Prehistory

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Prehistory

• Ancient History
• Prof. Marc Cooper

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Prehistory
Cayonu, one of the earliest Neolithic sites
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Problems

• Where and when do we find the earliest
  agriculture?
• What mechanisms produced plant and animal
  domestication?
• Are the domestication of plants and animals
  related, and if so, how?
• Why did hunter/gatherers give up their ways for a
  sedentary agricultural economy?

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Genesis on early agriculture

• History begins with paradise
• All creatures vegetarians
• Gathering vegetables and fruit
• Agriculture explained as the consequence of
  disobedience
• Agriculture and herding (Cain and Abel) occurs
  after the Fall
• Nimrod the hunter creates first cities in
  Mesopotamia after agriculture and herding already
  established
• Violence and hunting associated with cities

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Hobbes 1588-1679

• Hunter-gatherer people, had "No culture of the
  earth No navigation ... no account of time No
  arts No letters No society And which is worst
  of all, continual fear, and danger of violent
  death And the life of man, solitary, poor,
  nasty, brutish and short.
• View held until 19th century

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Engels speculation on early agriculture (1876,
1884)

• Argues that the issue is economic transformation
  from barbarism (primitive communism) to farming
• Farming produced
• Private ownership
• Oppression of women
• Food surplus
• Hierarchical government

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Gordon Childe Oasis theory (1928)

• Idea of Fertile Crescent
• Neolithic Revolution occurred at oases in the
  Fertile Crescent
• Testable through archaeology
• Kathleen Kenyon excavated Jericho, in part, to
  confirm Oasis Theory
• Jericho produced pre-pottery Neolithic

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Robert Braidwood Hilly Flanks theory (1948)

• Agriculture began in the hilly flanks of the
  Taurus and Zagros mountains
• Agriculture developed from intensive focused
  grain gathering
• Testable through scientific dating Carbon 14
  developed after WW II
• Jarmo (excavated during the 1950s) and Cayonu
  (excavated during the 1970s) seemed to produce
  earlier evidence for agriculture than Jericho

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Carbon 14 Dating
100 50 25 12.5
Age 0
Age 5,730
Age 11,460
Age 17,190
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Results of C-14 testing

• Jarmo earlier than Jericho
• Early sites found in both oases and hilly flanks
  areas
• Murebet and Jericho earliest agricultural sites
  ca. 9000 BCE
• dry farming sites
• derived from Mesolithic Natufian culture
• New questions considered during the 1960s and
  1970s
• How is plant domestication related to wild
  varieties?
• How is animal domestication related to plant
  domestication? Which comes first?
• When was pottery invented?
• When was irrigation discovered?

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Natufian Hunter-Gatherers

• From 11,000-8,000 BCE, hunter-gatherers known as
  Natufian culture collected wild wheat and barley
  for food
• Mobile settlement, using wild plant resources
  seasonally (not focused on any resource though)
• Shift from simple to complex foraging, focused on
  a few plant and animal species

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Pre-pottery Neolithic 9000 BCE

• Jericho and Murebit, type sites
• Early dry farming rather than irrigation
• Domesticated barley and wheat
• Cult of the dead
• Extensive use of flint blades and other
  microlithic tools

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Early Pottery

• Cayonu is one of the few sites in which the PPN
  town is immediately below the ceramic town
• Earliest pottery is made to resemble baskets
• Early ceramic figurines

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Çatal Höyük
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Çatal Höyük

• Flourished from ca. 6500 5500 BCE
• Town may have had a population of 10,000
• Obsidian trade may have been the source of the
  towns wealth
• Salt deposits may have been worked as well
• Trade connections with Jericho, 1500 miles south

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Vulture Shrine
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Hassuna Culture 6000 5250 BCE

• Small villages in northern Mesopotamia
• Populations probably did not exceed 500
• Dry farming
• Pottery
• Red, cream slip
• Linear decorations

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Halaf Culture 5500 4500 BCE

• Northern Mesopotamia
• Arpachiya
• Tepe Gawra
• Finely painted naturalistic polychrome pottery

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Halaf figurines
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Halaf polychrome
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Halaf stamp seal
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Samarra Culture 5500 4800 BCE

• Found in central and eastern Mesopotamia
• Often found together with Halaf pottery
• Associated with early irrigation
• Use of linseed oil in dry area shows irrigation
• Irrigation ditches found at Tell-es-Sawwan
• Link between Halaf and Ubaid cultures

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Tell-es-Sawwan

• Large fortified village near Samarra
• Irrigation technology
• Late period shows forerunners of Ubaid
  architecture

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Tell El-Ubaid
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Ubaid Culture 5500 4000 BCE

• Large village settlements
• First temples
• Stamp seals very common
• Replaced Halaf culture in northern Mesopotamia
• Employed irrigation to settle south
• Eridu/Ur among earliest Ubaid settlements
• Spread along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers

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Ubaid Temples

• Built of mud-brick on stone foundations, new
  technology
• Crenellation in regular use
• Painted walls
• Much like large versions of contemporary houses
• At Eridu, temple built on a mud-brick platform

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Sequence of Eridu Temple plans
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Stamp seals
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Ubaid in the far south

• Ubaid pottery found in Persian Gulf at about 70
  sites mainly on the western shore
• About 50 of the pottery made in Sumer according
  to clay analysis
• Suggests large-scale sea borne Ubaidian trade
• Dilmun, identified with Bahrein, becomes
  something like the Garden of Eden in later
  Sumerian mythology
• Ubaidian trade may have linked Mesopotamia and
  India
• No evidence for oceanic trade to the west.

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Ubaid in Persian Gulf
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Late Ubaid

• Southern Mesopotamian sites show a mix of large
  and small buildings suggesting the development of
  an elite
• Contemporary Halaf sites in the north remained
  socially homogenous
• As Ubaid culture replaced Halaf culture in the
  north, the new social differentiations arrived
  there as well.
• Small finds indicate that there were strong trade
  connections among far flung Ubaid settlements.
• By 4500 BCE, the southern Ubaid sites show a
  distinct hierarchical pattern suggesting that
  some towns were subordinate to others.
• Stamp seals come to be ubiquitous suggesting the
  development of property

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Summary of Near Eastern prehistory

• Earliest Neolithic villages ca. 9000 BCE
• Neolithic technology and culture predominant by
  7000 BCE
• Agricultural developments
• Plant domestication
• Animal domestication
• Irrigation before 5500 BCE
• Settlement of Babylonia by Halaf/Samarra pioneers
  5500 BCE
• Ubaidian society develops distinct social and
  religious hierarchies
• First cities by 3500 BCE

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Conclusions

• Neolithic spread from several centers
• Near East
• Southeast Asia
• North Africa (Sudan and Morocco)
• By 5000 BCE agriculture spread to the
  Mediterranean, China, India
• DNA studies suggest that as neolithic people
  increased in population, they displaced local
  populations
• There does not appear to be a relationship
  between language and the spread of agriculture
• Complex societies developed everywhere favorable
  environments allowed
• Near East was home of the first cities