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The particular pattern of striations on the sickle blades further indicated that the wild cere-
als were harvested while still moist and green and were cut low near the soil level, rather
than directly under the seed head.^4 Wild cereals can only be effectively gathered while green
because the fully mature seed heads shatter easily under the blows of a sickle, scattering the
precious grain. Only after thousands of years of selection would the stalks of ripened cereal
heads become tough enough to remain intact during harvesting.
Similar sickle blades were subsequently found at nearby locations, and Garrod named
the prehistoric culture to which these people belonged the Natufian culture, after Wadi
el- Natuf, where the Shukba cave was located.The Natufians: The First Sedentary Hunter- GatherersThe Natufians occupied the Levant^5 and other sites in the Near East from around 14,500
to 11,500 years ago, during the period now called the Epipaleolithic, a transitional phase
between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic periods in the Near East (see Table 3.1).
Thousands of years earlier, at the time of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) of the
Pleistocene Epoch (25,000– 19,000 years ago), the climate in the Levant had been cold and
dry and the land relatively unproductive except along the coastal regions, which remained
forested. The ancestors of the Natufians had been hunter- gatherers who led a nomadic exis-
tence, tracking herds of wild antelope, gazelle, and wild cattle, and supplementing their
animal diet with a wide variety of wild plant foods.
As the glaciers receded and temperatures rose, so did the amount of rainfall. The period
from 14,500 to 11,500 years ago, the pre- Holocene,^6 was especially wet, and the enhanced
water availability generated a wealth of plant and animal life. It was under conditions ofTable 3.1Chronological chart of the Late Epipaleolithic and Early Neolithic in the Northern
and Southern Levant
Dates cal BP Northern Levant Southern Levant
14,000 Early Natufian? Early Natufian
13,000 Late Natufian Late Natufian
12,000 Final Natufian Final Natufian11,000
Khiamian
PPNAKhiamian
PPNA
Mureybetian Sultanian
Early PPNB Early PPNB
10,000 Middle PPNB Middle PPNB
9,000 Late PPNB Late PPNB
8,000 Final PPNB Final PPNB (PPNC)
7,000 Pottery Neolithic Pottery Neolithic
Dates are given as “calibrated years ago” (years before the present), in which radiocarbon measurements are
calibrated using tree rings. Suggested correlations with climatic events are indicated. The cultural terms are marked
with the chronological boundaries (dashed lines) based on the currently available calibrated radiocarbon dates.
From Bar- Yosef, O. (2014), The origins of sedentism and agriculture in Western Asia, in C. Renfrew and P. Bahn,
eds., The Cambridge World Prehistory, Cambridge University Press, chapter 3.4: 408– 1438.