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The Tangled Roots of Agriculture a Once-Popular View That Climate Change Led the Near East’S Ancient François Valla of the University of Paris In

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The Tangled Roots of Agriculture a Once-Popular View That Climate Change Led the Near East’S Ancient François Valla of the University of Paris In NEWSFOCUS The Tangled Roots of Agriculture A once-popular view that climate change led the Near East’s ancient François Valla of the University of Paris in Nanterre convened the world’s leading Natu- on January 22, 2010 Natufians to begin domesticating plants and animals is under increasing fian experts for a meeting, the Younger Dryas attack, but alternative paradigms are still being formed model was well on its way to becoming a leading paradigm for agricultural origins. PARIS—About 20,000 years ago, when the farming, and many of its features seem to But when Bar-Yosef and Valla called the last ice age was at its peak, sparse populations foreshadow the Neolithic epoch, when the Natufian mavens back together for a meeting of hunter-gatherers roamed the largely tree- earliest farmers built densely populated vil- in Paris last fall,* opinions had shifted. In less steppes of the eastern Mediterranean lages of stone and mud brick, painted their talks and recent journal articles, many region in highly mobile bands of perhaps 15 to walls with art, and buried their dead under the researchers rejected the idea that the Younger 50 people. For thousands of years, they eked floors. “Many of the activities present in the Dryas forced Near Eastern hunter-gatherers www.sciencemag.org out a marginal existence, traveling widely to early Neolithic had their roots in the Natu- to become farmers—or that the Natufians gather tubers and nuts and hunt deer and fian,” says zooarchaeologist Natalie Munro of themselves were precocious farmers, as gazelles. Then, about 14,500 years ago, the the University of Connecticut, Storrs. some had suggested. climate warmed suddenly. Woodlands of pis- But the warmth that ushered in the Natu- “Agriculture was not driven by climate tachio, olive, and oak, along with lush fields fian era didn’t last long. About 13,000 years change,” says Lisa Maher, an archaeologist of wild wheat and barley, began to take over ago, smack in the middle of the Natufian cul- at the University of Cambridge in the the steppes. Just as suddenly, hunter-gatherers tural florescence, a sharp, 1300-year-long United Kingdom. Nor, says Arlene Rosen, a Downloaded from in what is now Israel, Jordan, Syria, and cold and dry spell called the Younger Dryas geoarchaeologist at University College Lebanon began doing things they had rarely, if reversed the post–ice age warming. For some London (UCL), was Natufian culture sim- ever, done before. Although they continued to archaeologists, the Natufian response to this ply a way station on the road to farming: hunt, they built permanent houses of stone and sudden cooling holds “The Natufians were not on a trajectory to , OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2000 wood, and buried their dead in and around the clues to one of agriculture. In fact, they carried on … for them with elaborate rituals. They ground up archaeology’s central Online 1300 years as successful foragers during the wild cereals with mortars and pestles, made mysteries: why for- sciencemag.org Younger Dryas.” Nevertheless, researchers tools and art objects from animal bones, and mer hunter-gatherers Podcast interview say, the Natufians’ successful adaptations to perhaps even practiced Shamanism. And they settled down and with author what nature threw at them, and their many Michael Balter. gathered in sedentary or semisedentary com- invented agriculture. cultural innovations, may have helped make munities of up to several hundred people. According to a once-popular hypothesis, agriculture possible when the weather was VILLAGE ON THE EUPHRATES These were the Natufians, a culture so dif- the Younger Dryas created an environmental more conducive to it. ferent from what came before that archaeolo- crisis that forced the Natufians or whoever gists once thought they were invaders from replaced them to begin domesticating Follow the lunate afar. Their large, socially complex communi- plants and animals to ensure that they had The Natufians were discovered and named ties “represent a key development in human enough to eat (Science, 20 November 1998, in 1928 by the legendary British archaeolo- settlement history,” says archaeologist Phillip p. 1446), thus spurring the world’s first gist Dorothy Garrod. At Shuqba Cave north- Edwards of La Trobe University in Victoria, experiments with agriculture. Australia. In the Near East, Natufian culture Back in 1989, when archaeologists Ofer *The Natufian Culture in the Levant II, Paris, 7–11 Sep- was the next-to-last stop on the long road to Bar-Yosef of Harvard University and tember 2009. MOORE, GORDON HILLMAN/A.M.T. CREDIT: 404 22 JANUARY 2010 VOL 327 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org Published by AAAS NEWSFOCUS First farm? The excavators of Abu Hureyra in Syria New research at