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Neolithic: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Neolithic
In a house in Jericho dated to 9400 BC, archaeologists discovered remains of figs that were a mutant variety incapable of being pollinated by insects. These trees could only reproduce from cuttings, meaning humans had to actively propagate them. This discovery marks the invention of farming technology centuries before the first cultivation of grains. The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, began approximately 12,000 years ago when pioneering use of wild cereals evolved into early farming in the Epipalaeolithic Near East and Mesopotamia. This era saw the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement, a wide-ranging set of developments that arose independently in several parts of the world. The term Neolithic was coined by John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system, marking the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe, and Africa. The Neolithic package included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and the shift to permanent settlement. In the Near East, the Neolithic lasted until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic from about 6,500 years ago, marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age. In other places, the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic and lasted until later, such as in Ancient Egypt until the Protodynastic period in 3150 BC, or in China until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture.
Göbekli Tepe and The Temple Builders
A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe, dated to around 9500 BC, may be regarded as the beginning of the Neolithic period. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, as shown by the absence of permanent housing nearby, and may be the oldest known human-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering a significant area, contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. The Neolithic 1 period began around 10,000 BC in the Levant, and the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated. Settlements became more permanent, with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of mudbrick. The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower, as in Jericho. The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. Some of the enclosures also suggest grain and meat storage. The Neolithic 2 period began around 8800 BC in the Levant, and a settlement of 3,000 inhabitants called Ain Ghazal was found in the outskirts of Amman, Jordan. Considered to be one of the largest prehistoric settlements in the Near East, it was continuously inhabited from approximately 7250 BC to approximately 5000 BC.
When did the Neolithic period begin and end in the Near East?
The Neolithic period began approximately 12,000 years ago and ended in the Near East around 6,500 years ago during the Chalcolithic transitional period. This era marked the development of metallurgy and the transition to the Bronze Age and Iron Age.
Who coined the term Neolithic and when was it introduced?
John Lubbock coined the term Neolithic in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. This term marked the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe, and Africa.
What is the oldest known human-made place of worship from the Neolithic period?
The temple area at Göbekli Tepe in southeastern Turkey, dated to around 9500 BC, is the oldest known human-made place of worship. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes and contains at least seven stone circles with limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, and birds.
When did the Neolithic period end in Ancient Egypt and China?
The Neolithic period in Ancient Egypt ended during the Protodynastic period in 3150 BC. In China, the period lasted until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture.
What technology defined the Neolithic period compared to the Paleolithic era?
The identifying characteristic of Neolithic technology is the use of polished or ground stone tools, in contrast to the flaked stone tools used during the Paleolithic era. The polished stone axe was the primary tool that allowed large-scale forest clearance and exploitation of farmland.
The growth of agriculture made permanent houses far more common, and the increased use of clay for building, along with the development of pottery and other clay-based artifacts, has led some to refer to the Neolithic period as the Age of Clay. In the Neolithic, mud brick houses started appearing that were coated with plaster. At Çatalhöyük, 9,000 years ago, doorways were made on the roof, with ladders positioned both on the inside and outside of the houses. Stilt-house settlements were common in the Alpine and Pianura Padana region. Remains have been found in the Ljubljana Marsh in Slovenia and at the Mondsee and Attersee lakes in Upper Austria. The domestication of large animals around 8000 BC resulted in a dramatic increase in social inequality in most of the areas where it occurred, New Guinea being a notable exception. Possession of livestock allowed competition between households and resulted in inherited inequalities of wealth. Neolithic pastoralists who controlled large herds gradually acquired more livestock, and this made economic inequalities more pronounced. However, evidence of social inequality is still disputed, as settlements such as Çatalhöyük reveal a lack of difference in the size of homes and burial sites, suggesting a more egalitarian society with no evidence of the concept of capital. Families and households were still largely independent economically, and the household was probably the center of life. However, excavations in Central Europe have revealed that early Neolithic Linear Ceramic cultures were building large arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 and 4600 BC. These structures required considerable time and labour to construct, which suggests that some influential individuals were able to organise and direct human labour. There is a large body of evidence for fortified settlements at Linearbandkeramik sites along the Rhine, as at least some villages were fortified for some time with a palisade and an outer ditch. Settlements with palisades and weapon-traumatized bones, such as those found at the Talheim Death Pit, have been discovered and demonstrate that systematic violence between groups and warfare was probably much more common during the Neolithic than in the preceding Paleolithic period.
