13,500 BCE: (The Mushabian Culture — The Archaeological Link Between Egypt and the Natufian, Tools and Toolmaking Techniques Typical of Late Afian and Its Im…

13,500 BCE: (The Mushabian Culture — The Archaeological Link Between Egypt and the Natufian, Tools and Toolmaking Techniques Typical of Late Afian and Its Immediate Successor Cultures in Egypt Becoming Established in Sinai and the Negev, the Late Ofer Bar-Yosef Arguing That the Merger of Mushabian with the Indigenous Geometric Kebaran Culture Gave Rise Around 13,000 BCE to the Natufian Culture of the Levant, Which Lasted to the Middle Tenth Millennium BCE and the Beginnings of Middle Eastern Agriculture): In the middle fourteenth millennium BCE, the Mushabian culture — bringing tools and toolmaking techniques typical of late Afian and its immediate successor cultures in Egypt — became established in Sinai and the Negev. The noted archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef argued that it was the merger of Mushabian with the indigenous Geometric Kebaran culture of the Levant that gave rise around 13,000 BCE to the well-studied Natufian culture of that region. The Natufian lasted down to the middle tenth millennium BCE and the beginnings of agriculture in the Middle East, and its makers are commonly thought by scholars to have been the cultural forebears of the early Semitic speakers. Follow the chain of descent: grain harvesters in the Ethiopian Highlands before 16,000 BCE produce the Afian culture in Egypt by 15,000 BCE. The Afian produces successor cultures whose toolmaking techniques are carried into Sinai as the Mushabian. The Mushabian merges with a local Levantine tradition to produce the Natufian. The Natufian gives rise to the first agricultural communities of the Middle East, and those communities are the forebears of the early Semitic speakers. Every link in this chain runs from south to north, from Africa to Asia. The Natufian culture — which every textbook on the origins of agriculture treats as the wellspring of the Neolithic revolution — turns out to be the grandchild of an African grain-harvesting tradition born in the Horn of Africa. The beginnings of Middle Eastern agriculture are, at their deepest root, an African story.