Jericho is an early village in the Hilly Flanks where the book traces the beginnings of farming and the institutional changes that helped make settled life possible. Around 9500 BC, emmer and two-row barley were found there; the village may already have had about five hundred inhabitants. Its evidence supports a broader argument: domesticated crops mattered, but farming did not arise simply because useful wild species happened to be available. Social organization and political institutions helped shape when communities settled and began cultivating crops.

Setting and Early Agriculture

The Hilly Flanks extend from south of modern Israel through Palestine and the west bank of the Jordan River, Syria, southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, and western Iran. The earliest evidence of farming, herding, and domestication discussed in the book comes from this region. At Jericho, emmer and two-row barley appeared around 9500 BC; farther north at Tell Aswad in Syria, the evidence includes emmer, peas, and lentils. Both sites were associated with Natufian culture and supported substantial villages.

Jericho’s estimated population of roughly five hundred makes it a significant early settlement, but its crops alone do not explain why farming began there. Wild ancestors of domesticated plants and animals ranged across vast areas, and other peoples lived among potential domesticates without cultivating them. The contrast directs attention from geography alone toward the institutions and social arrangements that made a settled community possible.

Settlement Before Farming

The evidence from Natufian sites suggests that sedentary life preceded agriculture. At Abu Hureyra, another settlement in the region, researchers have documented life before and after the transition: the village probably began around 9500 BC, and its inhabitants remained hunter-gatherers for about five hundred years before adopting agriculture. Jericho, by contrast, supplies the early farming evidence and a picture of a sizable village. Together, the sites show why settlement and cultivation should not be treated as a single change.

Archaeologists use gazelle teeth to infer that Natufian communities occupied sites throughout the year. Cementum in the teeth forms seasonal layers, allowing researchers to estimate whether an animal was killed in summer or winter. Gazelles killed in all seasons at Natufian sites support year-round residence. The evidence does not mean that every household’s motives are known, but it helps distinguish settled communities from groups that moved seasonally.

Storage and the burdens of mobility offer plausible reasons for settling. Moving required carrying children, older people, and heavy tools such as grinding stones and sickles; it also made food storage harder. Jericho’s early village belongs to a landscape in which people could accumulate food and remain in place, though the book argues that such practical advantages were not, by themselves, a sufficient explanation for the emergence of settled life.

Material Traces of Hierarchy

Natufian burials show that settled communities were not necessarily egalitarian. Some people were buried with substantial quantities of obsidian and dentalium shells brought from the Mediterranean coast near Mount Carmel, as well as ornaments made from canine teeth, deer phalanges, and shells. Others were buried without such objects. Because obsidian and shells were traded, control of exchange may have helped some people accumulate power and status.

At Ain Mallaha, a Natufian site north of the Sea of Galilee, about fifty round huts and numerous storage pits stood near a large, intensively plastered building beside a cleared central space. The building was probably the house of a chief, an interpretation rather than a directly observed fact. More elaborate burials and evidence of a skull cult at Ain Mallaha and other sites, particularly Jericho, add to the evidence for political hierarchy and religious practices. Taken together, these remains suggest institutions that shaped status and inheritance before farming became established.

Farming, Population, and Institutions

The transition to farming increased agricultural productivity and enabled population growth. At sites including Jericho and Abu Hureyra, early farming villages were much larger than their pre-farming predecessors; villages generally grew by two to six times after adopting agriculture. Farming was also associated with greater occupational specialization, faster technological change, and the possible development of more complex and less egalitarian political institutions.

The book’s interpretation reverses a familiar causal sequence. Rather than assuming that domestication first made settled life attractive and that political hierarchy followed, it argues that institutional changes may have helped create sedentary life and, later, farming. Jericho is part of the archaeological evidence for the scale of early villages and their growth, while Natufian burials, storage structures, and architecture offer material indications of social differentiation. These traces support an account in which climate and available species opened possibilities, but institutional differences influenced which communities took them up and when.