The animal bones of the Natufian layers show beasts of a “modern” type, but with some differences from those of present-day Palestine. The bones of the gazelle far outnumber those of the deer; since gazelles like a much drier climate than deer, Palestine must then have had much the same climate that it has today. Some of the animal bones were those of large or dangerous beasts: the hyena, the bear, the wild boar, and the leopard. But the Natufian people may have had the help of a large domesticated dog. If our guess at a date for the Natufian is right (about 7750 B.C.), this is an earlier dog than was that in the Maglemosian of northern Europe. More recently, it has been reported that a domesticated goat is also part of the Natufian finds. The study of the human bones from the Natufian burials is not yet complete. Until Professor McCown’s study becomes available, we may note Professor Coon’s assessment that these people were of a “basically Mediterranean type.” THE KARIM SHAHIR ASSEMBLAGE Karim Shahir differs from the Natufian sites in that it shows traces of a temporary open site or encampment. It lies on the top of a bluff in the Kurdish hill-country of northeastern Iraq. It was dug by Dr. Bruce Howe of the expedition I directed in 1950-51 for the Oriental Institute and the American Schools of Oriental Research. In 1954-55, our expedition located another site, M’lefaat, with general resemblance to Karim Shahir, but about a hundred miles north of it. In 1956, Dr. Ralph Solecki located still another Karim Shahir type of site called Zawi Chemi Shanidar. The Zawi Chemi site has a radiocarbon date of 8900 ± 300 B.C. Karim Shahir has evidence of only one very shallow level of occupation. It was probably not lived on very long, although the people who lived on it spread out over about three acres of area. In spots, the single layer yielded great numbers of fist-sized cracked pieces of limestone, which had been carried up from the bed of a stream at the bottom of the bluff. We think these cracked stones had something to do with a kind of architecture, but we were unable to find positive traces of hut plans. At M’lefaat and Zawi Chemi, there were traces of rounded hut plans. As in the Natufian, the great bulk of small objects of the Karim Shahir assemblage was in chipped flint. A large proportion of the flint tools were microlithic bladelets and geometric forms. The flint sickle blade was almost non-existent, being far scarcer than in the Natufian. The people of Karim Shahir did a modest amount of work in the grinding of stone; there were milling stone fragments of both the mortar and the quern type, and stone hoes or axes with polished bits. Beads, pendants, rings, and bracelets were made of finer quality stone. We found a few simple points and needles of bone, and even two rather formless unbaked clay figurines which seemed to be of animal form. [Illustration: SKETCH OF KARIM SHAHIR ASSEMBLAGE