Anatolia was home to some of the earliest farming communities. It has been long debated whether a migration of farming groups introduced agriculture to central Anatolia. Here, we report the first genome-wide data from a 15,000-year-old Anatolian hunter-gatherer and from seven Anatolian and Levantine early farmers. We find high genetic continuity (~80–90%) between the hunter-gatherers and early farmers of Anatolia and detect two distinct incoming ancestries: an early Iranian/Caucasus related one and a later one linked to the ancient Levant. Finally, we observe a genetic link between southern Europe and the Near East predating 15,000 years ago. Our results suggest a limited role of human migration in the emergence of agriculture in central Anatolia.

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Evidence for a Neolithic funeral feast has been excavated in northern Israel. A herd of eight wild cattle (aurochs) were slaughtered and joints of their meat placed in a pit which was covered over and the human burial laid on top. This was covered in turn with plaster, but the human skull was later removed through an accurately sited hole. It was the feast that began this funerary sequence, and the authors conservatively calculate that it provided a minimum of 500kg of meat. Given a 200g steak apiece this could theoretically feed some 2500 people, endorsing the authors' claim that the site was a central cult site serving surrounding villages. It is also suggested that the aurochs skulls, missing from the pit, may have been reserved for ritual purposes elsewhere, an early example of the Near Eastern bull cult that was later to have a long history in Europe.

The dynamics of Epipalaeolithic and Early Neolithic adaptations in the southern Levant from areas west of the Rift Valley are briefly described and evaluated against the backdrop of climatic changes. Taking account of recent advances in environmental studies and important revisions in the chronological framework of pollen diagrams from the Hula, a high degree of correlation between environmental and cultural developments is apparent. The variable nature of environmental changes and the mosaic of ecological zonation on human adaptive systems are stressed, with differentiation between : long-term incremental trends; sudden climatic changes; and predictable annual fluctuations about a mean. The nature and flexibility of the responses by communities to such external changes depended upon specific combinations of technological, social and ideological, psychological as well as idiosyncratic factors. Favourable niches alternately expanded or contracted. At times human adaptation systems in Cisjordan can be divided into two provinces, Mediterranean and Steppe/Desert ; at other times they included adjacent areas, such as Transjordan and the northern part of the Levantine corridor. A number of crises or "bottle-neck" situations, most resulting from environmental changes, are described which caused radical re-alignments in social and subsistence systems. It is against this backdrop, together with generally conservative social systems, that the transformation from foraging to plant and animal husbandry should be viewed.

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