Natufian culture
Encyclopedia
The Natufian culture was a Mesolithic
culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant
, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean
. It was unusual in that it was sedentary
, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture
. The Natufian communities are possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic
settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. There is some evidence for the deliberate cultivation of cereal
s, specifically rye
, by the Natufian culture, at the Tell Abu Hureyra
site, the site for earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. Generally, though, Natufians made use of wild cereals. Animals hunted include gazelle
s.
The term "Natufian" was coined by Dorothy Garrod
who studied the Shuqba cave
in Wadi an-Natuf, Israel
, about halfway between Tel Aviv
and Ramallah
.
places this culture from the terminal Pleistocene
to the very beginning of the Holocene
, from 12,500 to 9,500 BC.
The period is commonly split into two subperiods: Early Natufian (12,500–10,800 BC) and Late Natufian (10,800–9500 BC). The Late Natufian most likely occurred in tandem with the Younger Dryas
(10,800 to 9500 BC). In the Levant, there are more than a hundred kinds of cereals, fruits, nuts and other edible parts of plants, and the flora of the Levant during the Natufian period was not the dry, barren, and thorny landscape of today, but parkland and woodland.
complex, and is generally seen as a successor which developed from at least elements within that earlier culture. There were also other cultures in the region, such as the Mushabian culture
of the Negev
and Sinai, which are sometimes distinguished from the Kebaran
, and sometimes also seen as having played a role in the development of the Natufian.
More generally there has been discussion of the similarities of these cultures with those found in Northeast Africa. Graeme Barker notes there are: "similarities in the respective archaeological records of the Natufian culture of the Levant and of contemporary foragers in coastal North Africa across the late Pleistocene and early Holocene boundary".
Ofer Bar-Yosef
has argued that there are signs of influences coming from Africa to the Levant, citing the microburin
technique and “microlithic forms such as arched backed bladelets and La Mouillah points.” There has also been evidence that parthenocarpic figs
were brought by humans from the direction of Sudan
in this period.
Authors such as Christopher Ehret
have built upon the little evidence available to develop scenarios of intensive usage of plants having built up first in Africa, as a precursor to the development of true farming in the Fertile Crescent
, but such suggestions are considered speculative until more African archaeological evidence can be gathered. Anthropologist C. Loring Brace
in a recent study on cranial metric traits however, was also able to identify a "clear link" to African populations for early Natufians based on his observation of gross anatomical similarity with extant populations found mostly below the Sahara. Brace believes that these populations later became assimilated into the broader continuum of Southwest Asian populations.
Settlements occur in the woodland
belt where oak
and Pistacia
species dominated. The underbrush of this open woodland was grass with high frequencies of grain. The high mountains of Lebanon
and the Anti-Lebanon
, the steppe
areas of the Negev
desert in Israel
and Sinai, and the Syro-Arabian desert in the east were much less favoured for Natufian settlement, presumably due to both their lower carrying capacity and the company of other groups of foragers who exploited this region.
The habitations of the Natufian are semi-subterranean, often with a dry-stone foundation. The superstructure was probably made of brushwood. No traces of mudbrick
have been found, which became common in the following Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
, abbreviated PPN A. The round houses have a diameter between 3 and 6 meters, and they contain a central round or subrectangular fireplace. In Ain Mallaha
traces of posthole
s have been identified. "Villages" can cover over 1,000 square meters. 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, indicating a temporary abandonment of the settlement. Settlements have been estimated to house 100–150, but there are three categories: small, median, and large, ranging from 15 sq. m to 1,000 sq. m of people. There are no definite indications of storage facilities.
at the time, with a culture living from hunting, fishing and gathering, including the use of wild cereals. Tools were available for making use of cereals: flint-bladed
sickles for harvesting, and mortars
, grinding stones, and storage pits.
ic industry, based on short blade
s and bladelets. The microburin
-technique was used. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes and triangles. There are backed blades as well. A special type of retouch
(Helwan retouch
) is characteristic for the early Natufian. In the late Natufian, the Harif-point, a typical arrowhead
made from a regular blade, became common in the Negev
. Some scholars use it to define a separate culture, the Harifian
.
