The Natufians
Hunter-gatherers in the Levant stop moving, build stone houses, and bury their dead among them.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 3.3 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 500 years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
From about 15,000 years ago the Natufians occupy year-round settlements in the Levant with round semi-subterranean stone dwellings, harvest wild cereals with sickles whose flint blades carry silica gloss, grind grain on stone mortars, and bury their dead beneath the floors, sometimes with dogs and with shell ornaments. Sedentism arrives before farming, not after it. When the Younger Dryas dries the region, the pressure on these settled populations is one of the leading explanations for why cultivation begins.