretto. The authors concluded that their findings support the view that there were many pathways to agriculture and “the Neolithic way of life” was a highly variable and complex process that cannot be explained on the basis of single-cause models.
Natufian Settlements
Laura Anne Tedesco of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: “The Natufians were the first people of the eastern Mediterranean area to establish permanent villages. Prior to the Natufians, bands of people had moved seasonally, to follow animals for hunting and to gather available plants. The Natufians, while still hunters and foragers, settled in villages year-round, relying on the natural resources of their immediate area. These resources included gazelle, wild cereals, and marine life. The latter, abundant in the region, was used for food as well as for making tools, art, and body ornamentation. Shells collected from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were commonly used for jewelry and headdresses, typical status markers. [Source: Laura Anne Tedesco, Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org , October 2000 \^/]
“After the last Ice Age, as the climate became warmer and rainfall more abundant, the nomadic population of the eastern Mediterranean began to establish the first permanent settlements. The site of Eynan/Ain Mallaha, situated between the hills of Galilee and Lake Hula in the Levant, was inhabited from 10,000 to 8200 B.C., during the Natufian period. Eynan (in Hebrew)/Ain Mallaha (in Arabic) is one of hundreds of Natufian settlements known from the eastern Mediterranean, where remains of a rich and dynamic artistic tradition have been discovered.” \^/
Natufian sites
“Excavations in the Levant, including at Eynan/Ain Mallaha, were undertaken with great enthusiasm by European and American archaeologists in the years following World War II. During this period of scientific exploration, hundreds of sites were uncovered, not just Natufian but from preceding and succeeding periods. These archaeological activities contributed enormously to our current understanding of the prehistoric record of this region. Jericho, well known for its defensive walls described in biblical accounts, is another important Natufian site that was discovered at about the same time as Eynan/Ain Mallaha.” \^/
“When we talk about people in the Natufian period becoming more sedentary and less mobile, it’s not just about economics and settlement patterns, but about culture,” Tobias Richter, a professor of prehistory at the University of Copenhagen, told Smithsonian. “At what point does a place become home? At what point do we develop emotions and attachments that are tied to a specific location?” [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
Natufian settlements were generally found in open woodland areas with oak and Pistacia trees and underbrush with large amounts of grain-carrying grasses. They tended to stay away from the high mountains of Lebanon, the steppe areas of the Negev desert in Israel and Sinai, and the Syro-Arabian desert in the east, presumably because of limited food resources and competition from other groups of foragers who exploited this region. [Source: Wikipedia +]
Natufian dwellings were semi-subterranean, often with a dry-stone foundation. The frame was probably made of brushwood. No traces of mudbrick have been found, which became common later in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period. Their round houses have a diameter between three and six meters, and contain a central round or subrectangular fireplace. In Ain Mallaha traces of postholes have been identified. Villages covering over 1,000 square meters have been found. Smaller settlements have been interpreted by some researchers as camps. Traces of rebuilding in almost all excavated settlements seem to point to a frequent relocation, hinting of a semi-nomadic rather than settled existence. Settlements have been estimated to house 100–150 people, but there are three categories: small, medium, and large, ranging from 15 square meters to 1,000 square meters. There are no definite indications of storage facilities. +
Natufian Proto-Agriculture
The Natufian people lived by hunting and gathering. The preservation of plant remains at Natufian sites is poor because of the soil conditions, but wild cereals, legumes, almonds, acorns and pistachios may have been collected. Animal bones show that gazelle (Gazella gazella and Gazella subgutturosa) were the main prey. Deer, aurochs and wild boar were hunted in the steppe zone, as well as onagers and caprids (ibex). Water fowl and freshwater fish formed part of the diet in the Jordan River valley. Animal bones from Salibiya have been interpreted as evidence for communal hunts with nets. A pita-like bread dated to 12.500 B.C. has been attributed to Natufians. This bread is made of wild cereal seeds and papyrus cousin tubers, ground into flour. [Source: Wikipedia +]
According to one theory, a sudden change in climate — the Younger Dryas event (c. 10,800 to 9500 B.C.) — inspired the development of agriculture. The Younger Dryas was a 1,000-year-long interruption in the higher temperatures prevailing since the Last Glacial Maximum, which produced a sudden drought in the Levant. This could have threatened wild cereals, which were out-competed by dryland scrub. It is presumed that local population had become largely sedentary. To preserve their sedentary way of life they cleared the scrub and planting seeds obtained from elsewhere, originating agriculture. This theory is controversial and hotly debated in the scientific community.
Ancient figs found in an archaeological site in the Jordan Valley, presumably where Natufian lived , may represent one of the earliest forms of agriculture, scientists report. The carbonised fruits date between 11,200 and 11,400 years old. The U.S. and Israeli researchers reported their findings in the journal Science and said the figs are a variety that could have only been grown with human intervention, arging the discovery marks the point when humans turned from hunting and gathering to food cultivation. [Source:Rebecca Morelle, BBC News, June 2, 2006]
Rebecca Morelle of the BBC reported: “Nine small figs, measuring just 18mm (0.7in) across, along with 313 smaller fig fragments were discovered in a house in an early Neolithic village, called Gilgal I, in the Jordan Valley. The researchers from Harvard University in and Bar-Ilan University in Israel believe the figs are an early domestic crop rather than a wild breed. The ancient fig is smaller than these varieties of modern fig After examining the figs, they determined that it was a self-pollinating, or parthenocarpic, variety, like the kind we eat today. In nature, parthenocarpic fig trees appear now and again by a chance genetic mutation; but because they do not produce seeds, they cannot reproduce alone — they require a shoot to be removed and replanted.
See Separate Article: EARLIEST NON-GRAIN CROPS: NUTS, FIGS, BEANS, OLIVES, FRUIT AND POTATOES factsanddetails.com
Natufians and the Neolithic Revolution
V. Gordon Childe (1892-1957, an Australian transplant to Britain, invented the concept of the Neolithic Revolution in the 1920s. Charles C. Mann wrote in National Geographic, " In today's terms, Childe's views could be summed up like this: Homo sapiens burst onto the scene about 200,000 years ago. For most of the millennia that followed, the species changed remarkably little, with humans living as small bands of wandering foragers. Then came the Neolithic Revolution — "a radical change," Childe said, "fraught with revolutionary consequences for the whole species." In a lightning bolt of inspiration, one part of humankind turned its back on foraging and embraced agriculture. The adoption of farming, Childe argued, brought with it further transformations. To tend their fields, people had to stop wandering and move into permanent villages, where they developed new tools and created pottery. The Neolithic Revolution, in his view, was an explosively important event — "the greatest in human history after the mastery of fire." [Source:Charles C. Mann, National Geographic, June 2011]
Matti Friedman wrote in Smithsonian magazine: The discoveries at Ein Gev challenge the conventional wisdom about the agricultural revolution—and raise the question of whether the term “revolution” is even the right one... Childe was deeply affected by the Industrial Revolution, which had altered the Western world by the time of his birth, and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, which happened when he was 25. In the first half of the 20th century, which saw the breakup of old empires and ascendant movements for individual rights, belief in scientific progress and human agency was deeply felt. The promise of Childe’s “agricultural revolution” was a life freed from the unpredictable labor of hunting and gathering, and a step up the ladder toward an ordered way of life. [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
Today, many scholars still identify the move to agriculture as a singular moment of human invention that paved the way for modern life. This is supported by genetic studies and archaeological finds that trace the appearance of domesticated grains to modern-day Turkey and Syria approximately 10,000 years ago. Avi Gopher, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University, for example, pinpoints the transformation to 10,500 years ago. He calls this a “big bang”—a leap in plant domestication in southeastern Turkey executed not gradually but rapidly and purposefully, based on what we would think of as scientific understanding. Smart people, in other words, figured out something novel and important, and human history was never the same after that. This breakthrough, he told me, can only be called a revolution. “The idea that you could take control of a species in nature and put it to work for you—this was a complete change of worldview, one that led, in many ways, to our own civilization. And the evidence is that it happened quickly.”
The key moment of the “agricultural revolution” is sometimes described as a lightning bolt of human innovation akin to electricity or powered flight. It’s a good story. But at Nahal Ein Gev II, every dig season complicates it a little more. The village here flourished 2,000 years before the revolution got going, and the growing impression is of a place curiously ahead of its time—“a true turning point in human culture,” in the words of Steven Mithen, the eminent British prehistorian and author of After the Ice: A Global Human History. [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
See Separate Article: ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE factsanddetails.com
Natufians Show Agriculture Developed in a Step by Step Fashion
Matti Friedman wrote in Smithsonian magazine: The finds at Nahal Ein Gev II testify to humans settling down and practicing some form of cultivation millennia before that “big bang.” “You’ll never hear me say the word ‘revolution,’” Grosman told me. “I hate the word. If we look at Ein Gev, we’ll see that exciting things are happening there, but it’s not a ‘revolution.’ They’ve got one foot in one era and the other foot in another, and that’s why they’re so interesting.” [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
It’s not that Grosman disagrees that people figured out how to harness grain mutations in southeastern Turkey 2,000 years later. But she sees that as a late stage of the process, not the beginning, and as more of an elaboration than the breakthrough itself. The leap, in her eyes, was from nomadism to living in one place, harvesting plants and building a society bigger than an extended family. This shift is visible at Nahal Ein Gev II, she believes, and this change made possible the invention of agriculture—not the other way around.
The truth is that revolutions have always been more complicated than we tend to think. Was the French Revolution caused by the oppression of common people by royal autocrats, by the spread of liberal ideals or by expanding literacy? Or was it due to the actions of specific people like Louis XVI or Robespierre? The answer is some combination that is impossible to predict at the time and hard to grasp afterward. Richter, the University of Copenhagen prehistorian, views the move to agriculture in the same way. “I think we have to see history and historic process as an almost chaotic overlapping of circumstances that co-occur at the same time,” he said.
Natufian Tools
The characteristic Natufian tools was a small, half-moon-shaped flint blade called a lunate, barely a centimeter or two in length and apparently designed to be used as an arrowhead or embedded in a handle made of wood or bone. The Natufian microlithic industry centered on short blades and bladelets. They used the microburin technique to make these tools. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes, and triangles. There are backed blades as well. Sickle blades appear for the first time in the Natufian periodlithic industry. The characteristic sickle-gloss shows that they were used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals, indirectly suggesting the existence of incipient agriculture. Shaft straighteners made of ground stone indicate the practice of archery. There was a rich bone industry, including harpoons and fish hooks. There are heavy ground-stone bowl mortars as well. A special type of retouch (Helwan retouch) is characteristic in early Natufian stone tools. In the late Natufian, the Harif-point, a typical arrowhead made from a regular blade, became common in the Negev.
One persistent mystery at Natufian sites was purpose of a type of sharpened stone, five centimeters in length, hundreds of which had turned up in the dig. Matti Friedman wrote in Smithsonian magazine: The archaeologists called them “perforators,” guessing that they were used to make a hole in something. Artifact 3D showed that many of the perforators were cracked in precisely the same spot, suggesting that each had been used repeatedly for the same task until they broke in the same way. The researchers concluded that the stones were swiveled with a mechanism resembling a bow drill, with a string moving back and forth to rotate the tool—perhaps the earliest evidence for a mechanism of that kind. The drill could have been used to perforate beads or pieces of leather. [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
The same drill may also have featured in another of the site’s mysteries—a hundred or so doughnut-like stones, each with a hole drilled in the middle. These were pebbles picked up on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, a short walk from the village, but what they were for was anyone’s guess. By analyzing the hole in the center, the software was able to pinpoint their center of gravity. This, in turn, helped rule out early hypotheses, like the idea that they were weights used for fishing nets. Instead, Talia Yashuv, a master’s student at the lab, suggested that they were part of a spindle whorl, used to make string. She took a few of the stones to an expert on ancient crafts, who was able to use them to recreate the technique. If the hypothesis is correct, they would represent the earliest known examples of the spindle whorl.
The Ain Sakhri lovers, a carved stone object held at the British Museum, is the oldest known depiction of a couple having sex (See the image below). It was found in the Ain Sakhri cave in the Judean desert. Other Natufian objects interpreted as being connected with sex have been misplaced. According to Archaeology magazine: Once thought to have been phallic ritual objects, one- to two-inch-long clay cylinders from several Pottery Neolithic sites in Israel might have been the world’s first matches. Based on their conical tips, ridges, grooves, breakage patterns, and dark coloration, the 8,000-year-old items may have been used as fire drills — placed in holes and rotated to produce frictional heat to ignite tinder. Interestingly, some cultures interpret such fire drills as symbolic of male and female sex organs — so the initial interpretation might still generate a little heat. [Source: Samir S. Patel, Archaeology magazine, November-December 2012]
Between the Natufians (12,500-9500 B.C.) and Halaf Period (6500–5500 B.C.)
The Khiamian Period (c. 10,200 – c. 8,800 B.C., also referred to as El Khiam or El-Khiam) is a period of the Near-Eastern Neolithic, marking the transition between the Natufian and the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Some sources date it from about 10,000 to 9,500 B.C., The Khiamian is named after the site of El Khiam, situated on banks of the Dead Sea, where researchers have recovered the oldest chert arrows heads, with lateral notchs, the so-called "El Khiam points", which has served to identify sites in Israel, (Azraq), Sinai (Abu Madi), and to the north as far as the Middle Euphrates (Mureybet). [Source: Wikipedia +]
The Khiamian is regared as a time without any major technical innovations. However, for the first time houses were built on the ground level, not half buried as was previously done. Otherwise, members of this culture were still hunter-gatherers. Agriculture was still rather primitive. Relatively new discoveries in the Middle East and Anatolia show that some experiments with agriculture had taken place by 10,900 B.C. and wild grain processing had occurred by 19,000 B.C. at Ohalo II. According to Jacques Cauvin, the Khiamian was the beginning of the worship of the Woman and the Bull, found in later following periods in the Near-East, based on the appearance of small female statuettes, as well as by the burying of aurochs skulls.
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN, around 8500-5500 B.C.) is the name of the early Neolithic Period in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent. The domestication of plants and animals was evolving at this time, possibly triggered by the Younger Dryas drought (See above). The Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture came to an end around the time of the 8.2 kiloyear event, a cool spell that lasted several hundred years and peaked around on 6200 B.C.
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN, around 8500-5500 B.C.) Period is divided into three periods 1) Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA 8500 B.C. - 7600 B.C.); 2) Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB 7600 B.C. - 6000 B.C.) and 3) Pre-Pottery Neolithic C culture (culture continued a few more centuries at 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan).
Around 8000 B.C. during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) the world's first town Jericho appeared in the Levant. PPNB differed from PPNA in showing greater use of domesticated animals, a different set of tools, and new architectural styles.
Natufian Archaeology
Not far from the Sea of Galilee is the Natufian site of Nahal Ein Gev II, which is sometimes described as a village. Matti Friedman wrote in Smithsonian magazine: I came to the village with Leore Grosman, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....Her team of 30 arrived in work pants and sun hats from their quarters at a nearby kibbutz. At first light, they fanned out across the hill by the stream. Soon a few were squatting in the remains of a round house. Several diggers under the direction of Natalie Munro, an archaeologist from the University of Connecticut, were busy in the adjacent cemetery, brushing off an adult cranium and treading carefully around the skeleton of a 3-year-old. One team member set up a geolocation tripod that precisely locates every artifact on a grid. A PhD student looked for gazelle bones. The pace picked up as the sun rose, the same atmosphere of industry you might have sensed if you had come when the villagers were here 12 millennia ago. [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
The village yields new surprises each season. When I was there, a pair of doctoral students from Canada and Sweden were brushing earth from two reddish-brown objects inside one of the Natufian homes. It wasn’t clear what the objects were, but they were made of clay, which didn’t seem notable at first—anyone who has spent time at an archaeological dig has seen plenty of pottery. But then I remembered that pottery wasn’t supposed to have been invented in this part of the world for another 4,000 years. [Source: Matti Friedman, Smithsonian magazine, July-August 2023]
“The finds at the site make clear that its people were innovators,” Mithen, the British prehistorian, told me. “Processes of change that we thought occurred during the later Neolithic were already underway at this settlement. Nahal Ein Gev illustrates how architecture, art and economy are interlinked in ways that we have yet to fully understand in the transition from hunting and gathering to farming lifestyles.”
Many of the most important pieces of the puzzle from Nahal Ein Gev II emerge not at the site itself but a few hours’ drive south, in Jerusalem, in two rooms at the Hebrew University known as the Computational Archaeology Laboratory. Here Grosman and her colleagues subject their findings to study in disciplines ranging from paleobotany to zoology and lithic analysis. In one room is a large worktable where I found a few doctoral students staring intently at laptops beneath walls of shelves holding boxes with labels like “Gadi’s Mandibles.” (The box was full of Neanderthal jaws.) The other room is equipped with computers running software of the lab’s own design, including a program called Artifact 3D, which renders a scanned object into a matrix of millions of points that can be analyzed for minute idiosyncrasies.
Image Sources: Wikipedia Commons and Cambridge University (1st image) and Columbia University (2nd image)
Text Sources: National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Nature, Scientific American. Live Science, Discover magazine, Discovery News, Ancient Foods ancientfoods.wordpress.com ; Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, BBC, The Guardian, Reuters, AP, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.
Last updated June 2024