Sickle
blade
s appear for the first time. The characteristic sickle-gloss
shows that they have been used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals and form an indirect proof for incipient agriculture. Shaft straighteners made of ground stone
indicate the practice of archery
. There are heavy ground-stone bowl mortars as well.
s and fish hook
s. Stone and bone were worked into pendants and other ornaments. There are a few human figurines made of limestone
(El-Wad, Ain Mallaha
, Ain Sakhri), but the favourite subject of representative art seems to have been animals. Ostrich-shell containers have been found in the Negev
.
s, acorn
s and pistachio
s may have been collected. Animal bones show that gazelle
(Gazella gazella and Gazella subgutturosa) were the main prey. Additionally deer
, aurochs
and wild boar were hunted in the steppe
zone, as well as onager
s and caprids (Ibex). Water fowl and freshwater fish formed part of the diet in the Jordan River valley. Animal bones from Salibiya I (12,300 – 10,800 BP) have been interpreted as evidence for communal hunts with nets.
, the Younger Dryas
event (ca. 10800 to 9500 BC), that inspired the development of agriculture
. The Younger Dryas was a 1,000-year-long interruption in the higher temperatures prevailing since the last ice age
, which produced a sudden drought in the Levant. This would have endangered the wild cereals, which could no longer compete with dryland scrub, but upon which the population had become dependent to sustain a relatively large sedentary population. By artificially clearing scrub and planting seeds obtained from elsewhere, they began to practice agriculture. However, this theory of the origin of agriculture is controversial in the scientific community.
of the dog
is found. At the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha
in Israel
, dated to 12 000 BP, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together. At another Natufian site at the cave of Hayonim, humans were found buried with two canids.
, is the oldest known depiction of a couple having sex. It was found in the Ain Sakhri cave in the Judean desert
.
and the Judean Hills. The pits were backfilled with settlement refuse, which sometimes makes the identification of grave-goods difficult. Sometimes the graves were covered with limestone slabs. The bodies are stretched on their backs or flexed, there is no predominant orientation. There are both single and multiple burials, especially in the early Natufian, and scattered human remains in the settlements that point to disturbed earlier graves. The rate of child mortality
was rather high—about one-third of the dead were between ages five and seven.
Skull removal was practiced in Hayonim cave
, Nahal Oren
and Ain Mallaha
. Sometimes the skulls were decorated with shell beads (El-Wad).
Grave goods consist mainly of personal ornaments, like beads made of shell, teeth (of red deer
), bones and stone. There are pendants, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and belt-ornaments as well.
In 2008, the grave of a Natufian 'priestess' was discovered (in most media reports referred to as a shaman or witch doctor
). The burial contained complete shells of 50 tortoise
s, which are thought to have been brought to the site and eaten during the funeral feast.
), Anatolian obsidian
and shellfish from the Nile
-valley have been found. The source of malachite
-beads is still unknown.
n origin associated with the concept of Nostratic languages
.
Most scholars, for example Christopher Ehret
, Roger Blench
and others, contend that the Afroasiatic Urheimat
is to be found in Africa, probably in the area of the Horn of Africa
and Sudan
Within this group, Christopher Ehret, who like Militarev believes Afroasiatic may already have been in existence in the Natufian period, would associate Natufians only with the pre-Proto-Semitic branch of Afroasiatic.
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic is an archaeological concept used to refer to certain groups of archaeological cultures defined as falling between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic....
culture that existed from 12,500 to 9,500 BC in the Levant
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
, a region in the Eastern Mediterranean
Eastern Mediterranean
The Eastern Mediterranean is a term that denotes the countries geographically to the east of the Mediterranean Sea. This region is also known as Greater Syria or the Levant....
. It was unusual in that it was sedentary
Sedentism
In evolutionary anthropology and archaeology, sedentism , is a term applied to the transition from nomadic to permanent, year-round settlement.- Requirements for permanent settlements :...
, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
. The Natufian communities are possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. There is some evidence for the deliberate cultivation of cereal
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...
s, specifically rye
Rye
Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain and as a forage crop. It is a member of the wheat tribe and is closely related to barley and wheat. Rye grain is used for flour, rye bread, rye beer, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder...
