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Located in present day Syria. In the upper Euphrates valley. A tell exists. And, represents the transitional phase between hunter gatherer and neolithic settled agricultural communities. About 120km east of Aleppo.

Before the reservoir of Tabqa dam was flooded by lake Assad, the site was excavated in 1972 to 73
It’s now below water. (1) But a massive amount of collapsed houses, debris, and lost objects were found. And, its still being preserved.

It was inhabited between 13,000 and 9,000 years ago. This continuation of occupational sequence through the neolithic revolution. Has made the sites one of the most important in the origins of agriculture. One of the earliest as well. (2)

During the late glacial interstadial, the site was already experiencing climate change
Caused by lake level changes, and aridity, vegetation actually expanded. (2) It was colder and the site grew different grasses, there were oak and pistacia alantica trees (pistacio or terpentine). 12900 to 11600 years ago, during the younger dryas (3)

Despite the limited excavation time frame, a large amount of material was recovered and studied over the following decades. It was one of the first excavation to use “flotation”
Preserved even the tiniest fragile remains. (4)

Since 2012 archaeologists have published several papers reporting on an impact event
In some of the areas. High concentrations or iridium, platinum, nickel, cobalt were found. As well reports on meltglass, nanodiamonds, microspeherules and charcoil. They are attributed, to an object from space, destroying the village around 10,800 BC. (5,6,7)

Location and description is a massive accumulation of collapsed houses, debris and objects
The mound is nearly 500 metres (1600 ft) across. It is 8 metres (26 ft) deep. Combining about 1000000 cubic metres (or, 35,000,000 cu ft) of archaeological deposit.

Occupation history had two separate periods of occupation: An epipalaeolithic settlement; and, a Neolithic settlement
A good resource base with river, forest and steppe ecosystems. They hunted, harvested food/wood, made charcoil, and may hae cultivated cereals/grains for food and fuel. (8)

Abu Hureyra 1, was a settlement dated to the epipalaeolithic
A village of sedentary hunter-gatherers or collectors (2).

1: The epipaleolithic Natufian settlement was established 13500 years ago

The village consisted of small round huts. They were cut into the softer sandstone on the areas terrace. The roofs were supported with wooden posts. And, for protection from the elements. Covered with brushwood and reeds. (4) 40-41

Many of the huts had underground storage. For things like food, tools and hunting supplies
For these types of dwellings archaeologists have came up with the name subterranean pit dwellings.

They have described the population as ‘hunter collectors”. Because they built up there food supplies for necessary food security
Where it was protected from pest, animals and other humans.

There were probably a few hundred people.

In the summer. Vast herds of gazelle passed through the village. As part of there annual migration. Were hunted. (4 41-42) And kept for there meat, skin and other parts. The huge amount of food. From a short period. Would have needed to be protected. They also gathered wild plants, and fished.

Plants were gathered including lentils, einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, a couple varieties of rye

There were birds, and smaller animals like foxes, and rabbit. And, its believed there were large wild animals too. Like onager (asiatic wild ass), cattle and sheep

After 1300 years, the hunter gatherers of 1st occupation mostly abandoned
Probably because of the younger dryas, (which lasted over 1000 years (4); or, because of the purposed impact event (5)

Abu Hureyra 2, was dated to the pre-pottery neolithic. It was home to some of the world’s first farmers (9)
After the younger dryas abandonment, or an impact event. Many left the site.

Drought disrupted migration of gazelle; and destroyed forgable plant food sources.
Residents may have moved to Mureybet. Less than 50m to the NE and other side of the Euphrates.

In the second habitation, Abu Hureyra 2 lasted 2000 years, 11-9k years ago
They had a different accumulation of resources. Consisting of buckwheat, rye/einkorn, barley, emmer, lentils and more.

From the first part of the younger dryas, there’s indirect evidence that agriculture, using tools; organization; and, possible attempts at domesticating strains was being performed (10-13)
And, at more favourable sites like Mureybet, they may have been developing. During centuries of drought and cold. They may have built a farming program from there.

When the climate curved again around 9500bce people could have spread all over with new biotechnologys
Its believed the first domesticated morphologic cereals came about at the Abu Hureyra site around 10,000 years ago.(14) There’s also some evidence has been found for cultiation of rye from 11050 BCE (15).

Did you know? Dryas is the Latin name for the Arctic plant mountain avens, which is very hardy and the first to grow up after the ice has melted.

Since it was critical to keep food supply, its believed they also begin to grow legumes
They fix nitrogen levels can fix fertility in the soil (16)

Using there new technologies. They grew to a larger village. Eventually with several thousand people
Included with the eventual domesticated varieties of rye, wheat, barley. Hunting of gazelle decreased sharply (probably due to overexploitation that eventually left them extinct in middle east). For protein, they begin to kept sheep as livestock.

Overall, studying Tell Abu Hureyra as an archaeological site has been essential. Helping understand a smoother transition from the hunter-gatherer societies to the neolithic. And, settled agricultural communities. It played a important role in the development of human history and early civilization.

Cite: 1) Becker, Jeffrey (18 July 2018). “Tell Abu Hureyra: a Pleiades place resource” (https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/456814175). Pleiades: a gazetteer of past places. Clifflena Tiah.

