Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution, Neolithic Demographic Transition, Agricultural Revolution, or First Agricultural Revolution was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an larger population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants to learn how they grew and developed; this new knowledge led to the domestication of plants. Archaeological data indicates that the domestication of various types of plants and animals happened in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological epoch of the Holocene around 12,500 years ago, it was the world's first verifiable revolution in agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution narrowed the diversity of foods available, resulting in a downturn in the quality of human nutrition; the Neolithic Revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food-producing techniques. During the next millennia it would transform the small and mobile groups of hunter-gatherers that had hitherto dominated human pre-history into sedentary societies based in built-up villages and towns.
These societies radically modified their natural environment by means of specialized food-crop cultivation, with activities such as irrigation and deforestation which allowed the production of surplus food. Other developments found widely are the domestication of animals, polished stone tools, rectangular houses; these developments, sometimes called the Neolithic package, provided the basis for centralized administrations and political structures, hierarchical ideologies, depersonalized systems of knowledge, densely populated settlements and division of labour, more trade, the development of non-portable art and architecture, property ownership. The earliest known civilization developed in Sumer in southern Mesopotamia; the relationship of the above-mentioned Neolithic characteristics to the onset of agriculture, their sequence of emergence, empirical relation to each other at various Neolithic sites remains the subject of academic debate, varies from place to place, rather than being the outcome of universal laws of social evolution.
The Levant saw the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BCE, followed by sites in the wider Fertile Crescent. The term Neolithic Revolution was coined in 1923 by V. Gordon Childe to describe the first in a series of agricultural revolutions in Middle Eastern history; the period is described as a "revolution" to denote its importance, the great significance and degree of change affecting the communities in which new agricultural practices were adopted and refined. The beginning of this process in different regions has been dated from 10,000 to 8,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent and 8000 BC in the Kuk Early Agricultural Site of Melanesia; this transition everywhere seems associated with a change from a nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life to a more settled, agrarian-based one, with the inception of the domestication of various plant and animal species—depending on the species locally available, also influenced by local culture. Recent archaeological research suggests that in some regions such as the Southeast Asian peninsula, the transition from hunter-gatherer to agriculturalist was not linear, but region-specific.
There are several competing theories as to the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture. The most prominent of these are: The Oasis Theory proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, popularized by V. Gordon Childe in 1928 and summarised in Childe's book Man Makes Himself; this theory maintains that as the climate got drier due to the Atlantic depressions shifting northward, communities contracted to oases where they were forced into close association with animals, which were domesticated together with planting of seeds. However, today this theory has little support amongst archaeologists because subsequent climate data suggests that the region was getting wetter rather than drier; the Hilly Flanks hypothesis, proposed by Robert Braidwood in 1948, suggests that agriculture began in the hilly flanks of the Taurus and Zagros mountains, where the climate was not drier as Childe had believed, fertile land supported a variety of plants and animals amenable to domestication. The Feasting model by Brian Hayden suggests that agriculture was driven by ostentatious displays of power, such as giving feasts, to exert dominance.
