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Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins Of Evolutionary Anthropology 159 ARTICLES The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture OFER BAR-YOSEF The aim of this paper is to provide the reader with an updated description of the sites, together with this reconstruc- archeological evidence for the origins of agriculture in the Near East. Specifically, I tion of natural resources, allow us to will address the question of why the emergence of farming communities in the Near answer the questions of when and East was an inevitable outcome of a series of social and economic circumstances where the Neolithic Revolution oc- that caused the Natufian culture to be considered the threshold for this major curred. However, we are still far from evolutionary change.1–4 The importance of such an understanding has global providing a definitive answer to the implications. Currently, updated archeological information points to two other question of why it occurred. centers of early cultivation, central Mexico and the middle Yangtze River in China, Within the large region of the Near that led to the emergence of complex civilizations.4 However, the best-recorded East, recent archeological work has sequence from foraging to farming is found in the Near East. Its presence warns demonstrated the importance of the against the approach of viewing all three evolutionary sequences as identical in area known as the Mediterranean Le- terms of primary conditions, economic and social motivations and activities, and the vant. Today it is one of the most re- resulting cultural, social, and ideological changes. searched parts of the Near East.1–4,9–18 It is therefore possible that the picture I will draw is somewhat biased due to As with other crucial thresholds in marked a major organizational depar- the limited number of excavations else- cultural evolution, the impact of the ture from the old ways of life. This was where, such as in western Iran, north- 19–22 ‘‘Neolithic Revolution,’’ as it was la- followed by a second major socio- ern Iraq, or southeast Turkey. How- ever, no field project outside of the beled by V. G. Childe,5 or the ‘‘incipient economic threshold, characterized ar- Levant has yet exposed any indication cultivation and domestication’’ as it cheologically by Early Neolithic culti- of a prehistoric entity that resembles was defined by R. Braidwood,6 can vators. This sequence of changes can the Natufian. As will become clear in only be evaluated on the basis of its only be understood within the context the following pages, such an entity can of the entire region and the shifting outcome. I begin with a brief descrip- be recognized through its combined paleobotanical conditions of the Le- tion of the cultural sequence of the archeological attributes, including vant during this period. late hunter-gatherers who inhabited dwellings, graves, lithic and bone in- 7 the Near East until about 13,000 B.P. I therefore begin with a brief descrip- dustries, ground stone tools, ornamen- These foragers, who had a variety of tion of the Levant and its natural tation, and art objects, as well as the subsistence strategies and types of an- resources during the terminal Pleis- early age of its sedentary hamlets nual schedules, ranged from semi- tocene and early Holocene (18,000 to among all foragers societies in the sedentary groups to small mobile 9,000 B.P.: uncalibrated radio carbon Near East. bands. The establishment of sedentary years8). During this period, the land- Natufian hamlets in the Levant (Fig. 1) scape of the Near East was not dry, barren, and thorny as it appears today. THE REGION: RESOURCES AND Using palynological, paleobotanical, POTENTIAL FORAGING PATTERNS and geomorphological data, we are Ofer Bar-Yosef studies Middle and Upper The Mediterranean Levant, about Paleolithic sequences in the Near East, as able to propose instead a reconstruc- 1,100 km long and about 250 to 350 well as the origins of agriculture as ex- tion of the spatial distribution of an km wide, incorporates a variety of pressed in the archaeology of Epi-Paleo- oak-dominated parkland and wood- lithic Neolithic sites. He has published pa- landscapes, from the southern flanks pers and co-edited volumes on various land that provided the highest bio- of the Taurus Mountains in Turkey to prehistoric sites of Pleistocene and Holocene mass of foods exploitable by humans. the Sinai peninsula (Fig. 1). The vari- age in the Levant. He is the MacCurdy Profes- sor of Prehistoric Archaeology in the De- This vegetational belt mostly covered able topography comprises a narrow partment of Anthropology, Harvard Univer- the Mediterranean coastal plains and coastal plain, two parallel continuous sity. E-mail: [email protected] hilly ranges, as well as a few oases. mountain ranges with a rift valley in Recently published reports from the between, and an eastward sloping pla- Key words: origins of agriculture; Levant; Natu- excavated Late Paleolithic (or Epi- teau