The Great Population Crash
With some exceptions, population levels rose rapidly at the beginning of the Neolithic until they reached the carrying capacity. This was followed by a population crash of enormous magnitude after 5000 BC, with levels remaining low during the next 1,500 years. Populations began to rise after 3500 BC, with further dips and rises occurring between 3000 and 2500 BC but varying in date between regions. Around this time is the Neolithic decline, when populations collapsed across most of Europe, possibly caused by climatic conditions, plague, or mass migration. Phylogenies reconstructed from modern genetic data indicate an extreme drop in Y-chromosomal diversity occurred during the Neolithic, with effective population size for the mitochondria up to 17 times higher than for the Y-chromosomes during this period. The causes of this bottleneck remain poorly understood. At a basic level, it can likely be attributed to a culture-induced change in the distribution of male reproductive success, with possible explanations ranging from an increased incidence of violence and male mortality during the Neolithic to the rise of patrilineal segmentary groups with varying reproductive success due to polygyny. The Neolithic period saw the invention of agriculture, which led to a significant and far-reaching shift in human subsistence and lifestyle. The previous reliance on an essentially nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence technique or pastoral transhumance was at first supplemented, and then increasingly replaced by, a reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated lands. These developments are also believed to have greatly encouraged the growth of settlements, since it may be supposed that the increased need to spend more time and labor in tending crop fields required more localized dwellings. This trend would continue into the Bronze Age, eventually giving rise to permanently settled farming towns, and later cities and states whose larger populations could be sustained by the increased productivity from cultivated lands.
The Spread of Farming and Culture
In southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared in the 7th millennium BC, attested by one of the earliest farming sites of Europe, discovered in Vashtëmi, southeastern Albania and dating back to 6500 BC. In most of Western Europe it followed over the next two thousand years, but in some parts of Northwest Europe it is much later, lasting just under 3,000 years from c. 4500 BC to 1700 BC. Recent advances in archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with the migration of early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange. Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in the Balkans from 6000 BC, and in Central Europe by around 5800 BC. Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving rise to Starčevo-Körös, Linearbandkeramik, and Vinča. Through a combination of cultural diffusion and migration of peoples, the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine from 5300 to 2300 BC. The megalithic temple complexes of Ggantija on the Mediterranean island of Gozo and of Mnajdra are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to around 3600 BC. The Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni, Paola, Malta, is a subterranean structure excavated around 2500 BC; originally a sanctuary, it became a necropolis, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and shows a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to the Maltese islands. After 2500 BC, these islands were depopulated for several decades until the arrival of a new influx of Bronze Age immigrants, a culture that cremated its dead and introduced smaller megalithic structures called dolmens to Malta.
The Asian and American Frontiers
Settled life, encompassing the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Asia in the region of Balochistan, Pakistan, around 7,000 BC. At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest evidence for the drilling of teeth in vivo was found in Mehrgarh. In East Asia, the earliest sites include the Nanzhuangtou culture around 9500 to 9000 BC, Pengtoushan culture around 7500 to 6100 BC, and Peiligang culture around 7000 to 5000 BC. The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 6000 to 5000 BC. Between 3000 and 1900 BC, the Longshan culture existed in the middle and lower Yellow River valley areas of northern China. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the population decreased sharply in most of the region and many of the larger centres were abandoned, possibly due to environmental change linked to the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. In 2012, news was released about a new farming site discovered in Munam-ri, Goseong, Gangwon Province, South Korea, which may be the earliest farmland known to date in east Asia. The farm was dated between 3600 and 3000 BC. Pottery, stone projectile points, and possible houses were also found. In Mesoamerica, a similar set of events occurred by around 4500 BC in South America, but possibly as early as 11,000 to 10,000 BC. In the southwestern United States it occurred from 500 to 1200 AD when there was a dramatic increase in population and development of large villages supported by agriculture based on dryland farming of corn, and later, beans, squash, and domesticated turkeys. During this period the bow and arrow and ceramic pottery were also introduced. In later periods cities of considerable size developed, and some metallurgy by 700 BC.
Tools, Death, and The End of an Era
The identifying characteristic of Neolithic technology is the use of polished or ground stone tools, in contrast to the flaked stone tools used during the Paleolithic era. Neolithic people were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending, harvesting and processing of crops, such as sickle blades and grinding stones, and food production, such as pottery and bone implements. They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of other types of stone tools and ornaments, including projectile points, beads, and statuettes. But what allowed forest clearance on a large scale was the polished stone axe above all other tools. Together with the adze, fashioning wood for shelter, structures and canoes for example, this enabled them to exploit the newly developed farmland. Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatolia, Syria, northern Mesopotamia and Central Asia were also accomplished builders, utilizing mud-brick to construct houses and villages. At Çatalhöyük, houses were plastered and painted with elaborate scenes of humans and animals. In Europe, long houses built from wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs were built for the dead. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ireland, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the British Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges, flint mines and cursus monuments. It was also important to figure out ways of preserving food for future months, such as fashioning relatively airtight containers, and using substances like salt as preservatives. The world's oldest known engineered roadway, the Post Track in England, dates from 3838 BC and the world's oldest freestanding structure is the Neolithic temple of Ggantija in Gozo, Malta. The Neolithic period lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic from about 6,500 years ago, marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age. In other places, the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic and then lasted until later, such as in Ancient Egypt until the Protodynastic period in 3150 BC, or in China until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture.