This was a warm, wet time during which wild edible species could again spread into the areas which had been too dry during the Younger Dryas. Humankind however, had much less need for wild foods, for now they brought the science of agriculture with them. Many abandoned villages, such as the Natufian ones, become repopulated with farmers.

The Neolithic farming village found at Jericho above the sterile sand deposits of the Younger Dryas included the same house design, tools, and burial styles that were found in Natufian Syria. The point Ryan and Pitman are trying to make is that Neolithic farmers in Palestine came from the Taurus and Zagros Mountains rather than Egypt, as previously thought. Many of the arrowhead, knife, and dagger blades were made of obsidian from Anatolia. There are dissenting opinions concerning this, such as those of David Harris, but I haven't yet looked at those.

The Neolithic burials in the Near East are worth mentioning. After removing the skull from the corpse, it was covered with plaster and given seashells for eyes. They were placed in houses and shrines for veneration. In Catal Huyuk (32 acres), these headless corpses were left on a rack outside the town till the vultures had removed the flesh. Here however, the skulls lacked the plaster, seashells and the jaw as well. Mellaart's explanation of the cleansing of the flesh from the body by vultures is that it was a rite of passage from death to an afterlife, rather than for the purposes of hygiene.

In the westward direction, there were many similarities between sculptures at Catal Huyuk and figures on the shrine at Lepenski Vir over the Danube (a mesolithic site on the west side of the lake). Carbon 14 tests prove them to have been contemporary. This at the very least supports the idea that there was communication and probably trade very early on around the lake.