They used ground stone tools for processing plant foods, particularly wild cereals, on a scale that implies significant dependence on plant resources.

The Natufians are also notable for what happened to their way of life during the Younger Dryas.

The cold, dry conditions of that period appear to have significantly stressed Natufian communities, who responded by dispersing from the more elaborate semi-permanent settlements back toward more mobile, smaller-group strategies.

The social investment in large, semi-permanent communities that had been developing in the late Pleistocene appears to have been disrupted.

When conditions improved at the beginning of the Holocene, communities in the Levant and across the broader Fertile Crescent rebuilt the tradition of larger, more complex settlements and communal life.