Given the location (The Levant) and timing (11,000 years ago) espoused in the Dong, et al., study, it is most likely the Natufian Culture that domesticated the progenitor of the major European wine grape varieties.
Prior to Dong, et al., the commonly held belief was that vitis vinifera sprung from a Neolithic Age, Caucasus-region domestication of the wild vitis sylvestris. The Dong, et al., genetic study has shown otherwise.
In previous posts I have reported on the genesis of the study, the vitis sylvestris story, how Dong, et al., established genetic populations, the study team’s case for two simultaneous domestication events, the genetic traits associated with the individual domestication centers, the Levant as the domestication center from which all European grapes originated, and the physical environment in the Levant at the time of the domestication. In this post I highlight the Culture (most likely) responsible for domesticating the Levantine vitis sylvestris.
Kebaran Culture
Since 14,500 BP, people have occupied every eco-zone in the Near East and semi-sedentism was already a settlement pattern among foragers (Bar-Yosef). The inhabitants of the Levant at this stage were of the Kebaran culture and excavations at the Ohalo II site illustrates the settlement-pattern point while also providing the earliest evidence of grape usage within the region.
In the Fall of 1989, the Sea of Galilee dropped to unusually low levels, revealing a submerged prehistoric site several meters away from the shore. The site -- Ohalo II -- included scattered artifacts and remains of huts, hearths, and graves with in-situ Kebaran remains (Kislev, et al.).
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| Figure 1. Ohalo II site at shoreline of Sea of Galilee (Source: Kislev, et al.) |
Table 1. Materials excavated from Ohalo II.
Tools | Animal Remains | Vegetal Remains |
Typical flint tools | Fish | Wild barley (most prevalent |
Bone tools | Tortoise | Wild emmer wheat |
Mediterranean shell beads | Birds | Wild almonds |
Hare | Wild olive | |
Fox | Wild pistachio | |
Gazelle | Wild grape seeds | |
Deer |
A picture of one of the excavated grape pips is shown below. These seeds were identified as belonging to the wild type by the low length/breadth ratio and the short beak. This is the first evidence of wild grapes in Israel.
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| Figure 2. Grape pip excavated at Ohalo II (Source: Kislev, et al.) |
According to Kislev, et al., the food remains at Ohalo II "indicate a wide range of plant and animal species used for human consumption. This diversity attests to the broad spectrum economy practiced by the Kebarans."
The team deduced that the site was occupied at least twice a year and assumed an alignment with grass-grain harvesting in Spring and fruit gathering in the late Summer and Fall. The authors characterize thia as a "logistical mobility settlement-subsistence pattern" where "small task-specific expeditions are sent to retrieve food and other resources while the core group remains at one place." The bi-seasonality of plant food use in the same site "can be interpreted as the initial steps towards sedentism and cereal agriculture."
The Kebaran culture (20,000 - 14,500 BP) was, due to the overarching cold, limited to the coastal Levant and isolated oases. The Geometric Kebaran took advantage of climate amelioration to expand into the formerly desertic belt which had become "a lusher steppe" (Bar-Yosef).
Natufian Culture
The Levant was subjected to an abrupt, short, cold crisis around 13,000 BP followed by a period of increased precipitation and warming. This improvement in climate led to an expansion in parkland and woodland and associated food resources. It was in this environment that the Natufian Culture began to gain prominence. Arriving on the scene initially as foragers, the continually improving climate led them to become sedentary -- due to plentitude of food resources -- and establish "a series of Early Natufian hamlets in a delineated homeland." The major characteristics of the Natufian Culture are illustrated in the chart below.
As much of a boon that climate was to the Early Natufian culture, it was a bane in later days. The boon? "Natufian communities practiced intensive and extensive harvesting of wild cereals as part of an anticipated summer mobility pattern." The bane? The cold, dry climate associated with the Younger Dryas (12,800 BP - 11,600 BP) led to a rapid reduction in the size of the lushest vegetation belts and reduction in yields of natural stands of C3 plants such as cereals. This change in conditions led to changes in organizational strategies to include: reduced sedentism; shifts in settlement locations (abandonment of old sites and establishment of new sites in the steppic zone); experimental plantings; and clearing of patches of land. During this period plant and animal resources were further depleted by the activities of neighboring foragers.
According to Bar-Yosef, the increased population levels that had come with increased sedentism "made any short-term climatic change motivational for human groups to gain control over food resources." Thus, "the first experiments in systematic cultivation most likely occurred during the Younger Dryas."
Keynes was not as supportive of the theory of the Natufians as the first agriculturists: "The older theory on the origins of agriculture that had become a consensus by the late 1980s held that the pressures of the Younger Dryas drove the Natufians to adopt agriculture as a survival strategy ... By the early 2010s, this hypothesis has been rejected by some archaeologists and historians, who see the Natufians of the Younger Dryas as in a transitional stage that was only moving towards agriculture, ... in which they experimented with wild plant cultivation."
It should be pointed out that much of the foregoing discussion is based on domestication of wheat, legumes, etc., and does not involve grapevines. As a matter of fact, while we have evidence of grape consumption in the Kebaran culture, no grape residue has been recovered from any of the excavated Natufian sites in the Mediterranean due to the poor preservation of vegetal remains in the terra rossa soil.
Whether or not the Natufians were the first agriculturists, or just experimenters, the genetic study conducted by Dong, et al., places the domestication of the grapevine squarely within their space-time; and we will run with that.
Post-Younger-Dryas
There was rapid return of wetter weather post the Younger Dryas and this led to the expansion of numerous lakes and ponds and cultivation of annual crops along the shorelines. The first large villages began to appear (up to 2.5 ha) and they relied on cultivated barley and wheat or "their wild progenitors." According to Bar-Yosef, there is ample evidence to show that the inhabitants of these villages were descendants of local Natufian populations with changes in material culture, social organization, and daily lifeways. "The first manifestation of the cultural change that heralded the Neolithic Revolution is known in the Levant as the Khiamian."
Neolithic farming communities thrived under the favorable climate conditions of the Early Holocene and expanded "along the Levantine Corridor into Anatolia and neighboring regions." This, then, was the first movement of the cultivated grapevine outside of its birthplace.
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| The initial movement of the cultivated grapevine from the Western Distribution Center (black oval) into Anatolia (red arrow) with the expanding Neolithic farming communities. |
I will cover that movement more fully in subsequent posts.
Bibliography
Bar-Yosef, O., The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture, Evolutionary Anthropology.
Bar-Yosef, O., and F. Valla, The Natufian Culture and the Origin of the Neolithic in the Levant. Current Anthropology 31(4) January.
Dong, et al., Dual domestications and origin of traits in grapevine evolution, Science, 3/3/23
EurekAlert, Human Mobility and Western Asia's early state-level societies, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, 5/28/20.M. E> Kislev, D. Nadel and I. Carmi, Epipalaeolithic (19,000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Israel. Review of Palaeobotant and Palynology, 73 (1992): 161 - 166.
Lord Keynes, The Natufians and the Origins of Agriculture in the ancient Near East, heterodox.economicblogs.org, July 31, 2017.
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