The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture

As with other crucial thresholds in cultural evolution, the impact of the ‘‘Neolithic Revolution,’’ as it was labeled by V. G. Childe,5 or the ‘‘incipient cultivation and domestication’’ as it was defined by R. Braidwood,6 can only be evaluated on the basis of its outcome. I begin with a brief description of the cultural sequence of the late hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Near East until about 13,000 B.P.7 These foragers, who had a variety of subsistence strategies and types of annual schedules, ranged from semisedentary groups to small mobile bands. The establishment of sedentary Natufian hamlets in the Levant (Fig. 1) marked a major organizational departure from the old ways of life. This was followed by a second major socioeconomic threshold, characterized archeologically by Early Neolithic cultivators. This sequence of changes can only be understood within the context of the entire region and the shifting paleobotanical conditions of the Levant during this period. I therefore begin with a brief description of the Levant and its natural resources during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene (18,000 to 9,000 B.P.: uncalibrated radio carbon years8). During this period, the landscape of the Near East was not dry, barren, and thorny as it appears today. Using palynological, paleobotanical, and geomorphological data, we are able to propose instead a reconstruction of the spatial distribution of an oak-dominated parkland and woodland that provided the highest biomass of foods exploitable by humans. This vegetational belt mostly covered the Mediterranean coastal plains and hilly ranges, as well as a few oases. Recently published reports from the excavated Late Paleolithic (or EpiPaleolithic), Natufian, and Neolithic sites, together with this reconstruction of natural resources, allow us to answer the questions of when and where the Neolithic Revolution occurred. However, we are still far from providing a definitive answer to the question of why it occurred. Within the large region of the Near East, recent archeological work has demonstrated the importance of the area known as the Mediterranean Levant. Today it is one of the most researched parts of the Near East.1–4,9–18 It is therefore possible that the picture I will draw is somewhat biased due to the limited number of excavations elsewhere, such as in western Iran, northern Iraq, or southeast Turkey.19–22 However, no field project outside of the Levant has yet exposed any indication of a prehistoric entity that resembles the Natufian. As will become clear in the following pages, such an entity can be recognized through its combined archeological attributes, including dwellings, graves, lithic and bone industries, ground stone tools, ornamentation, and art objects, as well as the early age of its sedentary hamlets among all foragers societies in the Near East.