dissected by many eastward run- fian; Early Neolithic Paleolithic), Natufian, and Neolithic ning wadis. The region is character- 160 Evolutionary Anthropology ARTICLES Figure 1. A map of the Near East indicating the territories of the Early Natufian homeland, the expansion of the Late Natufian culture, and the area of the Harifian culture, a desertic adaptation of the Late Natufian to the cold, dry conditions of the Younger Dryas. ized by marked seasonality: winters demonstrate that the geographic pat- belts as reflected in the palynological are cold and rainy, summers are hot tern of annual rainfall during the late sequences.16,25 and dry. Mediterranean woodland and Pleistocene and the early Holocene Floral resources in the Levant are open parkland vegetation develop was similar to today’s.24 Decadal and seasonal, with seeds most abundant where annual precipitation reaches from April to June and fruits from 400 to 1,200 mm a year. Shrub land, September to November. Tubers are steppic vegetation (Irano-Turanian), ...nofield project rare. Among the three vegetational and arid plant associations (Saharo- zones, the Mediterranean is the rich- Arabian) cover the areas where annual outside of the Levant has est, with more than one hundred ed- precipitation is less than 400 mm (for ible fruits, seeds, leaves, and tubers.23 the current situation see Zohary23). yet exposed any The faunal biomass gradually Today, two annual patterns of win- indication of a dwindles away from the Mediterra- ter storm tracks prevail. One carries prehistoric entity that nean core area. Dense oak forests, humidity from the Mediterranean Sea where precipitation surpasses 800 mm, to the southern Levant; the second resembles the Natufian. arrives from northern Europe and maintain a lower biomass than do turns to the northern Levant, leaving open parklands. Thus the mosaic asso- the southern portion dry. Chemical ciations of Mediterranean vegetation, studies of the beds of Lake Lisan, an centennial fluctuations of precipita- bordering the Irano-Turanian shrub Upper Pleistocene lake in the Jordan tion, more than temperature changes, land, are the most optimal in terms of Valley, and the early Holocene distribu- were responsible for the expansion carrying capacity.26,27 It is along the tion of C3 and C4 plants in the Negev and contraction of the vegetational prehistoric position of this belt that ARTICLES Evolutionary Anthropology 161 the major cultivating communities THE PALEOCLIMATIC RECORD coastal plain of the Levant by a stretch emerged.28 5 to 20 km wide and 500 km long. Paleoclimatic information is often Given the poor aquatic resources in Game animals included the moun- derived from the records of oxygen this section of the Mediterranean sea, tain gazelle (Gazella gazella), a station- isotope fluctuations registered in ice the rise in sea level mainly affected the ary antelope with a small home range cores, deep sea cores, and terrestrial size of foraging territories and the that varies from a few to as many as 25 vegetational reconstructions based on 29 collection of marine shells often used square kilometers. A larger home pollen cores from lakes. The following for decoration. range can be inferred for Gazella sub- sequence emerges when such data sets gutturosa, the dominant species in the are supplemented with information Syro-Arabian desert. Other mammals from geomorphological sequences, FROM MOBILE included wild cattle (Bos primigenius), bio-geographic interpretations of fluc- HUNTER-GATHERERS TO fallow deer (Dama mesopotmaica), roe tuating faunal spectra, incomplete ar- deer (Capreolus capreolus), and wild cheo-botanical records, and pollen SEDENTARY FORAGERS boar (Sus scrofa). The rare wild goat from archeological sites:2–4,16,17,32,33 The archeology of the late Paleo- (Capra aegagrus) occupied parkland 1. During the Late Glacial Maxi- lithic foragers is relatively well- areas while the ibex (Cabra ibex) inhab- mum, dated to ca. 20,000 to 14,500 known.1,34,35 Social units have been ited the cliffy, drier landscapes.27,30 B.P. the entire region was cold and dry, identified based on selective analysis The optimal foraging pattern of late but the hilly coastal areas enjoyed of stone artifacts combined with other Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, one that winter precipitation and were covered attributes such as site size and struc- combined both residential and logisti- by forests. ture, the distribution of settlements, cal movements, was probably the most and the reconstructed pattern of sea- efficient. Topography made antici- sonal mobility.1–4,11,28,34,36–41 For in- pated moves of social units or task stance, the Kebaran (ca. 18,000 to forces along east-west transects easier, . the mosaic 14,500 B.P.) sites were limited geo- for this route took advantage of the associations of graphically to the coastal Levant and north-south layout of mountain ranges Mediterranean isolated oases due the prevailing cold, and vegetational belts.
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