Natufian culture

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 cereals, 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 gazelles. Brace believes that these populations later became assimilated into the broader continuum of Southwest Asian populations.

Settlements

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.

Domesticated dog

It is at Natufian sites that some of the earliest archaeological evidence for the domestication 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. 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 Hureyra, Mureybet, Yabrud III

Israel: Ain Mallaha (Eynan), El-Wad, Ein Gev, Hayonim cave, Nahal Oren, Salibiya I

*West Bank: Jericho, Shuqba cave

Jordan: Beidha

Lebanon: Jiita III, Borj el-Barajné, Jabal es Saaïdé, Aamiq II

See also

Synoptic table of the principal old world prehistoric cultures

References

Further reading

S6-S33.

External links

Epi-Palaeolithic (European Mesolithic) Natufian Culture of Israel (The History of the Ancient Near East)

Category:Archaeological cultures Category:Mesolithic Category:Afro-Asiatic languages Category:Archaeology of the Near East