Although it was named after a change in the way of working stone, the Neolithic is a complex phenomenon that marks the end of predation as a way of life and the beginning of agriculture and livestock.
About 12,000 years ago, the way of life of human beings who inhabited certain geographical areas began to transform radically. Predatory occupations, such as hunting and gathering, were gradually replaced by others of a productive nature, such as the domestication of animals and the cultivation of the land, and in this way, the societies of Homo sapiens gradually abandoned nomadism and subsistence economy to become sedentary and producers of their own food.
One of the main reasons for the economic and cultural transformation experienced by human societies is found in the climate change that occurred at the end of the last ice age and that inaugurated the Holocene period, the last of the current geological era. During it, temperatures increased considerably and, gradually, the ice that covered most of the planet melted and was relegated to the polar regions and high mountains. With the melting, in addition, large coastal areas were flooded.
Chronology of the beginnings of agriculture and livestock
Early stages of cultural development in the Middle East
Epipalaeolithic
12,000 – 9,000 BC Natufian (Palestinian) and Zarzian (in Iraq) cultures. Shacks and micro-lithic industry. Harvest of wild grains.
9500 – 8000 BC Tell Abu Hureyra (Syria). Wild grain storage remains.
8500 BC Evidence of selective hunting of sheep in Zawi Che-mi Shanidar (Iraq).
ceramic neolithic
9000 BC Ceramic Neolithic A at Jericho. Construction of the first wall. Agricultural villages in Palestine and Syria.
8000 BC Domestication of goats in Ganj Dareh and evidence of crops and livestock in Ali Kosh (Zagros Mountains).
8000 BC Ceramic Neolithic B at Jericho. Expansion of agriculture in the eastern Levant. Complex funeral rites.
7000 – 6500 BC Stable settlements in Anatolia (Cayonu Tepesi, Hacilar and Çatal Hüyük), Syria (Tell Mureybet) and Iraq (Qalat Jarmo).
Changetosurvive
The climatic change led to the disappearance of many plants and the migration or extinction of animal species that had guaranteed the survival of Paleolithic man. These changes in vegetation and fauna, together with the constant increase in population, broke the existing balance between the needs of human communities and natural resources; and, thus, Homo sapiens was forced to modify its eating habits so as not to disappear.
By the end of the Paleolithic, however, humanity had already acquired the necessary cultural maturity and technical progress to meet this challenge. Thus began the transition stage to the Neolithic that historians and archaeologists call Mesolithic or Epipaleolithic, during which hunters and gatherers gradually learned to control the production and consumption of food.
The Fertile Crescent
This is the name given to the geographical area where the signs of neolithization first appeared. The term comes from its shape -reminiscent of the crescent moon- and its very privileged environmental conditions. In the Fertile Crescent, agriculture, livestock and ceramics, among many other cultural and technological achievements, were developed before anywhere else.
The domestication of animals, beginning of livestock
The domestication of animals, which was a direct consequence of hunting, is, together with agriculture, the earliest manifestation of the neolithization process . As evidenced by the archaeological remains found, both activities were developed for the first time in the region known as the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC. c.
To avoid the annihilation of herds, Mesolithic hunters began to select their catches based on the sex and age of the animals. To this controlled hunting, the custom of chasing and keeping entire herds of cattle in closed enclosures would later be added. In this way, meat was available for long periods of time without depending on hunting.
The first animal domesticated for food was the goat . The remains found in Iran and Iraq show that the goats that lived in Neolithic settlements -from the wild species called bezoar -, were already smaller in size and had smaller horns than their wild relatives.
The explanation that zoo-archaeologists give to this phenomenon is that, from the beginning of livestock farming, prehistoric shepherds chose to select only those individuals that were smaller and more docile to handle and that, therefore, by separating the domestic females of the large free-living males, Homo sapiens modified intuitively the genetics of the animal. This custom, which would be repeated with the rest of the domesticated species -including vegetables-, meant that, over time, domestic goats ended up becoming a different species from the original.
The first domesticated animals
Goat , the first animal domesticated for its meat. Around 8000 BC. C. It comes from the wild species Copra aegragus .
Sheep , derives from the wild cameros of the mounts of Iran. Prized for its meat, milk and wool. 8th millennium BC C.
Cow In addition to providing meat, milk and leather, it was used as a draft animal. 6th millennium BC C. Anatolia.
Horse , comes from the wild horses of Kazakhstan and was not used as a mount until the fourth millennium BC. C.
Donkey , their ancestors were the onager of Western Asia and the kian of Tibet. Domesticated from the 5th millennium BC. C.
Boar , comes from the wild boar. It was bred in captivity in southeastern Turkey from the 8th millennium BC. C.
Primitive crops, beginnings of agriculture
If livestock farming emerged as an evolution of hunting, the appearance of agriculture is linked to the collection of seeds, roots, fruits and all kinds of vegetables that human groups have practiced since their origins. The same scarcity of natural resources that had forced Homo sapiens to modify their predatory strategies also influenced harvesting and, for this reason, Mesolithic men and women abandoned the habit of consuming plants immediately to develop grinding techniques. and food storage.
These practices, in addition to promoting the creation of new instruments and objects -such as mortars to grind grain and containers to store it-, caused the collected plants to end up colonizing human settlements:by transporting seeds and fruits from one place to another , the human being became an improvised vehicle for the propagation of different plant species.
