[ Music ]
The Natufian culture was a
group of people that lived
in this part of the world,
today's Israel, Lebanon, Syria,
the Levant, around 15,000
to 11,000 years ago.
Now these people were
not agriculturists.
They were hunter-gatherers.
But they were systematic
collectors.
They were hunting and gathering
on a massive diversified scale
and that diversification,
the different kinds of food
that they were collecting in
their natural environment,
their beginnings of a
systematic collection of grains
and creation of compound little
sickle tools to harvest grains,
and systematic collection not
only of you know large mammals,
the gazelles and oryx and other
kinds of large mammals that live
in this area, but also
small mammals and fish
with dedicated fishing villages.
That kind of diversification,
it's been called the
broad spectrum revolution.
When we think about how
agriculture emerged,
that emergence was not
initially because of the actions
of a really smart inventor
who figured out that
if we plant seeds in a
certain way they will grow
and we can harvest them
and collect a share of them
and keep some to
plant the next year.
No. This is a process that
emerged over thousands of years
as people began to use
resources more systematically
in particular places.
Natufian people were among
the first in the world
to be sedentary hunter
gatherers.
They lived in permanent or
semi-permanent settlements.
They built structures that
were simple by the standards
of later peoples in this
area but still had huts
that were made of branches
and leaves and with circles
of stones forming
their foundations.
They buried people in
context immediately in
or around their villages.
They were coming back to
these places and using them
for long periods of time.
And they were investing
resources, labor, work,
social ties, into these places.
Because they were using
these places so intensively,
they began to use the resources
around these places
more intensively.
They were increasing, if
you like, the efficiency
of extraction of foods and other
resources from these places.
They were trading
over longer distances.
They were developing denser,
more stable populations.
And we now recognize that all
of those changes were really
precursors to the invention
of agriculture where you're
staying in a place long enough
to store foods there, to
replant seeds the next year,
and to stay there or
return there to harvest them
in the following year.
That kind of cycle of
life really necessitates
that you have already adapted
to a more sedentary lifestyle.
The Natufian people
in this area were some
of the first peoples
anywhere in the world
to make that transition.
El-Wad is the site of
a Natufian village.
And the people were using the
cave, this is a very deep cave.
It goes way back
into the hillside.
But they were living outside
of the cave on terraces.
And those terraces they
were investing work in.
They began to build walls
to retain the soils
on the terraces.
They began to build little
structures on the terraces.
They began to bury their
dead on the terraces.
When we talk about the
Natufian, what we're talking
about is the shift from small
groups in nomadic hunters
and gatherers to fully
sedentary occupation.
Yeah, yeah.
Right? One of the
reasons we can say
that is you've got these
permanent installations.
Yeah. You don't invest
that much time and effort
if in two weeks you're
going to be leaving again.
Yeah. Right?
Yeah. [laughter] You see here
this terrace wall, right?
Also, investment in time
and energy, permanency.
The number of variables
that we have here, Yeah.
Again I mentioned that we
have 115, 120 individuals now,
minimum number of, and we
have evidence from microfauna,
commensals, which you don't see
in smaller more nomadic
oriented sites.
Oh so you've got like
rats that are living here.
Rats, mouse, sparrow,
right, beautiful
and they're well documented.
Yeah. We've got an MA and
a dissertation have come
out of our department
so it's a...
They don't live away from
human habitation now.
The humans create this
magnificent habitation
for these kinds of animals.
Yeah. Yeah so and you see them
in other kinds of sites but not
in the kinds of densities
you see here.
Sure, yeah.
They're living out here.
Yeah. They're using
the cave for something
but they're living out here.
They've got houses out here.
That's a bonus.
You can live definitely
without the cave.
The cave is nice.
Another thing that's changing
in Natufian times is politics.
If you're going to have
large sedentary populations,
you have to negotiate the
use of space, you're going
to encounter more
different kinds
of people doing more different
kinds of things around you
and you're going to have to have
ways of regulating those people
so that the society
is able to subsist.
We see in Natufian times
many pieces of evidence
about the development of
these political systems.
We have a copy of one of the
individuals that was found
from here, it wasn't
an exact spot.
You notice that on the
skull there was a Yeah.
An Italian shell headdress
and other materials were used
for its decorative
elements, jewelry.
One thing that's very,
very interesting is
that there are individuals,
male, female,
sometimes youngsters
even that have this kind
of decoration, others
that do not.
So we're thinking you
know, your treatment
in death somehow reflects
your standing in life.
Right. Maybe seeing also
the shift from some kind
of egalitarian hunter
gatherers to some kind
of hierarchical social
organization.
We make a big deal when we
see, you know, a little bit
of ornamentation in Neandertals.
Here it's systematic.
I mean this is helping to
organize their society.
Right, yeah.
We're still trying to work out
as to who may have gotten it,
who may not have gotten it.
And you find Italian
shells scattered
out throughout the excavation
also, lonely pieces, whatever.
And it's mostly in the early
Natufian that we see this.
Very, very little of
this kind of decoration
that you see in the
late Natufian.
So they just give it up
or just different social?
The hypothesis right now is
that for whatever reason,
we're not sure why, there's
a bit of dispersal again
and a shift from a
little bit more mobility,
you lose some of the sedentism.
Some people related this to the
younger dryer and poor economic,
environmental conditions.
That doesn't really fit
now with what we have
with the dates, whatever.
So it's a question that
we're trying to deal with.
What happened between the early
Natufian going into the late.
But as we're getting into our
late Natufian here we're finding
that it wasn't such a kind
of flimsy sort of
settlement either.
So again there're a
number of questions
that we're trying to deal with.
Sure, yeah.
So the Natufian people really
give us the best evidence we
have about what lifestyles were
like among the last
sedentary hunter gatherers
in this part of the world.
And archeologists and
anthropologists now understand
that as we go to study
how agriculture emerged,
the social structures,
the use of time
and place, the yearly cycle.
All of these things are things
that hunter gatherers were
understanding for thousands
of years before we begin to see
the development of domestication
of plants and animals
that enabled agriculture
to begin in earnest.
Agriculture, as a change
in the subsistence pattern,
is fundamentally economic.
It's about the relationship
of humans to each other
and to their environments.
But the social changes
that enabled it are changes
that happened without
domesticated plants and animals.
They were changes that
represent innovations
in human social systems.
Those social systems are what
began to change not only here
in the near East but
elsewhere in the world
as agriculture was emerging.