2) 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 0-19-510806-X.

3) Rasmussen, S.O., Andersen, K.K., Svensson, A.M., Steffensen, J.P., Vinther, B.M., Calusen, H.B., Siggaard-Andersen, M.-L., Johnsen, S.J., Larsen, L.B., Dahl-Jensen, D., Bigler, M., Röthlisberger, R., Fischer, H., Goto-Azuma, K., Hansson, M.E., Ruth, U., 2006 A new Greenland ice core chronology for the last glacial termination. Journal of Geophysical Research 111, D06102.

4) Mithen, Steven (2006). After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20000-5000 BC (https://archive.
org/details/aftericeglobalhu00mith) (paperback ed.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-01570-3.

5) Moore AM, Kennett JP, Napier WM, Bunch TE, Weaver JC, LeCompte M, Adedeji AV, Hackley
P, et al. (6 March 2020). “Evidence of Cosmic Impact at Abu Hureyra, Syria at the Younger
Dryas Onset (~12.8 ka): High-temperature melting at >2200 °C” (https://www.nature.com/
articles/s41598-020-60867-w.pdf) (PDF). Scientific Reports (published 6 March 2020). 10 (1): 4185 Bibcode:2020NatSR..10.4185M (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020NatSR..10.4
185M). doi:10.1038/S41598-020-60867-W (https://doi.org/10.1038%2FS41598-020-60867-
W). ISSN 2045-2322 (https://www.worldcat.org/issn/2045-2322). PMC 7060197 (https://ww
w.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7060197). PMID 32144395 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nl
m.nih.gov/32144395). Wikidata Q90119243. “The wide range of evidence supports the
hypothesis that a cosmic event occurred at Abu Hureyra ~12,800 years ago, coeval with
impacts that deposited high-temperature meltglass, melted microspherules, and/or
platinum at other YDB sites on four continents.”

6) Fernandez S (6 March 2020). “Fire from the Sky” (https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/01982
3/fire-sky) (Press release). University of California, Santa Barbara. Archived (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20210706231340/https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/019823/fire-sky) from
the original on 6 July 2021. Retrieved 7 August 2021. “Based on materials collected before
the site was flooded, Kennett and his colleagues contend Abu Hureyra is the first site to
document the direct effects of a fragmented comet on a human settlement.”

7) Hai Cheng; et al. (8 September 2020). “Timing and structure of the Younger Dryas event
and its underlying climate dynamics” (https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.20078
69117). PNAS. doi:10.1073/pnas.2007869117 (https://doi.org/10.1073%2Fpnas.200786911

8) Hillman, Gordon C.; A. J. Legge; P. A. Rowle-Conwy (1997). “On the Charred Seeds from
Epipalaeolithic Abu Hureyra: Food or Fuel?”. Current Anthropology. 38 (4): 651–655.
doi:10.1086/204651 (https://doi.org/10.1086%2F204651). S2CID 144151770 (https://api.se
manticscholar.org/CorpusID:144151770).

4 40-41) Mithen, Steven (2006)

4 41-42) Mithen, Steven (2006)

9) Hillman 2016) Hillman, Gordon; Hedges, Robert; Moore, Andrew; Colledge, Susan; Pettitt, Paul (27 July
2016). “New evidence of Lateglacial cereal cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates”.
The Holocene. 11 (4): 383–393. doi:10.1191/095968301678302823 (https://doi.org/10.119
1%2F095968301678302823). S2CID 84930632 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:8
4930632).

10) Hillman, Gordon C. (2000). “Overview”. Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming
at Abu Hureyra. By Moore, A.M.T.; Hillman, G.C.; Legge, A.J. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. Pg 420–421

11) Bar-Yosef, Ofer (2002). “The Natufian culture and the early Neolithic: Social and economic
trends in Southwestern Asia”. In Bellwood, P.; Renfrew, C. (eds.). Examining the
Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis. McDonald Institute Monographs. Cambridge:
University of Cambridge. pp. 113–126.

12) Bar-Yosef, Ofer (2002). “Natufian”. In Fitzhugh, B.; Habu, J. (eds.). Beyond Foraging and
Collecting: Evolutionary Change in Hunter-Gatherer Settlement Systems. New York: Kluwer
Academic/Plenum Publishers. pg 91–149

13) Dow, Olewiler and Reed 2005

14) Wilcox, George (February 2009). “Late Pleistocene and early Holocene climate and the
beginnings of cultivation in northern Syria”. Archaeology. 19 (1): 156.
Bibcode:2009Holoc..19..151W (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009Holoc..19..151W).
doi:10.1177/0959683608098961 (https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0959683608098961).
S2CID 129444462 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:129444462).
ProQuest 220530920 (https://search.proquest.com/docview/220530920).

15) Peter M. M. G. Akkermans; Glenn M. Schwartz (2003). The archaeology of Syria: from
complex hunter-gatherers to early urban societies (c. 16,000–300 BC) (https://books.google.c
om/books?id=_4oqvpAHDEoC&pg=PA72). Cambridge University Press. pp. 72–.
ISBN 978-0-521-79666-8.

16) “Origins of agriculture – Early development” (https://www.britannica.com/topic/agricultur
e). Encyclopedia Britannica.