I know that but settlements 130,000 YA? Habitations I might buy but settlements imply a permanence that implies agriculture.
Probably settlements 130,000 year old was an overstatement. The seemed to be referring to finding a few stone age remnants of possible Neanderthal origin.
If the environment was rich enough in resources, they wouldn't have needed agriculture.
One of the advantages early humans had in the Middle East was wild grain in sufficient quantities to harvest without planting.
There are a couple of theories on this, one that humans developed an early taste for beer, and another that they really did plant these wild grains only just scattering sort of like you scatter grass seed on your lawn.
Think about it. If you gather seed, and store it, if it gets wet it will sprout. If it gets very wet, it will ferment.
So it's easy to imagine that a cache of wild grain got wet, sprouted, and some genius figured that if you put the seeds on the ground you'll get more grain.
Another genius figured out that if you put a lot of water on grain in a hole in the rock, it will ferment and you can get high.
We know this happened in the Middle East, we just don't know exactly when.