these ancestors were spread over very large areas,
millions of square kilometers. The wild ancestors of
domesticated animal species were spread throughout
Eurasia. Though the Hilly Flanks were particularly well
endowed in terms of wild crop species, even they were very
far from unique. It was not that the Natufians lived in an area
uniquely endowed with wild species that made them
special. It was that they were sedentary before they started
domesticating plants or animals. One piece of evidence
comes from gazelle teeth, which are composed of
cementum, a bony connective tissue that grows in layers.
During the spring and summer, when cementum’s growth is
most rapid, the layers are a different color from the layers
that form in the winter. By taking a slice through a tooth you
can see the color of the last layer created before the
gazelle died. Using this technique, you can determine if the
gazelle was killed in summer or winter. At Natufian sites,
one finds gazelles killed in all seasons, suggesting year-
round residence. The village of Abu Hureyra, on the river
Euphrates, is one of the most intensively researched
Natufian settlements. For almost forty years archaeologists
have examined the layers of the village, which provides one
of the best documented examples of sedentary life before
and after the transition to farming. The settlement probably
began around 9500 BC , and the inhabitants continued their
hunter-gatherer lifestyle for another five hundred years
before switching to agriculture. Archaeologists estimate
that the population of the village prior to farming was
between one hundred and three hundred.
You can think of all sorts of reasons why a society might
find it advantageous to become sedentary. Moving about is
costly; children and old people have to be carried, and it is
impossible to store food for lean times when you are on the
move. Moreover, tools such as grinding stones and sickles
were useful for processing wild foods, but are heavy to
carry. There is evidence that even mobile hunter-gatherers
stored food in select locations such as caves. One
attraction of maize is that it stores very well, and this is a
key reason why it became so intensively cultivated
throughout the Americas. The ability to deal more
effectively with storage and accumulate food stocks must
have been a key incentive for adopting a sedentary way of