h2_eyna_1

The Natufian culture existed in the Mediterranean region of the Levant. It was a Mesolithic culture, but unusual in that it was sedentary, or semi-sedentary, before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities are possibly the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. There is no evidence for the deliberate cultivation of cereals, but people at the time certainly made use of wild cereals. Animals hunted include the gazelles.

Sedentism

A semi-sedentary life may have been made possible by abundant resources due to a favourable climate at the time, with a culture living from hunting, fishing and gathering, including the use of wild cereals. Tools were available for making use of cereals: flint-bladed sickles for harvesting, and mortars, grinding stones, and storage pits.

Lithics

The Natufian had a microlithic industry, based on short blades and bladelets. The microburin-technique was used. Geometric microliths include lunates, trapezes and triangles. There are backed blades as well. A special type of retouch (Helwan retouch) is characteristic for the early Natufian. In the late Natufian, the Harif-point, a typical arrowhead made from a regular blade, became common in the Negev. Some scholars use it to define a separate culture, the Harifian.

Sickle blades appear for the first time. The characteristic sickle-gloss shows that they have been used to cut the silica-rich stems of cereals and form an indirect proof for incipient agriculture. Shaft straighteners made of ground stone indicate the practice of archery. There are heavy ground-stone bowl mortars as well.

Precursors and associated cultures

The Natufian developed in the same region as the earlier Kebaran complex, and is generally seen as a successor which developed from at least elements within that earlier culture. There were also other cultures in the region, such as the Mushabian culture of the Negev and Sinai, which are sometimes distinguished from the Kebaran, and sometimes also seen as having played a role in the development of the Natufian.
More generally there has been discussion of the similarities of these cultures with those found in Mediterranean Africa. Graeme Barker notes "the similarities in the respective archaeological records of the Natufian culture of the Levant and of contemporary foragers in coastal North Africa across the late Pleistocene and early Holocene boundary".

Ofer Bar-Yosef has argued that there are signs of influences coming from Africa to the Levant, citing the microburin technique and “microlithic forms such as arched backed bladelets and La Mouillah points.” There has also been evidence that parthenocarpic figs, were brought by humans from the direction of Sudan in this period.

Authors such as Christopher Ehret have built upon the little evidence available to develop scenarios of intensive usage of plants building up first in Africa, and was a precursor to the development of true farming in the Fertile Crescent, but such suggestions are considered speculative until more African archaeological evidence can be gathered.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian