The Natufians, the first villagers

In the Levant, people began to live in villages all year round before they farmed. The Natufians harvested wild cereals, made the oldest known bread and buried their dead under their houses.

Date: About 12,500 to 9500 BCII · Our species and the Old Stone AgeIII · Farming and the New Stone Age
Place: Shuqba Cave, West Bank · Shubayqa 1, Jordan · Hilazon Tachtit, Israel · Ain Mallaha, IsraelThe Middle East
Laid out as: A civilisationA society seen from the inside: its rulers, places, work, beliefs and daily life, laid out like the rooms of a house.
Lessons: 4 planned, none written yet
Themes: Farming, food and drink
Society, family and daily life
Religion, belief and myth

The lessons we plan

Titles may change as they are written

ISettling down before farming
IIThe oldest bread
IIIA shaman’s grave
IVDogs and people

Still to come

The people and objects these lessons will cover

People

Dorothy Garrod

Objects

Sickle blades
Bread crumbs from Shubayqa
The Ain Mallaha puppy burial

Where it sits

All of human history, era by era

Early human ancestry Our species and the Old Stone Age Farming and the New Stone Age First cities and the Bronze Age The Iron Age and growing states The classical world After the empires Medieval networks and empires Oceans crossed Revolutions and the first factories Industry, empire and world war The world since 1945

15,000 years ago to 9500 BC. Each era is drawn the same width, so the earliest are squeezed: era II alone is over 300,000 years.

Nearby in time and place

This page is an outline. The summary above is a starting point; each lesson, when it is written, will give its sources, its pictures and where historians disagree. Spotted a mistake?