It is generally seen as a successor, which evolved out of elements within that preceding culture. The Natufian developed in the same region as the earlier Kebaran industry. The Levant hosts more than a hundred kinds of cereals, fruits, nuts, and other edible parts of plants, and the flora of the Levant during the Natufian period was not the dry, barren, and thorny landscape of today, but rather woodland. The Late Natufian most likely occurred in tandem with the Younger Dryas (10,800 to 9,500 BC). The period is commonly split into two subperiods: Early Natufian (12,000–10,800 BC) and Late Natufian (10,800–9,500 BC). Radiocarbon dating places the Natufian culture at an epoch from the terminal Pleistocene to the very beginning of the Holocene, a time period between 12,500 and 9,500 BC. Climate and Post-Glacial expansion in the Near East, based on the analysis of Greenland ice cores. Temperatures would rise again at the end of the Younger Dryas, and with the onset of the Holocene and the Neolithic Revolution. The Natufian appeared at the time of the Bølling-Allerød warming, before temperatures dropped drastically again during the Younger Dryas. As early as 1931, both Garrod and Neuville drew attention to the presence of stone sickles in Natufian assemblages and the possibility that this represented a very early agriculture. Over the next two decades Garrod found Natufian material at several of her pioneering excavations in the Mount Carmel region, including el-Wad, Kebara and Tabun, as did the French archaeologist René Neuville, firmly establishing the Natufian culture in the regional prehistoric chronology. A year later, when she discovered similar material at el-Wad Terrace, Garrod suggested the name "the Natufian culture", after Wadi an-Natuf that ran close to Shuqba. She identified this with the Mesolithic, a transitional period between the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic which was well-represented in Europe but had not yet been found in the Near East. She discovered a layer sandwiched between the Upper Palaeolithic and Bronze Age deposits characterised by the presence of microliths. In 1928, Garrod was invited by the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (BSAJ) to excavate Shuqba cave, where prehistoric stone tools had been discovered by Père Mallon four years earlier. Prior to the 1930s, the majority of archaeological work taking place in British Palestine was biblical archaeology focused on historic periods, and little was known about the region's prehistory. The Natufian culture was discovered by British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod during her excavations of Shuqba cave in the Judaean Hills in the West Bank of the Jordan River. ĭorothy Garrod coined the term Natufian based on her excavations at Shuqba cave (Wadi an-Natuf) near the town of Shuqba in the western Judean Mountains.ĭorothy Garrod (centre) discovered the Natufian culture in 1928. Archaeogenetic analysis has revealed derivation of later (Neolithic to Bronze Age) Levantines primarily from Natufians, besides substantial admixture from Chalcholithic Anatolians. Generally, though, Natufians exploited wild cereals and hunted animals, including gazelles. In addition, the oldest known evidence of beer, dating to approximately 13,000 BP, was found at the Raqefet Cave in Mount Carmel near Haifa in Israel. The world's oldest evidence of bread-making has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,500-year-old site in Jordan's northeastern desert. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture, at Tell Abu Hureyra, the site of earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. The Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian culture ( / n ə ˈ t uː f i ə n/ ) is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Levant, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago.
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