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Natufians were the early epipaleolithic archaeology culture of the levant. Dating 15 to 10.5 thousand years ago. (1)(2) They are known for there sedentary, or semi sedentary lifestyle. They are associated with the invention and earliest finds of both beer and bread making.

They maybe ancestors to the first builders of neolithic settlements
At Jericho, or Tell Abu Hureyra in Palestine, they may have the earliest evidence of agriculture in the world.(3) As well, the longest inhabited region in the world.

It is believed they exploited wild cereals; and, hunted wild animals included gazelles (4)
There were onagers and caprids (ibex) too. And, additionally deer, aurochs and wild boar in the steppe zone. And, from the Jordan river valley, water fowl and freshwater fish would have formed part of their diet as well.

Dorothy Garrod coined the term based on her excavations at Shuqba cave and nearby at Wadi an-Natuf, in the western Judean Mountains
It was during her excavations in the West Bank of the Jordan river. (6)(5)

Though this area 10-15,000 years ago was a lot different than today
The Levant hosts more than a hundred kinds of cereals, fruits, nuts, and other edible parts of plants. Back during this time period, it was not the dry, barren, and thorny landscape of today, but rather more woodland. (6) It was more fertile.

Ain Sakhri lovers was also believed to be created by Natufians. It is the first art depiction of a couple having sex. Found in the Ain Sakhri cave in the Judean desert (7)

Habitations often had dry-stone foundations and were semi-subterranean
Traces of mudbrick have not been found, and superstructures were found and probably made of brushwood.

Mud brick became common in the following Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA)

Houses were round with a diameter between 3 and six meteres, and they contain a central round or subrectangular fireplace

Postholes have been identified
Villages can cover 1000 square meters. Though smaller or temporary settlements were found. There are no definite indications of storage.

They had their own blades, and retouch method
Sickle blades appear for first time. They also had heavy ground stone bowls and shaft straighteners.

More than 90 Natufian sites have been excavated and identified. Including:

Aammiq 2
Tell Abu Hureyra
Abu Salem
Abu Usba
Ain Choaab
Ain Mallaha (Eynan)
Ain Rahub
Ain Sakhri
Ala Safat
Antelias Cave
Azraq 18 (Ain Saratan)
Baaz
Bawwab al Ghazal
Beidha
Dederiyeh
Dibsi Faraj
El Khiam
El Kowm I
El Wad
Erq el Ahmar
Fazael IV & VI
Gilgal II
Givat Hayil I
Har Harif K7
Hatoula
Hayonim Cave and Hayonim Terrace
Hilazon Tachtit
Hof Shahaf
Huzuq Musa
Iraq ed Dubb
Iraq el Barud
Iraq ez Zigan
J202
J203
J406a
J614
Jayroud 1–3 & 9
Jebel Saaidé II
Jeftelik
Jericho
Kaus Kozah
Kebara
Kefar Vitkin 3
Khallat Anaza (BDS 1407)
Khirbat Janba
Kosak Shamali
Maaleh Ramon East
Maaleh Ramon West
Moghr el Ahwal
Mureybet
Mushabi IV & XIX
Nachcharini Cave
Nahal Ein Gev II
Nahal Hadera I and Nahal Hadera IV
Nahal Oren
Nahal Sekher 23
Nahal Sekher VI
Nahr el Homr 2
Qarassa 3
Ramat Harif (G8)
Raqefet Cave
Rosh Horesha
Rosh Zin
Sabra 1
Saflulim
Salibiya 1
Salibiya 9
Sands of Beirut
Shluhat Harif
Shubayqa 1
Shubayqa 6
Shukhbah Cave
Shunera VI
Shunera VII
Tabaqa (WHS 895)
Taibé
TBAS 102
TBAS 212
Tor at Tariq (WHS 1065)
Tugra I
Upper Besor 6
Wadi Hammeh 27
Wadi Jilat 22
Wadi Judayid (J2)
Wadi Mataha
Yabrud 3
Yutil al Hasa (WHS 784)

The world’s oldest evidence of bread-making has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,500-year-old site in Jordan’s northeastern desert (8)

In addition, the oldest known evidence of beer, dating to approximately
13,000 BP, was found at the Raqefet Cave in Mount Carmel, near Haifa in Israel (9)(10)
This is 8,000 years earlier than experts previously thought beer was invented. (11)

2008 unique burial discovered? (12)
A claimed 3 aurochs, and 86 tortoise shells we found. The body was surrounded by the shells, the pelvis of a leopard, forearm of wild board, wingtip of golden eagle and skull of stone marten. (13)(14)

Typically grave goods are made of shell, teeth (of red deer), bones, and stone
Pendants, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, and belt-ornaments

Other finds include:
-figs carried from Africa (15)
-harpoons & fish hooks
-pendants and ornaments
-the human figurines
-animal representative art
-ostrich shell containers
-production of lime plaster (16)
-pita like bread (17)
-possible domesticated dog (18)

Prior to the neolithic, Natufians were the early epipaleolithic archaeology culture of the Levant. Check it out with neolithic architecture. Their interesting finds and lifestyle contribute to the broader understanding of things today.

Cite:
1) Grosman, Leore (2013). “The Natufian Chronological Scheme – New Insights and their Implications” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ct
v8bt33h). In Bar-Yosef, Ofer; Valla, François R. (eds.). Natufian Foragers in the Levant: Terminal Pleistocene Social Changes in
Western Asia (1 ed.). New York: Berghahn Books. pp. 622–627. ISBN 978-1-879621-45-9. JSTOR j.ctv8bt33h (https://www.jstor.org
/stable/j.ctv8bt33h) – via JSTOR.

