Natufians

The Natufians were an ancient community of hunter-gatherers from the same region as Ohalo II. The climate warmed 15,000 years ago (Figure 13-7), and the Natufians spread across the western part of the Fertile Crescent (Figure 14‑2), from the Levant in the west to the foothills of the Taurus Mountains in the north and into Turkey (Figure 14‑4). Similar hunter-gatherers were in the Zagros Mountains in Iran.

The Natufians flourished in this period of warm weather and plentiful rainfall. There was an abundance of wild grains, fruit, nuts, and game. In general, hunter-gatherers lived in the regions that are green in Figure 14‑5, which generally have greater than 30 cm rain per year, which is sufficient for wild and domestic rainfed grains, other vegetation, and animals.

In the mid-20^th century, Dorothy Garrod (Figure 14‑6) discovered the Natufians when she found a sickle with a bone handle and flint blades, such as in Figure 14‑4, in caves on Mt. Carmel. Her team found residues of barley and wheat on the sickle. Researchers have calculated that one person could gather enough wild grain in 3 weeks to feed an entire family for a year. Grain could be stored and kept for decades so the Natufians established permanent settlements to store food. They pounded the grains in mortar and pestles and cooked flat biscuits. They also ate fruits and nuts. The Natufians developed a lifestyle in which they stayed in semi-permanent locations during extended periods of the year. Many of their sites were on the edges of the Jordan Valley, where there were springs and streams with year round flows. To build their homes, they laid out circles of stones (Figure 14‑7) and built brush and branch structures on the stones. They added terraces in front of living areas. The Natufian communities generally had 25 to 50 people.

The Natufians seemed to have a religious orientation with ancestor worship as an important component. Their dead were buried along with artifacts in holes below their family huts. Because of the abundance of food, Natufians did not need to spend all of their time foraging for food, and they engaged in arts and crafts. Their mortar and pestles for grinding grain were made from solid rock and some demonstrated fine craftsmanship (Figure 14‑9). They regularly repaired their huts and made artistic objects ranging from bone carvings to stone art objects. Natufians traded tools, grains, ideas, decorations, and spouses (marriage between people from different clans) between their small communities along a north-south trade route stretching from the Jordan Valley to the Euphrates in northern Syria.

The Natufians hunted with spears, bolas, and slingshots. They hunted gazelle, aurochs, goat, wolf, fox, crab, cat, and many bird species. This was generally a healthy lifestyle, but hunting was a risky activity and led to cracked heels and other injuries; in fact, people generally died of injuries prior to age 50. While traveling, Natufians carried animal skins for tents.

Breeding of fruit and nut trees might have taken place inadvertently when seeds from fruits and nuts were thrown into camp refuse piles and sprouted. Because they would have selected the trees in the wild with the largest and most appealing fruits and nuts, the fruits and nuts from trees in the refuse piles might have been more suitable for human consumption than the average tree in the environment.

Figure 14‑9. Mortar and pestles from Natufian Culture (Nahal Oren (left) and Eynan (right), 12,500 – 9500 BC), Credit: Gary Todd. Public domain.

The Natufians lived in their hunter-gatherer paradise for 2,500 years, but that ended with the release of North American giant glacial Lake Agassiz into the Atlantic Ocean, which changed the North Atlantic Current and caused a worldwide drought, which is called the Younger Dryas Ice Age and Drought (12,800 to 11,500 years ago) (Figure 14‑10). The drought forced the Natufians to abandon their settlements and they roamed the land searching for food. Many perished, but a few groups established settlements at springs and oases and began to plant and water seeds!!!!