Lecture 1

The Neolithic Revolution

Probably the most significant pre-condition for the existence of cities is a surplus food supply: cities can exist only if significant numbers of people can be "excused" from the necessity of spending all their time securing the food they need in order to live. For most of humans' time on earth it was apparently impossible to provide surpluss food, but all that changed as a result of a phenomenon many scholars call the "Neolithic Revoltuion."

230,000 years ago beginning of tool production

75,000 years ago emergence of specific "tool-culture" areas

50,000 years ago appearance of "modern humans"

10,000 B.C. last (fourth) glaciation and the dominance of "modern humans"

8,000 B.C. end of the last glaciation and the end of the Palaeolithic: people on the threshold of food production--intensive hunting and gathering

1. It was once thought that this development had taken place in the " Fertile Crescent" -- but no longer.

2. The river valleys were still mostly swamps and the " invention" of farming seems to have occurred on the hilly flanks that surrounded the rivers.

3. Jarmo was one of the earliest sites.

4. The cause of the Neolithic Revolution: several possible approaches--

a. The event does not need to be explained; it was chance: some person noticed some time: why did it happen just then?

b. Climatic determinish: the climate was getting warmer and dryer: palaeolothic hunters were forced to find new sources of food: but there is little evidence for climatic change at just this time, and climate had changed many times previously without the invention of agriculture.

c. The "oasis theory, a variant on the climatic theory: in the increasingly harsh conditions of the Near East plants and animals were forced to live together; a problem with this is that most early sites were not oases (Jericho is an exception).

d. Social developments: according to this theory the Neolithic Revolution was set off by increased population, leading to more complex social relationshops, forcing people to settle down; they could not follow the seasonable fruits and vegetables and got in each other's way, and as more people settled in a limited area they had to maximize their food supply; using what they already knew, they domesticated plants and animals.

e. Which (if any) of these seems more reasonable?

f. Many scholars stress the role of women in the Neolithic Revolution and in Neolithic society in general.

1. Jarmo is a site in northeastern Iraq, excavated in 1951 by Robert Braidwood of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

2. The village should be dated to ca. 7,000 B.C. It lay on the crest of a hill overlooking a deep wadi (dry river) covering an area of ca. 3.2 acres, made up of about 12 layers of habitation--covering most of the Neolithic period.

3. Houses were made of pisse or adobe (pressed mud); the earlier structures had no foundations, while later houses had stone foundations.

a. Floors were made of mud, often packed over a layer of reeds.

b. Each house had its own built-in oven and a baked-in receptacle in the floor.

c. At any one time there were about 30 houses in the village and the excavators suggest a population of from 150 to 200 individuals.

4. The food supply can be deduced from physical remains of grains and animals bones, and from the impression of cereals in clay.

a. Evidence of barley emmer wheat and large bins that may have been used for grain storage.

b. Bones of goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, a relative of the horse, and dogs.

c. Examination of the teeth shows that some of the animals were a year old when they were killed--evidence of domestication of animals.

d. Impressions in clay reveal the presence of woven baskets or rugs made out of reeds.

5. Tools included hoes, digging sticks, slint sickle blades, millstones; obsidian tools (made out of volcanic glass) indicates the presence of trade, since the nearest source of supply is near Lake Van, some 200 miles away.

6. Decorative items included shells from the Persian Gulf, beads, pendants, marble brackets, clay figurines of animals and pregnant women (usually identified as the Mother Goddess).

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