They are among the clearest pre-agricultural precursors to the subsequent Neolithic transition.

When the Younger Dryas ended around 11,700 BCE, the communities of the Fertile Crescent found themselves in a rapidly improving world.

The climate warmed.

Rainfall increased.

The natural vegetation that had been compressed southward by the cold expanded northward again.

Wild cereal stands, which had retreated to warmer refugia during the cold period, reestablished themselves across the uplands of the Fertile Crescent.

The game animals that depended on those plant communities expanded with them.