The study of the reproductive cycle of plants, especially those that, due to their nutritional properties, were consumed in greater quantity, meant that, after thousands of years of collecting wild species, some communities learned to domesticate them and, thus, at the dawn of the Neolithic, agriculture began to develop.
As in the case of livestock, the oldest records of an agricultural economy They have been found in Palestine, in northern Mesopotamia and in Turkey, and also date from the 9th millennium BC. C. The first cultivated species were wheat and barley , two types of abundant cereals in these regions, very nutritious and that require little care. Later, new cereals, such as oats, rye and millet, as well as different types of legumes, such as lentils and peas, would be added to the list of domesticated species.
It is believed that shifting cultivation prevailed in the early Neolithic phases:after clearing an area, the land was burned to keep it free of weeds and, when the soil was exhausted, a new location was chosen to start the process on uncultivated land. more fertile. Over time, however, Neolithic peasants discovered and applied improvements in farming systems, which made it possible to greatly increase food production and abandon shifting cultivation.
The space that wheat and barley occupied in the Middle East was filled by rice in China - it began to be cultivated during the 8th millennium BC. C.-. From there it would spread to neighboring regions. In America, meanwhile, the main cultivated vegetable would be corn - from the seventh millennium BC. C.-, whose consumption is believed to originate in Mesoamerica.
The development of the productive economy brought about a demographic explosion, forced the colonization of new regions -which, for example, allowed the spread of the Neolithic to Europe- and caused changes in social organization. In this way, in addition to favoring sedentarization and the consequent creation of stable settlements -a process that, independently, had begun in the Mesolithic-, the new activities forced the adoption of more complex and structured forms of coexistence -including an incipient division of work-.
Pioneersofchange
In the predatory societies of the Mesolithic period, men were mainly engaged in hunting and women in gathering. For this reason, in the development of agriculture, historians give a leading role to the female sex. Mesolithic cave painting where a group of women is represented. Caves of Cogull (Spain).
Technical innovations
On the other hand, the neolithic process that brought Homo sapiens out of the caves was accompanied by the conquest of numerous technical advances and inventions that, little by little, allowed human communities to improve their quality of life and increase their ability to control and modify the surrounding environment.
During the Neolithic period, most instruments - many of them related to agriculture - were made of stone. The way of working this material, however, changed with respect to the Paleolithic and thus, the technique of polishing the stone - giving it shape and edge by rubbing - prevailed over carving - which involved hitting one stone with another. In this sense, the term Neolithic or New Stone Age was coined in 1865 by the British naturalist and anthropologist John Lubbock to describe these changes in the way stone tools were made.
The development of the productive economy, in this context, allowed human groups to spend more time performing tasks that were not related to obtaining food. In this way, after experimenting with the materials of their environment, new daily industries appeared that no longer used stone, such as basketry, carpentry, weaving and, above all, ceramics. Precisely, the invention and subsequent development of ceramics is considered one of the fundamental achievements in the process of neolithicization of human societies.
Agrain-baseddiet
Neolithic mortars were not very different from those used today. The grain was thrown into a concave container and crushed with another stone until its flour was obtained. The consumption of cereals, rich in carbohydrates and proteins, notably improved the diet of Homo sapiens and contributed to lengthening their life expectancy.
Tillage tools made of stone
Following a tradition that began in the Mesolithic, during the Neolithic, knives, scrapers and arrowheads, among other utensils, were almost always made of flint. The adoption of the agrarian way of life, however, required Homo sapiens to devise new tools. Embedding flint teeth in pieces of wood or horns, for example, the first sickles for harvesting were made, and joining stone axes to a resistant stick, the most primitive hoes were created. The use of the bones and antlers of animals, on the other hand, was also maintained compared to previous times and, thanks to these materials, harpoons for fishing and assegais for hunting were manufactured, two activities that. Despite the development of agriculture and livestock, they continued to be practiced frequently, as well as spatulas and shovels for digging, awls for drilling and needles for sewing.
The appearance of mining
The need to obtain large amounts of flint, obsidian and basalt -used for the manufacture of farming tools- forced the improvement of stone extraction techniques and the excavation of wells and underground galleries. Polished stone mallets and bone chisels were used to extract the ore. Prehistoric mines of Gavá, Spain.
Road of civilization, trade
Once the production of food and crafts progressed, the surpluses obtained began to be used to obtain other resources and objects in the neighboring regions. Over time, as the intensity and frequency of these exchanges increased, the first bonds of dependency would inevitably appear.
The development of an incipient trade, which archaeologists have shown by the discovery of types of pottery and materials that are not typical of the place where they were found, such as obsidian, would later be favored by the invention of advanced forms of transportation and by the birth of a new industry that, needing resources difficult to obtain in many agricultural regions, would put an end to the reign of stone:metallurgy.
The last stage of the Neolithic in the Near East, Europe, Egypt and other regions of the Old World that between the VII and III millennium BC. C. they adopted agriculture and livestock as the basis of their economy, it is called Eneolithic, Paleolithic, Copper Age or Final Neolithic. This period of transition between the Neolithic proper and the Bronze Age, during which human beings not only learned to melt and forge copper, gold and silver, but also managed to perfect the cultivation and craft production techniques used until then, it was a moment of deep and decisive cultural, social and economic transformations.
The changes registered during the last phases of the Eneolithic, as can be perfectly observed when studying the appearance of the first Mesopotamian civilizations, would ultimately be responsible for the fact that, after more than 100,000 years of evolution, Homo sapiens abandoned that long stage of its evolution known as prehistory.