2) Campana, Douglas V. (1989). Natufian and Protoneolithic Bone Tools: The Manufacture and Use of Bone Implements in the Zagros
and the Levant (https://books.google.com/books?id=XX8SAQAAIAAJ&newbks=0&hl=en). B.A.R. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-86054-632-0

3) Moore, Andrew M. T.; Hillman, Gordon C.; Legge, Anthony J. (2000), Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu
Hureyra, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-510806-4

4) Kottak, Conrad P. (2005), Window on Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Anthropology, Boston: McGraw-Hill, pp. 155–156,
ISBN 978-0-07-289028-0

5) Boyd, Brian (1999). ” ‘Twisting the kaleidoscope’: Dorothy Garrod and the ‘Natufian Culture’ “. In Davies, William; Charles, Ruth
(eds.). Dorothy Garrod and the progress of the Palaeolithic. Oxford: Oxbow. pp. 209–223. ISBN 9781785705199.

6) Bar-Yosef, Ofer (1998), “The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture” (http://www.columbia.edu/itc/ant
hropology/v1007/baryo.pdf) (PDF), Evolutionary Anthropology, 6 (5): 159–177, doi:10.1002/(SICI)1520-6505(1998)6:5<159::AID- EVAN4>3.0.CO;2-7 (https://doi.org/10.1002%2F%28SICI%291520-6505%281998%296%3A5%3C159%3A%3AAID-EVAN4%3E3.
0.CO%3B2-7)

7) BBC. A History of the World. Ain Sakhri Lovers (https://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/vNEwNR8rSzGPSwSn3yeJwA)

8) “Prehistoric bake-off: Scientists discover oldest evidence of bread” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44846874).
BBC. 17 July 2018.

9) ‘World’s oldest brewery’ found in cave in Israel, say researchers” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-45534133).
British Broadcasting Corporation. 15 September 2018.

10) 13,000-year-old brewery discovered in Israel, the oldest in the world” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/13000-year-old-brewery-disc
overed-in-israel-the-oldest-in-the-world/). The Times of Israel. 12 September 2018.

11) ‘World’s oldest brewery’ found in a cave in Israel, say researchers” (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-45534133).
BBC.

12) Grosman, L.; Munro, N. D.; Belfer-Cohen, A. (2008). “A 12,000-year-old Shaman burial from the southern Levant (Israel)” (https://w
ww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584673). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 105 (46): 17665–17669.
Bibcode:2008PNAS..10517665G (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008PNAS..10517665G). doi:10.1073/pnas.0806030105 (http
s://doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.0806030105). ISSN 0027-8424 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/0027-8424). PMC 2584673 (https://ww
w.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584673). PMID 18981412 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18981412).

13) “Hebrew U. unearths 12,000-year-old skeleton of ‘petite’ Natufian priestess” (http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1034294.html).
By Bradley Burston. Haaretz, 05-Nov-2008

14) Hogenboom, Melissa (24 May 2016), Secrets of the world’s oldest funeral feast (http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160520-secrets-
of-the-worlds-oldest-funeral-feast), earth, BBC

15) Kislev, ME; Hartmann, A; Bar-Yosef, O (2006). “Early domesticated fig in the Jordan Valley”. Science. 312 (5778): 1372–1374.
Bibcode:2006Sci…312.1372K (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2006Sci…312.1372K). doi:10.1126/science.1125910 (https://doi.or
g/10.1126%2Fscience.1125910). PMID 16741119 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16741119). S2CID 42150441 (https://api.semant
icscholar.org/CorpusID:42150441)

16) Friesem, David E.; Abadi, Itay; Shaham, Dana; Grosman, Leore (30 September 2019). ” ‘Lime plaster covering burials 12,000 years
ago presents a technological leap forward at the end of the Palaeolithic” (https://doi.org/10.1017%2Fehs.2019.9). Cambridge
University Press. 1. doi:10.1017/ehs.2019.9 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2Fehs.2019.9).

17) “World’s oldest bread found at prehistoric site in Jordan” (https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Worlds-oldest-bread-found-at-prehistori
c-site-in-Jordan-562680), The Jerusalem Post, 2018

18) Clutton-Brock, Juliet (1995), “Origins of the dog: domestication and early history” (https://archive.org/details/domesticdogitsev00ser
p), in Serpell, James (ed.), The domestic dog: its evolution, behaviour and interactions with people, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, ISBN 978-0-521-41529-3

Bibliography:
‘13,000-year-old brewery discovered in Israel, the oldest in the world” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/13000-year-old-brewery-discovered-in-israel-the-oldest-in-the-world/). The Times of Israel. 12 September 2018

Zalloua, Pierre A.; Matisoo-Smith, Elizabeth (6 January 2017). “Mapping Post-Glacial expansions: The Peopling of Southwest Asia”
(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5216412). Scientific Reports. 7: 40338. Bibcode:2017NatSR…740338P (https://ui.ad
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Bar-Yosef O (1987) Pleistocene connections between Africa and SouthWest Asia: an archaeological perspective. The African
Archaeological Review; Chapter 5, pg 29–38

Moore, Andrew M. T.; Hillman, Gordon C.; Legge, Anthony J. (2000), Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu
Hureyra, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-510806-4

Balter, Michael (2005), The Goddess and the Bull, New York: Free Press, ISBN 978-0-7432-4360-5

Campana, Douglas V.; Crabtree, Pam J. (1990). “Communal Hunting in the Natufian of the Southern Levant: The Social and
Economic Implications”. Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology. 3 (2): 223–243. doi:10.1558/jmea.v3i2.223 (https://doi.org/10.155
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