Ded- think rye was domesticated there. eriyeh Cave in northwest Syria is helping to fill that east of Jerusalem and at el-Wad Cave on gap. In unpublished work Mount Carmel, Garrod unearthed distinctive, presented here, archaeo- crescent-shaped flint tools called lunates, as logist Yoshihiro Nishiaki of well as grinding stones and mortars, figurines the University of Tokyo and jewelry, the remains of stone buildings, reported the remains of stone and burials of dozens of individuals. buildings occupied between Today, about 60 Natufian sites are known, 14,000 and 13,000 years ago, ranging from larger, villagelike “base one of which was heavily camps” to smaller “mobile camps.” Archae- burnt, charring and preserv- ologists divide the culture—often identified ing many plant remains. So Spirit world. This 12,000-year-old burial at Hilazon Tachtit in Israel by the presence of the lunates, probably used far, archaeobotanist Ken-ichi might have been that of a shaman woman. as arrowheads and for cutting plants—into Tanno of Japan’s Research two periods: a more sedentary Early Natu- Institute for Humanity and Nature in Kyoto hunting continued unabated during the fian, characterized by larger encampments has found that nearly 90% of the 12,000 plant Younger Dryas, according to studies by and elaborate group burials adorned with fragments he studied come from pistachio Bar-Oz, Munro, and others, a finding they ochre and jewelry; and a more mobile Late and almond trees. Tanno also found signifi- say is inconsistent with decreases in the Natufian, with smaller camps and undeco- cant amounts of wild wheat, one of the main Natufian population. rated, individual burials. cereals domesticated in the region during the Archaeologists agree that the milder, later Neolithic period. The finds at Ded- A paradigm gone dry? post–ice age climate conditions helped eriyeh show that Natufian plant use was The Younger Dryas, named for the sudden transform mobile hunter-gatherers into the “intensive, knowledgeable, and complex,” return to more southern latitudes of the more sedentary Natufians. In the early years says Maher. But there’s no sign that the Natu- cold-adapted plant Dryas octopetala, has on January 22, 2010 of Natufian research, archaeologists had fians actually cultivated plants at Dederiyeh been precisely dated from isotopic ratios of only a rough idea how old their sites were, rather than simply collecting them wild. oxygen, nitrogen, and other elements in the in part because of the lack of a suitable There is also plentiful evidence of Natu- Greenland ice cores, which vary with radiocarbon calibration curve fian hunting, particularly of the mountain changes in temperature and moisture. These (Science, 15 September gazelle. Just outside el-Wad Cave, for exam- records indicate that the Younger Dryas 2006, p. 1560). But ple, where archaeologist Mina Weinstein- stretched from 12,900 to 11,600 years ago; new dating shows pollen cores and other proxy that the Natufians CLIMATE CHANGE SINCE THE LAST ICE AGE climate indicators suggest appeared right around that at least parts of the www.sciencemag.org the time of the Bølling- -25 0.35 Near East also experienced Allerød interstadial -30 this cold, dry spell. The warm period, which began 0.30 Younger Dryas dates corre- 14,500 years ago and lasted -35 spond closely to the cali- 0.25 until the beginning of the Bølling-Allerød brated dates for the Late -40 Younger Dryas. “There is Temperature Dryas Younger 0.20 Natufian, thought to have clearly a striking correlation -45 begun about 13,000 years Downloaded from between the emergence of the 0.15 ago. This period, archaeolo- -50 larger-scale Natufian settle- Early Natufian gists agree, is marked by at Snow Colder/Drier - Warmer/Wetter Temperature - Degrees Celsius - Degrees Temperature 0.10 ments and the beginning of -55 Accumulation Late Natufian Snow Accumulation - meters/year least a partial return to the the warm and moist Bølling- Holocene more mobile lifestyle that Allerød,” says UCL archaeol- -60 0.05 preceded the sedentary Early ogist Andrew Garrard. Dur- 20 15 10 5 0 Natufian. Beginning in the ing colder times, this region Age - Thousands of Years Before the Present late 1980s, Bar-Yosef, Anna was mostly a treeless steppe Stormy weather. Records from Greenland ice cores suggest that the Late Natufians of Belfer-Cohen of The Hebrew dotted with shrubs and grass- the Near East had little trouble surviving the cold and dry Younger Dryas (named after University of Jerusalem, and lands, and new forests ex- the arctic plant Dryas octopetala, inset, top). other researchers argued panded rapidly, presumably influentially that the Late providing the Natufians with nuts and other Evron of the University of Haifa in Israel has Natufian culture was a response to the cold, calorie-rich plant resources and encouraging led renewed excavations since the mid- dry conditions, which shrank the resource- them to settle down. 1990s, Haifa zooarchaeologist Guy Bar-Oz rich forests and made wild cereals such as Nevertheless, researchers have had little found that gazelle made up about 75% of the wheat and barley more scarce.
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