THe Beginning of Civilization and Neolithiic Age

AN 100
Lecture on Beginning of Civilization and the Neolithic Age
August 31, 2004
1st Semester SU 2004-2005



Neolithic – “of the new stone age”; signified the cultural stage in which humans invented pottery and ground-stone tools (old definition)

Neolithic – presence of domesticated plants and animals; people began to produce food rather than merely collect it

Cultivation - when people plant crops

Domestication – when crops are cultivated and the animals raised are modified—different from wild varieties

Domestication in the Near East
- dogs were first domesticated before the rise of agriculture around 10,000 B.C.
- varieties of oats, rye, barley, lentils, peas, and various fruits and nuts (apricots, pears, pomegranates, dates, figs, olives, almonds, pistachios in the Fertile Crescent (the arc of land stretching up from Israel and the Jordan Valley through southern Turkey and then downward to the western slopes of Zargos Mountains in Iran
- Ali Kosh (now southwestern Iran, 7500 B.C. to 5500 B.C.) – archeologists found the obsidian (volcanic glass); evidence of what they ate and the houses they lived in
- Catal Huyuk in mountainous region of southern Turkey (Huyuk is the Turkish word for a mound formed by a succession of settlements, one built on top of another
- Guila Naquitz cave excavated in the 1960s by Kent Flannery, provides a picture of aelry domestications in Highland MesoAmerica (8900 B.C. to 6700 B.C.)

Summary: Origins of Food Production and Settled Life

1. In the period immediately before the plants and animals were domesticated, there seems to have been a shift to many areas of the world to less dependence on what is called broad-spectrum collecting. The broad spectrum of available resources frequently included aquatic resources such as fish and shellfish and a variety of wild plants and deer and other game. Climatic changes may have been partly responsible for the change to broad-spectrum collecting.

a. climate change
b. overkilling leading to extinction of animals csuch as the mammoth
c. population growth (Mark Cohen) big-game not enough
d. world was filling up, hunter gatherers begin to move into previously uninhabited parts of the world such as Australia and the New World
e. decreasing nutrition (height declined by two inches)

sedentarism – how and why people in different places may have come to cultivate and domesticate plants and animals to live in permanent villages

agriculture – all types of domestic plant cultivation

macrobands – camps with 15 to 30 residents (movement of Archaic peoples in Mesoamerica 8,000 years ago)

microbands – camps with 2 to 5 residents

2. IN some sites in Europe, the Near East, Africa, and Peru, the switch to braod-spectrum collecting seems to be associated with the development of more permanent communities. In other areas, such as semiarid highlands of Mesoamerica, permanent settlements may have emerged only after the domestication of plants and animals.

a. barley, wheat, peas, lentils and chickpeas in the near East
b. various millets, sorghum, groundnuts, yams. Dates, coffee, and melons in Africa
c. various millets and rice in China
d. rice, bananas, sugar cane, citrus fruits, coconuts, taro, and yams in Southeast Asia
e. maize or corn, squash, beans, and pumpkins in Mesoamerica
f. lima beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, manioc, and peanuts in lowland and highland South America
g. plants domesticated in North America is not common today except for sunflower


3. The shift to the cultivation and domestication of plants and animals has been referred to as the Neolithic revolution, and it occurred, probably independently, in a number of areas. To date, the earliest evidence of domestication comes from the Near East about 8,000 B.C. Dating for the earliest domestication in other areas of the Old World is not so clear, but the presence of different domesticated crops in different regions suggests that there were independent centers of domestication in China, Southeast Asia (what is now Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam), and Africa some time around or after 6,000 B.C. In the New World, there appear to have been several early areas of cultivation and domestication: the highlands of Mesoamerica (about 7,000 B.C.), the central Andes around Peru (about the same time), and the Eastern Woodlands of North America (about 2,000. B.C.)


4. Theories about why food production originated remain controversial, but most archeologists think that certain conditions must have pushed people to switch from collecting to producing food. Some possible causal factors include (1) population growth in regions of bountiful wild resources (which may have pushed people to move to marginal areas where they tried to reproduce their former abundance); (2) global population growth (which filled most of the world’s habitable regions and may have forced people to utilize a broader spectrum of wild resources and to domesticate plants and animals); and (3) the emergence of hotter and drier summers and colder winters (which may have favored sedentarism near seasonal stands of wild grain; population growth in such areas may have forced people to plant crops and raise animals to support themselves).

Microlithic technology – smaller and lighter tools such as small blades one to two inches long; can be fitted into groves in bone or wood to form arrows, harpoons, daggers, and sickles; blades became replaceable like a razor

Composite tools – tools made of more than one material

5. Regardless of why food production originated, it seems to have had important consequences for human life. Population generally increased substantially after plant and animal domestication. Even though not all early cultivators were sedentary, sedentarism did increase with greater reliance on agriculture. Somewhat surprisingly, some prehistoric populations that relied heavily on agriculture seem to have been less healthy than earlier populations that relied on food collection. In the more permanent villages that were established after the rise of food production, houses and furnishings became more elaborate, and people began to make textiles and to paint pottery. These villages have also yielded evidence of increased long-distance trade.

Possible reasons for poor health:

a. Greater malnutrition can result from an overdependence on a few dietary staples that lack some necessary nutrients.
b. Overdepndence on a few sources of food may also increase the risk of famine because the fewer the staple crops, the greater the danger to the food supply posed by a weather-caused crop failure.
c. Social and political factors- the rise of different socioeconomic classes of people and unequal access, between and within communities, to food and other resources

Example:
- skeletal remains of prehistoric Native Americans who died in what is now Illinois between A.D. 950 and 1300, the period spanning the changeover on that region from hunting and gathering to agriculture
- agricultural people living in the are of Dickson’s Mounds—burial sites named after the doctor who first excavated them—were apparently in worse health than their hunter-gatherer ancestors
- fishing and hunting still available
- balance diet apparently available but who is getting it?
- The elit of Cahokia, 100 miles away, where perhaps 15,000 to 30,000 people lived, who were getting most of the meat and fish
- Individual near Dickson’s Mounds may have gotten luxury items such as shell necklaces from the Cahokia elite but not benefiting nutritionally from the relationship with Cahokia.

The Elaboration of Material Possessions

- permanent villages were established after rise of food production about 10,000 years ago
- houses became more elaborate and comfortable
- materials used depended on timber or stone (whether available locally or sun strong enough to dry mud bricks)
- bubble shaped houses in Neolithic Cyprus
- Khirokitria large, domed, circular dwellings like beehives

- apparel made of woven textiles appeared

- domestication of flax (for linen) cotton, and wool-growing sheep

- development by the Neolithic society of the spindle and loom for spinning and weaving

- textiles were also woven by hand but was slow and laborious

- pottery – large urns for grain storage, mugs, cooking pots, and dishes

- shaped into graceful forms and painted colorful patterns

- Obsidian blades from the Neolithic occupation at Jericho. The closest source of obsidian was in Anatolia, some 500 miles away from Jericho, so these must have been obtained through long-distance trade

About 3500 B.C., cities first appeared in the Near East. Theses cities had political assemblies, kings, scribes, and specialized workshops. The specialized production of goods and services was supported by surrounding farming villages, which sent their produce to the urban centers. A dazzling transformation had taken place in a relatively short time. People had not only settled down, but they had also become “civilized” or urbanized (the word civilized literally means to make “citified”)