, by the Natufian culture, at the Tell Abu Hureyra
Tell Abu Hureyra
Tell Abu Hureyra is an archaeological site located in the Euphrates valley in modern Syria. The remains of the villages within the tell come from over 4,000 years of habitation, spanning the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic periods. Ancient Abu Hureyra was occupied between 11,000 and 7,500 years ago...
site, the site for earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. Generally, though, Natufians made use of wild cereals. Animals hunted include gazelle
Gazelle
A gazelle is any of many antelope species in the genus Gazella, or formerly considered to belong to it. Six species are included in two genera, Eudorcas and Nanger, which were formerly considered subgenera...
s.
The term "Natufian" was coined by Dorothy Garrod
Dorothy Garrod
Dorothy Annie Elizabeth Garrod CBE was a British archaeologist who was the first woman to hold an Oxbridge chair, partly through her pioneering work on the Palaeolithic period. Her father was Sir Archibald Garrod, the physician.-Life:Born in Oxford, she attended Newnham College, Cambridge...
who studied the Shuqba cave
Shuqba cave
Shuqba cave is an archaeological site near the town of Shuqba in the western Judean Mountains.-Location:Shuqba cave is located on the northern bank of Wadi en-Natuf. This wadi is a kilometer south of the town of Shuqba, and runs west towards the Mediterranean coastal plain. The town is 28 km...
in Wadi an-Natuf, Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, about halfway between Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv , officially Tel Aviv-Yafo , is the second most populous city in Israel, with a population of 404,400 on a land area of . The city is located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline in west-central Israel. It is the largest and most populous city in the metropolitan area of Gush Dan, with...
and Ramallah
Ramallah
Ramallah is a Palestinian city in the central West Bank located 10 kilometers north of Jerusalem, adjacent to al-Bireh. It currently serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority...
.
Dating
Radiocarbon datingRadiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
places this culture from the terminal Pleistocene
Pleistocene
The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....
to the very beginning of the Holocene
Holocene
The Holocene is a geological epoch which began at the end of the Pleistocene and continues to the present. The Holocene is part of the Quaternary period. Its name comes from the Greek words and , meaning "entirely recent"...
, from 12,500 to 9,500 BC.
The period is commonly split into two subperiods: Early Natufian (12,500–10,800 BC) and Late Natufian (10,800–9500 BC). The Late Natufian most likely occurred in tandem with the Younger Dryas
Younger Dryas
The Younger Dryas stadial, also referred to as the Big Freeze, was a geologically brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought between approximately 12.8 and 11.5 ka BP, or 12,800 and 11,500 years before present...
(10,800 to 9500 BC). In the Levant, there are more than a hundred kinds of cereals, fruits, nuts and other edible parts of plants, and the flora of the Levant during the Natufian period was not the dry, barren, and thorny landscape of today, but parkland and woodland.
Precursors and associated cultures
The Natufian developed in the same region as the earlier KebaranKebaran
The Kebaran or Kebarian culture was an archaeological culture in the eastern Mediterranean area , named after its type site, Kebara Cave south of Haifa...
complex, and is generally seen as a successor which developed from at least elements within that earlier culture. There were also other cultures in the region, such as the Mushabian culture
Mushabian culture
The Mushabian culture is suggested to have originated along the Nile Valley prior to migrating to the Levant, due to similar industries demonstrated among archaeological sites in both regions but with the Nile valley sites predating those found in the Sinai regions of the Levant.Accordingly...
of the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
and Sinai, which are sometimes distinguished from the Kebaran
Kebaran
The Kebaran or Kebarian culture was an archaeological culture in the eastern Mediterranean area , named after its type site, Kebara Cave south of Haifa...
, and sometimes also seen as having played a role in the development of the Natufian.
More generally there has been discussion of the similarities of these cultures with those found in Northeast Africa. Graeme Barker notes there are: "similarities in the respective archaeological records of the Natufian culture of the Levant and of contemporary foragers in coastal North Africa across the late Pleistocene and early Holocene boundary".
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Ofer Bar-Yosef
Ofer Bar-Yosef is an Israeli archaeologist whose main field of study has been the Palaeolithic period.He was Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the institution where he originally studied archaeology at undergraduate and post-graduate levels in the 1960s...
has argued that there are signs of influences coming from Africa to the Levant, citing the microburin
Microburin
A microburin is a characteristic waste product from manufacture of lithic tools, sometimes confused with an authentic burin, which is characteristic of the Mesolithic, but which has been recorded from the end of the Upper Paleolithic until the Calcolithic...
technique and “microlithic forms such as arched backed bladelets and La Mouillah points.” There has also been evidence that parthenocarpic figs
FIGS
FIGS is an acronym for French, Italian, German, Spanish. These are usually the first four languages chosen to localize products into when a company enters the European market....
were brought by humans from the direction of Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
in this period.
Authors such as Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret , a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a writer on African history and African historical linguistics, particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeological record...
have built upon the little evidence available to develop scenarios of intensive usage of plants having built up first in Africa, as a precursor to the development of true farming in the Fertile Crescent
Fertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent, nicknamed "The Cradle of Civilization" for the fact the first civilizations started there, is a crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia. The term was first used by University of Chicago...
, but such suggestions are considered speculative until more African archaeological evidence can be gathered. Anthropologist C. Loring Brace
C. Loring Brace
C. Loring Brace is an anthropologist at the University of Michigan. He considers the attempt "to introduce a Darwinian outlook into biological anthropology" to be his greatest contribution to the field of anthropology.-Life and work:...
in a recent study on cranial metric traits however, was also able to identify a "clear link" to African populations for early Natufians based on his observation of gross anatomical similarity with extant populations found mostly below the Sahara. Brace believes that these populations later became assimilated into the broader continuum of Southwest Asian populations.
Settlements
Woodland
Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...
belt where oak
Oak
An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 600 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
and Pistacia
Pistacia
Pistacia is a genus of flowering plants in the cashew family, Anacardiaceae. It contains ten to twenty species that are native to Africa and Eurasia from the Canary Islands, whole Africa, and southern Europe, warm and semi-desert areas across Asia, and also North America from Mexico to warm and...
species dominated. The underbrush of this open woodland was grass with high frequencies of grain. The high mountains of Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
and the Anti-Lebanon
Anti-Lebanon
The Anti-Lebanon mountains is the Western name for the Eastern Lebanon Mountain Range , which are a southwest-northeast-trending mountain range between Syria and Lebanon. Its Western name comes from the Greek word for ‘opposite’. The majority of the mountain range lies in Syria. The border between...
, the steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
areas of the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
desert in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
and Sinai, and the Syro-Arabian desert in the east were much less favoured for Natufian settlement, presumably due to both their lower carrying capacity and the company of other groups of foragers who exploited this region.
The habitations of the Natufian are semi-subterranean, often with a dry-stone foundation. The superstructure was probably made of brushwood. No traces of mudbrick
Mudbrick
A mudbrick is a firefree brick, made of a mixture of clay, mud, sand, and water mixed with a binding material such as rice husks or straw. They use a stiff mixture and let them dry in the sun for 25 days....
have been found, which became common in the following Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A denotes the first stage in early Levantine Neolithic culture, dating around 9500 to 8500 BC. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent...
, abbreviated PPN A. The round houses have a diameter between 3 and 6 meters, and they contain a central round or subrectangular fireplace. In Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha, also known as Eynan, was a Natufian settlement built and settled circa 10,000–8,000 BCE. The settlement is an example of hunter-gatherer sedentism, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming.- The Village :...
traces of posthole
Posthole
In archaeology a posthole is a cut feature used to hold a surface timber or stone. They are usually much deeper than they are wide although truncation may not make this apparent....
s have been identified. "Villages" can cover over 1,000 square meters. 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, indicating a temporary abandonment of the settlement. Settlements have been estimated to house 100–150, but there are three categories: small, median, and large, ranging from 15 sq. m to 1,000 sq. m of people. There are no definite indications of storage facilities.
Sedentism
A semi-sedentary life may have been made possible by abundant resources due to a favourable climateClimate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
at the time, with a culture living from hunting, fishing and gathering, including the use of wild cereals. Tools were available for making use of cereals: flint-bladed
Stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric, particularly Stone Age cultures that have become extinct...
sickles for harvesting, and mortars
Mortar and pestle
A mortar and pestle is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix solid substances . The pestle is a heavy bat-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, ceramic or stone...
