Natufian Culture, perchè siamo diventati stanziali ipotesi

Raphael Pumpelly, an American geologist who hypothesized that the warming climate of the Holocene forced people to settle near drying lakes.

V. G. Childe, who proposed whattoday is called the ‘‘oasis hypothesis.’’Childe asserted that the Holocene postglacial warming resulted in increasing densities of humans and animals in river valleys, thereby motivating a new subsistence strategy based on animal domestication and cultivation

H. E. Wright agreed that a greater role should be attributed to climatic fluctuations. he suggested that food production did not begin at an earlier period because ‘‘culture was not ready.’

Hence a short, cold, and abrupt crisis at about 13,000 B.P., which was immediately followed by an increase in precipitation and an expansion of woodland and parkland, had a major impact. It made sedentism within a certain ‘‘homeland’’ the most practical settlement pattern, resulting in the formation of the Early Natufian

The technological innovations introduced by the Natufians, such as sickles, picks, and improved tools for archery, were additions to an already existing Upper Paleolithic inventory of utensils that included simple bows, corded fibers, and food processing tools such as mortars and pestles.Demographic pressure was therefore the outcome when certain groups of foragers became sedentary while others remained mobile.


Another major crisis was the ‘‘Younger Dryas,’’ a period of cold, dry climatic conditions that lasted for centuries. Rapid reduction in the size of the lushest vegetation belts as well as reduction in the yields of natural stands of C3 plants such as cereals forced certain human groups to change their organizational strategies, including the ways they obtained carbohydrate resources. Experimental planting, shifts in the location of settlements, and the clearing of land patches resulted in establishment of the Early Neolithic (commonly labelled PPNA) villages, first in the western part, or the Levantine wing, of the Fertile Crescent. Other groups in the steppic belt reacted to these conditions by increasing their mobility.

The rapid return of wetter conditions around 10,000 B.P. triggered the expansion of numerous lakes and ponds, which then facilitated the cultivation of various annuals along their shores, especially in the Levantine Corridor. From that time onward, large villages existed, with estimated populations of 300 to 500 individuals...