| One such location was Abu Hureyra, by the Euphrates River in Syria, where a sedentary community of hunter-gatherers flourished between 10,500 and 9000 B.C.E. About 300 to 400 people lived in a small village settlement of pit dwellings with thatched roofs. Each spring, they killed thousands of migrating gazelle, a small desert antelope from the south. Eventually deteriorating climatic conditions and deforestation due to heavy firewood consumption caused abandonment of the settlement. Sedentary villages like these, located at the margins of several environmental zones, were the places where agriculture and animal domestication first took hold in the Near East, and, indeed, in the world. | 2 |