, grinding stones, and storage pits.
Lithics
The Natufian had a microlithMicrolith
A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. It is produced from either a small blade or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a very typical piece of waste,...
ic industry, based on short blade
Blade
A blade is that portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with a cutting edge and/or a pointed tip that is designed to cut and/or puncture, stab, slash, chop, slice, thrust, or scrape animate or inanimate surfaces or materials...
s and bladelets. The microburin
Microburin
A microburin is a characteristic waste product from manufacture of lithic tools, sometimes confused with an authentic burin, which is characteristic of the Mesolithic, but which has been recorded from the end of the Upper Paleolithic until the Calcolithic...
-technique was used. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes and triangles. There are backed blades as well. A special type of retouch
Retouch (lithics)
Retouch - the work done to an edge of a flint implement in order to make it into a functional tool, or to reshape a used tool. In the case of a core-tool, such as a hand-axe, retouch may simply consist of roughly trimming the edge by striking with a hammerstone, but on smaller, finer flake or blade...
(Helwan retouch
Helwan retouch
The Helwan Retouch was a bifacial microlithic flint-tool fabrication technology characteristic of the Early Natufian culture . The decline of the Helwan Retouch was largely replaced by the "backing" technique and coincided with the emergence of microburin methods, which involved snapping bladelets...
) is characteristic for the early Natufian. In the late Natufian, the Harif-point, a typical arrowhead
Arrowhead
An arrowhead is a tip, usually sharpened, added to an arrow to make it more deadly or to fulfill some special purpose. Historically arrowheads were made of stone and of organic materials; as human civilization progressed other materials were used...
made from a regular blade, became common in the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
. Some scholars use it to define a separate culture, the Harifian
Harifian
The Harifian is a specialized regional cultural development of the Epipalaeolithic of the Negev Desert. It corresponds to the latest stages of the Natufian culture. Like the Natufian, it is characterized by semi-subterranean houses. These are often more elaborate than those found at Natufian sites...
.
Sickle
Sickle
A sickle is a hand-held agricultural tool with a variously curved blade typically used for harvesting grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock . Sickles have also been used as weapons, either in their original form or in various derivations.The diversity of sickles that...
blade
Blade
A blade is that portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with a cutting edge and/or a pointed tip that is designed to cut and/or puncture, stab, slash, chop, slice, thrust, or scrape animate or inanimate surfaces or materials...
s appear for the first time. The characteristic sickle-gloss
Sickle-gloss
Sickle-gloss, or sickle gloss, is a silica residue found on blades suggesting that they have been used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals and forming an indirect proof for incipient agriculture...
shows that they have been used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals and form an indirect proof for incipient agriculture. Shaft straighteners made of ground stone
Ground stone
In archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. Ground stone tools are usually made of basalt, rhyolite, granite, or other macrocrystalline igneous stones whose coarse structure makes them ideal for...
indicate the practice of archery
Archery
Archery is the art, practice, or skill of propelling arrows with the use of a bow, from Latin arcus. Archery has historically been used for hunting and combat; in modern times, however, its main use is that of a recreational activity...
. There are heavy ground-stone bowl mortars as well.
Other finds
There was a rich bone industry, including harpoonHarpoon
A harpoon is a long spear-like instrument used in fishing to catch fish or large marine mammals such as whales. It accomplishes this task by impaling the target animal, allowing the fishermen to use a rope or chain attached to the butt of the projectile to catch the animal...
s and fish hook
Fish hook
A fish hook is a device for catching fish either by impaling them in the mouth or, more rarely, by snagging the body of the fish. Fish hooks have been employed for centuries by fishermen to catch fresh and saltwater fish. In 2005, the fish hook was chosen by Forbes as one of the top twenty tools...
s. Stone and bone were worked into pendants and other ornaments. There are a few human figurines made of limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
(El-Wad, Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha, also known as Eynan, was a Natufian settlement built and settled circa 10,000–8,000 BCE. The settlement is an example of hunter-gatherer sedentism, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming.- The Village :...
, Ain Sakhri), but the favourite subject of representative art seems to have been animals. Ostrich-shell containers have been found in the Negev
Negev
The Negev is a desert and semidesert region of southern Israel. The Arabs, including the native Bedouin population of the region, refer to the desert as al-Naqab. The origin of the word Neghebh is from the Hebrew root denoting 'dry'...
.
Subsistence
The Natufian people lived by hunting and gathering. The preservation of plant remains is poor because of the soil conditions, but wild cereals, legumes, almondAlmond
The almond , is a species of tree native to the Middle East and South Asia. Almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree...
s, acorn
Acorn
The acorn, or oak nut, is the nut of the oaks and their close relatives . It usually contains a single seed , enclosed in a tough, leathery shell, and borne in a cup-shaped cupule. Acorns vary from 1–6 cm long and 0.8–4 cm broad...
s and pistachio
Pistachio
The pistachio, Pistacia vera in the Anacardiaceae family, is a small tree originally from Persia , which now can also be found in regions of Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, India, Pakistan, Egypt, Sicily and possibly Afghanistan , as well as in the United States,...
s may have been collected. Animal bones show that gazelle
Gazelle
A gazelle is any of many antelope species in the genus Gazella, or formerly considered to belong to it. Six species are included in two genera, Eudorcas and Nanger, which were formerly considered subgenera...
(Gazella gazella and Gazella subgutturosa) were the main prey. Additionally deer
Deer
Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...
, aurochs
Aurochs
The aurochs , the ancestor of domestic cattle, were a type of large wild cattle which inhabited Europe, Asia and North Africa, but is now extinct; it survived in Europe until 1627....
and wild boar were hunted in the steppe
Steppe
In physical geography, steppe is an ecoregion, in the montane grasslands and shrublands and temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biomes, characterized by grassland plains without trees apart from those near rivers and lakes...
zone, as well as onager
Onager
The Onager is a large member of the genus Equus of the family Equidae native to the deserts of Syria, Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel and Tibet...
s and caprids (Ibex). Water fowl and freshwater fish formed part of the diet in the Jordan River valley. Animal bones from Salibiya I (12,300 – 10,800 BP) have been interpreted as evidence for communal hunts with nets.
Development of agriculture
According to one theory, it was a sudden change in climateClimate
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods...
, the Younger Dryas
Younger Dryas
The Younger Dryas stadial, also referred to as the Big Freeze, was a geologically brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought between approximately 12.8 and 11.5 ka BP, or 12,800 and 11,500 years before present...
event (ca. 10800 to 9500 BC), that inspired the development of agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
. The Younger Dryas was a 1,000-year-long interruption in the higher temperatures prevailing since the last ice age
Ice age
An ice age or, more precisely, glacial age, is a generic geological period of long-term reduction in the temperature of the Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental ice sheets, polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers...
, which produced a sudden drought in the Levant. This would have endangered the wild cereals, which could no longer compete with dryland scrub, but upon which the population had become dependent to sustain a relatively large sedentary population. By artificially clearing scrub and planting seeds obtained from elsewhere, they began to practice agriculture. However, this theory of the origin of agriculture is controversial in the scientific community.
Domesticated dog
It is at Natufian sites that some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the domesticationDomestication
Domestication or taming is the process whereby a population of animals or plants, through a process of selection, becomes accustomed to human provision and control. In the Convention on Biological Diversity a domesticated species is defined as a 'species in which the evolutionary process has been...
of the dog
Dog
The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
is found. At the Natufian site of Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha, also known as Eynan, was a Natufian settlement built and settled circa 10,000–8,000 BCE. The settlement is an example of hunter-gatherer sedentism, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming.- The Village :...
in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, dated to 12 000 BP, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together. At another Natufian site at the cave of Hayonim, humans were found buried with two canids.
Art
The Ain Sakhri lovers, a carved stone object held at the British MuseumBritish Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, is the oldest known depiction of a couple having sex. It was found in the Ain Sakhri cave in the Judean desert
Judea
Judea or Judæa was the name of the mountainous southern part of the historic Land of Israel from the 8th century BCE to the 2nd century CE, when Roman Judea was renamed Syria Palaestina following the Jewish Bar Kokhba revolt.-Etymology:The...
.
Burials
Burials are located in the settlements, commonly in pits in abandoned houses but also in caves in Mount CarmelMount Carmel
Mount Carmel ; , Kármēlos; , Kurmul or جبل مار إلياس Jabal Mar Elyas 'Mount Saint Elias') is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. Archaeologists have discovered ancient wine and oil presses at various locations on Mt. Carmel...
and the Judean Hills. The pits were backfilled with settlement refuse, which sometimes makes the identification of grave-goods difficult. Sometimes the graves were covered with limestone slabs. The bodies are stretched on their backs or flexed, there is no predominant orientation. There are both single and multiple burials, especially in the early Natufian, and scattered human remains in the settlements that point to disturbed earlier graves. The rate of child mortality
Child mortality
Child mortality, also known as under-5 mortality, refers to the death of infants and children under the age of five. In 2010, 7.6 million children under five died , down from 8.1 million in 2009, 8.8 million in 2008, and 12.4 million in 1990. About half of child deaths occur in Africa....
was rather high—about one-third of the dead were between ages five and seven.
Skull removal was practiced in Hayonim cave
Hayonim Cave
HaYonim Cave is a cave located in a limestone bluff about 250 meters above modern sea level, in the Upper Galilee, Israel. The site had substantial occupation during the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian period, from 250,000 years ago to 100,000 years ago, and later, during the Natufian period around...
, Nahal Oren
Nahal Oren
Nahal Oren is an archeological site in a cave 10 kilometers south of Haifa, Israel, which was first excavated in 1941. Kebaran and Natufian Pre-Pottery A and B industries were found. -Domestication of Gazelles and Goats:...
and Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha
Ain Mallaha, also known as Eynan, was a Natufian settlement built and settled circa 10,000–8,000 BCE. The settlement is an example of hunter-gatherer sedentism, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming.- The Village :...
. Sometimes the skulls were decorated with shell beads (El-Wad).
Grave goods consist mainly of personal ornaments, like beads made of shell, teeth (of red deer
Red Deer
The red deer is one of the largest deer species. Depending on taxonomy, the red deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Asia Minor, parts of western Asia, and central Asia. It also inhabits the Atlas Mountains region between Morocco and Tunisia in northwestern Africa, being...
), bones and stone. There are pendants, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and belt-ornaments as well.
In 2008, the grave of a Natufian 'priestess' was discovered (in most media reports referred to as a shaman or witch doctor
Witch doctor
A witch doctor originally referred to a type of healer who treated ailments believed to be caused by witchcraft. It is currently used to refer to healers in some third world regions, who use traditional healing rather than contemporary medicine...
). The burial contained complete shells of 50 tortoise
Tortoise
Tortoises are a family of land-dwelling reptiles of the order of turtles . Like their marine cousins, the sea turtles, tortoises are shielded from predators by a shell. The top part of the shell is the carapace, the underside is the plastron, and the two are connected by the bridge. The tortoise...
s, which are thought to have been brought to the site and eaten during the funeral feast.
Long distance exchange
At Ain Mallaha (in IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
), Anatolian obsidian
Obsidian
Obsidian is a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed as an extrusive igneous rock.It is produced when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly with minimum crystal growth...
and shellfish from the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
-valley have been found. The source of malachite
Malachite
Malachite is a copper carbonate mineral, with the formula Cu2CO32. This green-colored mineral crystallizes in the monoclinic crystal system, and most often forms botryoidal, fibrous, or stalagmitic masses. Individual crystals are rare but do occur as slender to acicular prisms...
-beads is still unknown.
Language
While the period involved makes it difficult to speculate on any language associated with the Natufian culture, linguists who believe it is possible to speculate this far back in time have written on this subject. As with other Natufian subjects, opinions tend to either emphasize African connections or Eurasian connections. Hence Alexander Militarev and others have argued that the Natufian may represent the culture which spoke Proto-Afroasiatic which he in turn believes has a EurasiaEurasia
Eurasia is a continent or supercontinent comprising the traditional continents of Europe and Asia ; covering about 52,990,000 km2 or about 10.6% of the Earth's surface located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres...
n origin associated with the concept of Nostratic languages
Nostratic languages
Nostratic is a proposed language family that includes many of the indigenous language families of Eurasia, including the Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic as well as Kartvelian languages...
