The transition of humans from hunter-gatherers to farmers probably occurred at the same time in several places. But there is one in particular where archaeologists found evidence of that transformation. It is a place in present-day Syria, the site of Tell Abu Hureyra, located in the Euphrates valley.
The site consists of two settlements, two villages that archaeologists call Abu Hureyra 1 and Abu Hureyra 2 , and that cover a chronological period of 4,000 years that goes from the Epipalaeolithic, between 13,000 and 9,000 years ago, to the Neolithic.
The inhabitants of Abu Hureyra 1 , the Epipaleolithic village, were sedentary hunter-gatherers. While those of Abu Hureyra 2 , the early Neolithic village, were already farmers.
Which means that the townspeople started out as hunter-gatherers, but gradually turned to farming, making them the world's earliest known farmers. This transition began with the beginning of the Younger Dryas period, the period of climatic cooling at the end of the Pleistocene (between 12,700 and 11,500 years ago) that could have been caused by the impact of the Clovis comet in North America. Evidence suggests that the first cereal to be cultivated was rye.
Until the early 1970s, no one had paid much attention to that mound, some 500 meters wide by 8 meters deep, filled with the ruins of collapsed houses, rubble and other objects. The construction of the Tabqa dam and the consequent creation of Lake Assad, which would submerge the site, forced urgent excavation.
Archaeologist Andrew Moore was in charge of the work in two seasons between 1972 and 1973, extracting large amounts of material, using modern techniques that allowed even the smallest and most fragile plant remains to be preserved. Everything recovered would be studied by researchers over the following decades.
The oldest settlement, dating from the Epipalaeolithic (about 13,500 years ago), consisted of small round huts carved into the rock of sandstone terraces, covered with brush and reed roofs supported by wooden poles. Each hut had an underground part to store food. It housed only a few hundred people, but they must have constituted the largest permanent human agglomeration at that time.
Although they were hunter-gatherers, the large amount of food obtained through hunting and the heavy load and transport could be reasons for settling permanently and storing it to protect it from inclement weather and pests. At the same time they collected and stored grain. Among the archaeological pieces found there are several large grinding stones.
About 1,300 years later, with the beginning of the Younger Dryas period, most of the population left the place, only a few families remained. They had to manage to survive drought and cold and developed the domestication of plant species, intentional planting and selection of strains. Then, when the climate became milder around 9500 B.C., the village grew again, to several thousand people, many spreading throughout the Middle East bringing this new biotechnology with them.
The researchers believe that the drought and cold weather made wild grains scarce, forcing people to start growing them to ensure a permanent supply. But the development of agriculture would entail some drawbacks. Abnormalities and injuries to the hip and back were detected in the remains found in Abu Hureyra, resulting from the manner and posture in which the crops were harvested. A very common injury affected the last dorsal vertebra, due to the pressure used during the grinding process.
The later Neolithic settlement, from the seventh millennium BC, is also of great importance due to its enormous size (15 hectares), larger than any other recorded site from this period, including Çatal Höyük. Rectangular houses were built with the floors and walls sometimes plastered and there are even traces of paint on some plaster walls.
All this was submerged under Lake Assad when the Tabqa dam was closed in 1974. It is the largest lake in Syria with an area of 610 square kilometers. Its water is used to irrigate the lands on both sides of the Euphrates and to provide drinking water for the city of Aleppo.
But earlier, in 1971, Syria had asked the international community for help to excavate and save as many archaeological remains as possible from the area to be flooded. To encourage international archaeological missions, the law on antiquities was modified, so that they could claim a part of the artifacts they found and take them back to their countries of origin.
Thus, between 1971 and 1974, in addition to the Syrian archaeologists who worked at the Tell al-Abd, Anab al-Safina, Tell Sheikh Hassan, Qalat Jabar, Dibsi Faraj and Tell Fray sites, there were United States missions at Dibsi Faraj, Tell Fray and Shams ed-Din-Tannira; from France in Mureybet and Emar; from Italy at Tell Fray; from the Netherlands at Tell Ta'as, Hadidi, Yebel 'Aruda and Selenkahiye; from Switzerland at Tell al-Hajj; from Great Britain at Abu Hureyra and Tell es-Sweyhat; and from Japan at Tell Roumeila. Many of the finds from these excavations are exhibited in the National Museum of Aleppo.
