New findings put the beginning of the Neolithic culture back to around 10,700 to 9400 BC in Tell Qaramel in northern Syria, 25 km north of Aleppo. Until those findings are adopted within the archaeological community, the beginning of the Neolithic culture is considered to be in the Levant (Jericho, modern-day West Bank) about 9500 BC. It developed directly from the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in the region, whose people pioneered the use of wild cereals, which then evolved into true farming. The Natufians can thus be called "proto-Neolithic" (12,500–9500 BC or 12,000–9500 BC). As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas are thought to have forced people to develop farming. By 9500–9000 BC, farming communities arose in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa and North Mesopotamia. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of dogs, sheep and goats. By about 8000 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, and the use of pottery.
Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery, and, in Britain, it remains unclear to what extent plants were domesticated in the earliest Neolithic, or even whether permanently settled communities existed. In other parts of the world, such as Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally-distinctive Neolithic cultures that arose completely independent of those in Europe and Southwest Asia. Early Japanese societies used pottery ''before'' developing agriculture.
Unlike the Paleolithic, where more than one human species existed, only one human species (''Homo sapiens'') reached the Neolithic. Homo floresiensis may have survived right up to the very dawn of the Neolithic, about 12,000 years ago.
The term ''Neolithic'' derives from the Greek ''νεολιθικός'', ''neolithikos'', from ''νέος'' ''neos'', "new" + ''λίθος'' ''lithos'', "stone", literally meaning "New Stone Age." The term was invented by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.
The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 5000–6000 BC, neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains, filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chinese cultures. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square meters and the collection of neolithic findings at the site consists of two phases.
Until the findings in Tell Qaramel are adopted within the archaeological community, sites in the Levant (Jericho, Palestine & Jbeil (Byblos), Lebanon) that go back to around 9500 to 9000 BC. are still considered the beginning of the Neolithic 1 (PPNA). The actual date is not established with certainty due to different results in carbon dating by scientists in the British Museum and Philadelphia laboratories.
An early temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe dated to 10,000 BC may be regarded as the beginning of the Neolithic 1. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity. This temple site may be the oldest known man-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering , 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 may have supported roofs.
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 (animal husbandry and selective breeding).
In the 21st century, remains of figs were discovered in a house in Jericho dated to 9400 BC. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were the first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains.
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. There are also some enclosures that suggest grain and meat storage.
Settlements have rectangular mudbrick houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where people preserved skulls of the dead, which were plastered with mud to make facial features. The rest of the corpse may have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses.
The Chalcolithic period began about 4500 BC, then the Bronze Age began about 3500 BC, replacing the Neolithic cultures.
In 1981 a team of researchers from the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, including Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche divided Near East neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics. In 2002 Danielle Stordeur and Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with a division into five periods. Natufian (1) between 12000 and 10000 BCE, Khiamian (2a) between 10000 and 9500 BCE, PPNA: Sultanian (Jericho), Mureybetian (2b) between 9500 and 8700 BCE, early PPNB (''PPNB ancien'') (3a) between 8700 and 8200 BCE, middle PPNB (''PPNB moyen'') (3b) between 8200 and 7500 BCE, late PPNB (''PPNB récent'') (4) between 7500 and 7000 BCE and a PPNB (sometimes called PPNC) transitional stage (''PPNB final'') (5) where Halaf and dark faced burnished ware begin to emerge between 7500 and 6500 BCE. They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8800 and 8600 BCE at sites like Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Aswad.
In South India, the Neolithic began by 3000 BC and lasted until around 1400 BC when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ashmounds since 2500 BC in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu.
In East Asia, the earliest sites include Pengtoushan culture around 7500 BC to 6100 BC, Peiligang culture around 7000 BC to 5000 BC.
The 'Neolithic' (defined in this paragraph as using polished stone implements) remains a living tradition in small and extremely remote and inaccessible pockets of West Papua (Indonesian New Guinea). Polished stone adze and axes are used in the present day ( CE) in areas where the availability of metal implements is limited. This is likely to cease altogether in the next few years as the older generation die off and steel blades and chainsaws prevail.
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 ("''Linearbandkeramik''") were building large arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 BC and 4600 BC. These structures (and their later counterparts such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds, and henge) required considerable time and labour to construct, which suggests that some influential individuals were able to organise and direct human labour — though non-hierarchical and voluntary work remain strong possibilities.
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 have been discovered, such as at Herxheim, which, whether the site of a massacre or of a martial ritual, demonstrates "...systematic violence between groups." and warfare was probably much more common during the Neolithic than in the preceding Paleolithic period. This supplanted an earlier view of the Linear Pottery Culture as living a "peaceful, unfortified lifestyle."
Control of labour and inter-group conflict is characteristic of corporate-level or 'tribal' groups, headed by a charismatic individual; whether a 'big man' or a proto-chief, functioning as a lineage-group head. Whether a non-hierarchical system of organization existed is debatable and there is no evidence that explicitly suggests that Neolithic societies functioned under any dominating class or individual, as was the case in the chiefdoms of the European Early Bronze Age. Theories to explain the apparent implied egalitarianism of Neolithic (and Paleolithic) societies have arisen, notably the Marxist concept of primitive communism.
The profound differences in human interactions and subsistence methods associated with the onset of early agricultural practices in the Neolithic have been called the ''Neolithic Revolution'', a term coined in the 1920s by the Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe.
One potential benefit of the development and increasing sophistication of farming technology was the possibility of producing surplus crop yields, in other words, food supplies in excess of the immediate needs of the community. Surpluses could be stored for later use, or possibly traded for other necessities or luxuries. Agricultural life afforded securities that pastoral life could not, and sedentary farming populations grew faster than nomadic.
However, early farmers were also adversely affected in times of famine, such as may be caused by drought or pests. In instances where agriculture had become the predominant way of life, the sensitivity to these shortages could be particularly acute, affecting agrarian populations to an extent that otherwise may not have been routinely experienced by prior hunter-gatherer communities.
The world's oldest known engineered roadway, the Sweet Track in England, dates from 3800 BC and the world's oldest free-standing structure is the neolithic temple of Ggantija in Gozo, Malta.
Early Neolithic ''Periodization: The Levant: 10,000 to 8500 BC; Europe: 5000 to 4000 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region.''
Middle Neolithic ''Periodization: The Levant: 8500 to 6500 BC; Europe: 4000 to 3500 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region.''
Later Neolithic ''Periodization: 6500 to 4500 BC; Europe: 3500 to 3000 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region.''
Eneolithic ''Periodization: Middle East: 4500 to 3300 BC; Europe: 3000 to 1700 BC; Elsewhere: varies greatly, depending on region. In the Americas, the Eneolithic ended as late as the 1800s for some people.''
Category:Holocene Category:Greek loanwords
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He has been interested in the origins of the concepts of race, the misconception of human variation as race, and the scientific approaches to the biocultural origins and histories of indigenous African peoples.
Keita's career has primarily been in public sector medicine, but has included academic teaching and research. He is a member of the American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Anthropological Association (AAA), the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, the Physicians for Human Rights, the NAACP, and the Royal African Society, among others.
His papers, writings and planned projects reflect an eclectic and broad range of interests, including craniofacial phenetic affinity in ancient northwest Africa, Egypt, and the Levant, BiDil—and the dangers of biological determinism in US health policy, intellectual and developmental disabilities. His interests in the biology of poverty and its impact on human development has increased since the MRDDA experience. Other interests include the US census instructions as a creator of identity and the inaccuracies in this approach, human biological diversity, ancestry testing for "identity", phenetic affinity, and paleopathology.
Genetics, linguistics, and history in Africa—and the history of ideas about Africa and anthropology that continue to have influence, the misuse of genetics, bioethics and the (mis)concept of race, and science in the service of justice are also of interest. He has served as a consultant to museums, and given lectures and workshops on human variation and the idea of "race"--and how these differ from each other, human biological diversity in indigenous Africa, and the origins of ancient Egypt using the most current scientific data.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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