.
Most scholars, for example Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret
Christopher Ehret , a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, is a writer on African history and African historical linguistics, particularly known for his efforts to correlate linguistic taxonomy and reconstruction with the archeological record...
, Roger Blench
Roger Blench
Roger Blench is a British linguist, ethnomusicologist and development anthropologist. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and remains based in Cambridge, England...
and others, contend that the Afroasiatic Urheimat
Afroasiatic Urheimat
The term Afroasiatic Urheimat refers to the place where Proto-Afroasiatic speakers lived in a single linguistic community, or complex of communities, before this original language dispersed geographically and divided into distinct languages. Afroasiatic languages are spoken today in many parts of...
is to be found in Africa, probably in the area of the Horn of Africa
Horn of Africa
The Horn of Africa is a peninsula in East Africa that juts hundreds of kilometers into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. It is the easternmost projection of the African continent...
and Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
Within this group, Christopher Ehret, who like Militarev believes Afroasiatic may already have been in existence in the Natufian period, would associate Natufians only with the pre-Proto-Semitic branch of Afroasiatic.
Sites
Natufian sites include:- Syria: Tell Abu HureyraTell Abu HureyraTell Abu Hureyra is an archaeological site located in the Euphrates valley in modern Syria. The remains of the villages within the tell come from over 4,000 years of habitation, spanning the Epipaleolithic and Neolithic periods. Ancient Abu Hureyra was occupied between 11,000 and 7,500 years ago...
, MureybetMureybetMureybet is a tell, or ancient settlement mound, located on the west bank of the Euphrates in Ar-Raqqah Governorate, northern Syria. The site was excavated between 1964 and 1974 and has since disappeared under the rising waters of Lake Assad...
, YabrudYabrudYabrud is a city in Syria, located in the Rif Dimashq governorate about 80 km north of the capital Damascus. The city is known for its ancient caves, most notably the Iskafta cave , and the Yabrud temple, which was once Jupiter...
III - Israel: Ain Mallaha (Eynan)Ain MallahaAin Mallaha, also known as Eynan, was a Natufian settlement built and settled circa 10,000–8,000 BCE. The settlement is an example of hunter-gatherer sedentism, a crucial step in the transition from foraging to farming.- The Village :...
, El-Wad, Ein Gev, Hayonim caveHayonim CaveHaYonim Cave is a cave located in a limestone bluff about 250 meters above modern sea level, in the Upper Galilee, Israel. The site had substantial occupation during the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian period, from 250,000 years ago to 100,000 years ago, and later, during the Natufian period around...
, Nahal OrenNahal OrenNahal Oren is an archeological site in a cave 10 kilometers south of Haifa, Israel, which was first excavated in 1941. Kebaran and Natufian Pre-Pottery A and B industries were found. -Domestication of Gazelles and Goats:...
, Salibiya I- West Bank: JerichoJerichoJericho ; is a city located near the Jordan River in the West Bank of the Palestinian territories. It is the capital of the Jericho Governorate and has a population of more than 20,000. Situated well below sea level on an east-west route north of the Dead Sea, Jericho is the lowest permanently...
, Shuqba caveShuqba caveShuqba cave is an archaeological site near the town of Shuqba in the western Judean Mountains.-Location:Shuqba cave is located on the northern bank of Wadi en-Natuf. This wadi is a kilometer south of the town of Shuqba, and runs west towards the Mediterranean coastal plain. The town is 28 km...
- West Bank: Jericho
- Jordan: Beidha
- Lebanon: Jeita III, Borj Barajne, Jabal es SaaïdéJabal es SaaïdéJabal es Saaïdé , Jabal es Saaide, Jabal as Sa`idah, Jabal as Sa`īdah, Jebal Saaidé, Jebel Saaidé or Jabal Saaidé is a Mountain in Lebanon near the inhabited village of Saaïdé, approximately northeast of Baalbek, Lebanon....
, Aamiq II
See also
- Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric culturesSynoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric culturesThe synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures gives a rough picture of the relationships between the various principal cultures of prehistory outside the Americas, Antarctica, Australia and Oceania...