Summary
Highlights
The last Ice Age ended 15,000 years ago, leading to climate change and the melting of glaciers. This brought the world back to life, creating fertile areas like the Middle East's Fertile Crescent, which became a paradise for hunter-gatherers, offering abundant edible plants and thriving animal populations.
Traveling bands in the Fertile Crescent discovered vast supplies of edible grasses, like ancient wheat and barley. Dorothy Garrod, a pioneering archaeologist, unearthed evidence of the Natufians, people who lived around 12,000 years ago and used sickles to harvest these wild grains in large quantities, a practice that would revolutionize their lives.
Unlike other foods, grain did not decay if kept dry, allowing for long-term storage. This reliability became a reason for the Natufians to settle down, leading to the construction of the first lasting shelters and villages. These settlements, often comprising pit houses, housed small communities of 25-50 people.
The Natufians were eclectic foragers and hunters, with a diet including gazelle, aurochs, and various birds. They were adept at hunting and lived physically demanding lives, as evidenced by healed fractures in their skeletons. They also perfected the use of flint tools, creating specialized blades, axes, and sickles. They also adorned their tools and made decorative items like carved deer and gazelles.
Natufians crafted beautifully shaped, heavy stone mortars and pestles, too large to carry, indicating their increasing settlement. These were used to process grains into coarse biscuits or pancakes, ancestors of today's flatbreads. The processing of these grains was skilled, preventing excessive wear on their teeth.
After 2,500 years, the Natufian way of life was abruptly ended by the Younger Dryas, a short Ice Age that brought severe drought and famine to the Middle East. Forced to adapt, some Natufian refugees settled near natural springs in the Jordan Valley. Here, they began to intentionally cultivate plants, sacrificing their precious food stocks to sow seeds, becoming the world's first farmers.
Archaeologists have found traces of early farms, like the three huts at Zad 2 near the Dead Sea. Despite the barren landscape, the presence of a natural spring allowed for cultivation. Burnt seeds unearthed at the site were larger than wild varieties, indicating that these farmers had deliberately selected and cultivated superior strains of barley and other plants, initiating the process of domestication.
Farming introduced a more labor-intensive life, with tasks like harvesting, winnowing, and grinding. Early farming burials show signs of strain injuries from this work. Farmers developed new tools, including various axes and picks, and invented the bow and arrow to improve hunting efficiency in arid lands. They also built the first specialized granaries for large-scale storage.
Farming communities developed permanent mud and rock houses, built for individual families, and treated them as homes. Like their Natufian ancestors, they buried their dead under the floor. Farming led to larger families and population growth, necessitating organized living. Villages and shared granaries, like the one found at Jeff alak, emerged, leading to the development of social institutions with leaders and chiefs.
While farming revolutionized life in the Fertile Crescent, other parts of the world, like Europe, remained populated by hunter-gatherers. The agricultural revolution that began in the Middle East would gradually spread across the globe over thousands of years, fundamentally transforming human societies and their relationship with the environment.