Abu Hureyra: Early Farming and Climate Change in Syria

Abu Hureyra was a prehistoric settlement on the Euphrates River in northern Syria, occupied in two main phases between roughly 11,500 and 6000 BC. It is one of the most important sites for understanding how people in the Near East shifted from foraging to farming, and how they coped with the abrupt cold spell known as the Younger Dryas. The mound was excavated in a hurried rescue operation in 1972 and 1973 and then disappeared beneath the waters of Lake Assad.

Rescue excavation on the Euphrates

In the late 1960s Syria began building the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates, which would create a large reservoir, Lake Assad. An international rescue campaign was organised to investigate archaeological sites before they were flooded.

The British archaeologist Andrew Moore led the excavation of Tell Abu Hureyra, a large mound on the south bank of the river. In just two seasons, in 1972 and 1973, his team dug a series of trenches and used flotation, then a relatively new technique, to recover tiny charred seeds from the soil. The site was flooded soon afterwards. Full publication, the volume Village on the Euphrates, appeared in 2000.

Abu Hureyra 1: a village of foragers

The first settlement, called Abu Hureyra 1, began around 11,500 BC and belongs to the Late Epipalaeolithic, closely related to the Natufian culture of the Levant. Its inhabitants lived in pit dwellings, round houses dug partly into the ground and roofed with wood and reeds.

The archaeobotanist Gordon Hillman identified the seeds and fruits of well over a hundred plant species in the deposits, including wild einkorn, wild rye, wild lentils and many small-seeded grasses. Gazelles hunted on their seasonal migration provided much of the meat. The richness of local resources allowed people to live in one place all year round.

The Younger Dryas and early rye

From about 10,900 BC the climate turned colder and drier during the Younger Dryas. At Abu Hureyra the plant remains show a sharp decline in wild foods that needed moisture, such as wild cereals and fruits from the woodland, and a shift towards drought-tolerant plants.

Hillman and colleagues argued in 2001 that the villagers responded by cultivating rye. They reported a few large, plump rye grains of domestic type dated by radiocarbon to about 11,000 BC, close to the start of the cold phase. If correct, this would be among the earliest evidence of cultivation in the world, well before the classic founder crops of the Neolithic.

The claim remains controversial. Critics have pointed out how few grains are involved and suggested that they might be wild forms or later material that worked its way down into older layers. Most researchers accept that Abu Hureyra shows people changing their diet under climatic stress, but not that rye was clearly domesticated there.

A further hypothesis, published in 2020, proposed that a cosmic airburst affected Abu Hureyra at the start of the Younger Dryas, based on melted glass and other materials. This idea is part of the wider “Younger Dryas impact hypothesis”, which most specialists regard as unproven and strongly disputed.

Abu Hureyra 2: a Neolithic farming town

After a gap, the site was resettled in the ninth millennium BC, around 8500 BC on the excavators’ chronology, as Abu Hureyra 2, a village of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. This time the inhabitants built rectangular mud-brick houses with several rooms, many with plastered floors. The settlement grew into one of the largest of its time in the region, eventually covering about 11 to 16 hectares according to different estimates, with a population in the low thousands.

The people of Abu Hureyra 2 grew domesticated einkorn, emmer, barley, rye, lentils, peas and chickpeas, the crops described in Domestication of Wheat and Barley. For a time they still hunted gazelle intensively, but around 7500 BC they shifted rapidly to herding domesticated sheep and goats, a change that may reflect the near collapse of local gazelle populations.

The eloquent bones

The anthropologist Theya Molleson studied the human skeletons from Abu Hureyra 2. She found that many individuals, particularly women, had damaged toes, enlarged knee joints and worn lower vertebrae. She linked these to long hours kneeling at saddle querns, rocking back and forth to grind grain.

Teeth also showed the effects of the new diet: heavy wear from grit in stone-ground flour and, later, decay from softer, starchy foods. Abu Hureyra thus provides a rare, intimate record of the physical cost of the Neolithic Revolution.

Timeline

• c. 11,500 BC: Abu Hureyra 1, a settlement of foragers, is founded on the Euphrates.
• c. 11,000 BC (disputed): Earliest reported rye grains of domestic type.
• c. 10,900 BC: Onset of the Younger Dryas; wild plant foods decline at the site.
• c. 10,000 BC: Abu Hureyra 1 is abandoned (dates vary between studies).
• c. 8500 BC: The site is resettled as the Neolithic village of Abu Hureyra 2.
• c. 7500 BC: Villagers shift from gazelle hunting to sheep and goat herding.
• c. 6000 BC: The settlement declines and is largely abandoned.
• 1972-1973: Andrew Moore leads the rescue excavation before the site is flooded by Lake Assad.

Why it matters

Few sites capture the transition from foraging to farming in a single place as fully as Abu Hureyra. Its plant remains, animal bones and skeletons show how climate, diet and daily labour changed together, and they remain central to debates about why agriculture began.