This is about weeds

About the rise of weeds

From 10,000 to 8000 BCE

From 12,500 to 9,500 BC

As early as 13,000 years ago

From between 14,500 and 11,500 before the present

Some 12,000 years ago

15,000 to 11,600

In the twelfth and eleventh millennia BCE

At Jericho and Abu Hureyra, at Wadi an-Natuf, in Jordan

In Palestine

In Israel

In what is now Syria

At Ain Mallaha and Wadi Hammeh

From southern Turkey to Sinai

At Mt. Carmel, Ain Mallaha (Eynan), Hayonim Cave, Wadi Hammeh,

Nahal Oren, Rosh Zin, Rosh Horesha, Wadi Judayid, Beidha, Jericho, and

Skhul Cave, Abu Hureyra

From present day Jaffa to Tyre

Beneath oak and pistachio trees

Evergreen and deciduous oaks

The vegetation is very diverse

With a prolific undergrowth of grasses

Cypress and common myrtle

Poplar and prune

Artemesia and grasses

Semi-desert with sage-brush

Shrubs, bushes, and annuals

Olive and pistachio

Dense stands of wild grasses among trees

Tamarisk and willow

In riverine and lacustrine areas

At least partly covered by marshes

Occasionally the steppe belts

Dwarf shrubs and herbs

With low trees and shrubs

Half are evergreen.


Hedgehog, polecat and badger

Commensurate sedentism of dogs and humans

A fox skull, a dagger, a spoon

Perforated teeth of foxes

Removal of teeth as an initiation rite

Decorated ostrich-egg vessels

The presence of red ochre

The grinding of ochre in mortars

Earliest floral grave lining

Stems of sage mint and figwort

Spring-flowering and strongly aromatic

Of aromatic fragrance and bright colours

A veneer of stems leaves and fruits

Grasses reeds and sedges

Common myrtle for its aromatic and therapeutic characteristics

40-odd Tortoise shells

Red-fox beech-marten Eurasian-badger mongoose

Partridge and falcons

Cutmarks related to the butchery process

They extracted marrow from longbones

They manufactured piercing implements from the tibia of gazelles

Which may have been weaving implements

Their assemblage of grave-goods was a form of curation

They ate fawns

Left traces of gnawing

Mortars cups and basins

Shell beads and stone beads

Weaving and the use of flax

Art objects and dentalia

32 pieces of charcoal

Nine dried figs burned in a fire

5 seeds of a Judas tree

Elaborate ceremonial life

Functional elements used for weaving

Elaborate 7-part funerary customs as well as feasts

There is no mortuary evidence for hereditary social inequality

At Eynan/Ain Mallaha an exquisite headdress

Made from hundreds of delicate, tusk-shaped dentalium shells

Was found in a woman’s burial

A woman’s hand on a puppy

Necklaces.


They hunted gazelle and small game

Both slow-moving and agile

Such as hare and boar

Fox and hare

Such as goats and birds

By using nets and fire

And with the help of their dogs

They domesticated dogs

Processed cereals and acorn

They were the first to do so it is said

They built villages and granaries

Round stone houses with vegetal roofs

They made middens where weeds grew

May have planted fig trees

They buried the dead with the bodies of their dogs

They treated the dogs as they treated their own dead

Their shamans were women

They made art

They ground seed

They decorated their stone mortars

Which were also used as gravegoods

The stone bowls in some graves may have served as cult objects

They carved enormous mortars from boulders

The obsidian of the bowls was imported

The interiors of their round drystone dwellings were daubed in white or red

Including the paved floors

The Natufians invented the sickle

Flint sickleblades hafted into bone or wooden handles

They were sedentary foragers

Affluent foragers

At first they gathered wild grain

Wild weed grasses more than wheat and barley

They ate molluscs

They intensified their care of wild cereals and nut crops

They intervened to enhance the growing conditions

Of barley, einkorn and emmer wheat

Almonds, pistachios and acorns

A marker of intentional cultivation is the presence of weeds

A sudden rise in pollen of weed plants

Vetch amidst barley

They may have planted barley and wheat

Terraced the hillsides

They tended or planted lupine

Gathered or cultivated

The idea that the Natufians were the world’s first farmers remains controversial

Yet weeds developed in tandem with cultivation

Their sickleblades were polished by grass stems

They decorated sicklehafts

They harvested grains whilst green

They harvested and stored plant foods

Maybe in sedge baskets

They managed plant habitats

They saved seeds

There was dramatic increase in the classic weeds

This suggests small-scale cultivation

Small-seeded legumes, small-seeded grasses, stony-seeded gromwells

The weeds that grow in tilled fields

Coinciding with these weedy plants

Are the first charred grains of morphologically domesticated rye

They established the first cemeteries

In caves apart from their dwellings

They held funerals

Made bedrock mortars and cup-marks

They feasted on gazelle at grave-sites and buried the festal remains

They dried fish and meat

They perfected short blades and bladelets

Rats, mice and sparrows flourished in their villages

The presence of arable weeds reflects increased sedentism.


