Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

June 23, 2023

A Prehistoric Village in Northern Israel May Hold Answers about the Origins of Civilization

Nahal Ein Gev.

For decades, paleontologists and archaeologists have believed that, about 10,000 years ago, people living now in what is now Syria and Turkey discovered agriculture and forsook the nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors for the settled lives of farmers—a development that would during the following millennia lead to the creation of cities, and later states and empires. But that story is contradicted by the discoveries made over the past thirteen years by the Israeli archaeologist Leore Grosman at a site known as Nahal Ein Gev, inhabited by a prehistoric people known as Natufians. Matti Friedman writes:

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