Dorothy Garrod identified the Natufian culture

While excavating Shuqba near Jerusalem

During digs at Mount Carmel Palestine

She coined the cultural label for the late Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture

Following her excavations at Es Skhul and El Wad

Her discovery and definition of the Natufians

First in Shuqba cave and later in El Wad cave and terrace

Became one of the cornerstones for understanding

The transition from foraging to farming

In the Fertile Crescent

Trained by R. R. Marett at Oxford

And the Abbé Henri Breuil in France

Her excavations at the cave sites in the Levant

Were conducted with almost exclusively women workers

Recruited from local villages

In what was then Palestine

They began their excavations in 1928

The excavations in El Wad, Es Skhul, and Et Tabun caves

Were conducted from 1929 through 1934.


Several skeletons bore body decorations

The remains of a 45 year-old woman were separate

She had bone spurs on her pelvis and spine

Indicating she suffered physical ailments

Accompanying her burial are the remains

Of the tail bones from a cow a wing

Bone from a golden eagle a forearm

Of a boar 50 tortoise carapace pieces

Two marten skulls pelvis of a leopard

And a fully articulated foot

From another person. Male gazelle horns

A pointed bone tool and a round pebble

A fragment of a worn basalt bowl

Seashells. Her body was held in place

By 10 large stones. She’s intricately buried in a complicated position

Her legs splayed out and folded

Unlike the other individuals

She was perhaps a shaman

Or the grave could be showing the beginnings of social stratification.

The Natufians lined graves with a soft mud veneer and then placed on the veneer

A thick cover of fresh flowering plants

In a fluorescence of symbolic activity

Allowing soft delicate plant tissues

To leave their precise impressions

These plants flower in spring

Most have a strong aromatic fragrance

Some possess medical qualities

The greens linings were thick and continuous

The impressions were formed before midsummer

Their superbly carved sculptures, animal figurines, and jewelry

Their villages were excavated by women in Palestine

In the village at Hatula

On the western edge of the Shephelah hills

Abundant cup-marks in a large block of limestone

7 cup-marks

They always appear in groups

Up to 30 on the same stone slab

The seven cup-marks are surrounded by 5 or 6 very shallow depressions

20 cm in diameter.

The peculiar order of cup marks, the number seven involved

The proximity to the dwelling may suggest

A game board

They decorated their bodies with beads.


Using flint knives and chisels

They carved a figurine of a pig from limestone

They inscribed a human face on a pebble

A gazelle head made of bone

A kneeling gazelle figurine in limestone

A headless human figure in limestone

A basalt pestle with a phallic termination

An exceptional figurine was found at Ain Sakhri near Bethlehem

Roughly 10 cm tall

It depicts two persons engaged in intercourse

Two people embraced in a sensuous pose

Two naked people wrapped up in each other

When you move it to look in different ways

The figurine changes

A limestone figurine with an owl at one end and a dog’s head at the other

The term figurine should be defined

Enigmatic zoomorphic or anthropomorphic entities

Of any size

Anthropomorphic pebbles

Three-dimensional cylindrical to globular objects

Of transitional industry.


On the stone head from Eynan/Ain Mallaha

Traces of the artist’s tool marks are still visible

The eyes, formed by three concentric curving lines

Dominate the lower portion of the face

Which has been bisected by a broad horizontal band

The eyes are disproportionately large

The upper portion of the head

Is incised with diagonal lines,

Which may represent hair or ornamentation

The Ain Sakhri lovers figurine

Was found by a Bedouin in a cave near Bethlehem

Was found by René Neuville in a museum in Palestine

It was 1933

The Bedouin took the consul to the cave

The cave was a domestic site, not a burial place

Indicating that the calcite representation of entwined lovers

On a rounded riverstone

Was of quotidian significance

The tenderness of the embracing figures

Suggests this is love

Suggests nothing about fertility

Neither facial features nor gender are determinable

When the figurine is turned in the hand

One end shows a penis

The other end two breasts

From another view a vagina is visible

The sculpture of the lovers

Is an act of love

It is the first kissing couple


With crops came weeds

Or from weeds, crops

And what is a flower

They went into the corn to kiss

Weeds and kissing go together