This required assembling large quantities of food. The Demographic theories proposed by Carl Sauer and adapted by Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery posit an sedentary population that expanded up to the carrying capacity of the local environment and required more food than could be gathered. Various social and economic factors helped drive the need for food; the evolutionary/intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an evolutionary adaptation of plants and humans. Starting with domestication by protection of wild plants, it led to specialization of location and full-fledged domestication. Peter Richerson, Robert Boyd, Robert Bettinger make a case for the development of agriculture coinciding with an stable climate at the beginning of the Holocene. Ronald Wright's book and Massey Lecture Series A Short History of Progress popularized this hypothesis; the postulated Younger Dryas impact event, claimed to be in part responsible for megafauna extinction and ending the last glacial period, could have provided circumstances that required the evolution
Epipalaeolithic
In archaeology, the Epipalaeolithic or Epipaleolithic is a term for a period intervening between the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic in the Stone Age. This position is occupied by the Mesolithic and the two are sometimes confused, or used as synonyms. More they are used for different areas: Epipaleolithic for the Levant, the Near East in general, as well as sometimes parts of Europe other than North and Western Europe, where Mesolithic is much more used. A Mesolithic period is not recognized for the Levant or Near East; the Epipalaeolithic has been defined as the "final Upper Palaeolithic industries occurring at the end of the final glaciation which appear to merge technologically into the Mesolithic". The period is dated from c. 20,000 BP to 10,000 BP in the Levant, but in Europe. If used as a synonym or equivalent for Mesolithic in Europe, it might end at about c. 5,000 BP or later. In the Levant the period may be subdivided into Early and Late Epipaleolithic, the last being the Natufian; the preceding final Upper Paleolithic period is the Kebaran or "Upper Paleolithic Stage VI".
Epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers nomadic, made advanced tools from small flint or obsidian blades, known as microliths, that were hafted in wooden implements. There are settlements with "flimsy structures" not permanently occupied except at some rich sites, but used and returned to seasonally. In describing the period before the start of the Neolithic, "Epipaleolithic" is used for cultures in regions that were far from the glaciers of the Ice Age, so that the retreat of the glaciers made a less dramatic change to conditions; this was the case in the Levant. Conversely, the term "Mesolithic" is most to be used for Western Europe where climatic change and the extinction of the megafauna had a great impact of the paleolithic populations at the end of the Ice Age, creating post-glacial cultures such as the Azilian, Sauveterrian and Maglemosian. In the past, French archaeologists had a general tendency to prefer the term "Epipaleolithic" to "Mesolithic" for Western Europe. Where "Epipaleolithic" is still used for Europe, it is for areas close to the Mediterranean, as with the Azilian industry.
"Epipalaeolithic" stresses the continuity with the Upper Paleolithic. Alfonso Moure says in this respect: In the language of Prehistorical Archaeology, the most extended trend is to use the term "Epipaleolithic" for the industrial complexes of the post-glacial hunter-gatherer groups. Inversely, those that are in transitional ways towards artificial production of food are inscribed in the "Mesolithic". In Europe, the Epipalaeolithic may be regarded as a period preceding the Early Mesolithic, or as locally constituting at least a part of it. Other authors treat the Epipalaeolithic as part of the Late Palaeolithic; the different usages reflect the degree of innovation and "economic intensification in the direction of domestication, sedentism or environmental modification" seen in the culture. If the Palaeolithic way of life continues with only adaptation to reflect changes in the types of wild food available, the culture may be called Epipalaeolithic. One writer, talking of Azilian microliths in Vasco-Cantabria has "some exceptions that seem to herald the coming of'true' Mesolithic technologies a few centuries later".
The concept of the "Epipalaeolithic" arrived several decades after the main components of the three-age system, the Paleolithic and Neolithic. It was first proposed in 1910 by the Swedish archaeologist, Knut Stjerna, his initial example being a culture or sub-culture in Scandinavian archaeology, that would not be called Epipalaeolithic today; this left stone-lined pit graves containing implements such as harpoon and javelin heads. Stjerna observed that they "persisted during the recent Paleolithic period and during the Protoneolithic". Here he had used a new term, "Protoneolithic", according to him to be applied to the Danish kitchen-middens. Stjerna said that the eastern culture "is attached to the Paleolithic civilization". However, it was not intermediary and of its intermediates he said "we cannot discuss them here"; this "attached" and non-transitional culture he chose to call the Epipaleolithic, defining it as follows: With Epipaleolithic I mean the period during the early days that followed the age of the reindeer, the one that retained Paleolithic customs.
This period has that of Maglemose and that of Kunda. Stjerna made no mention of the Mesolithic, it is unclear if he intended his terms to replace that, his new terms were soon adopted by the German Hugo Obermaier, who in 1916 used them in El Hombre fósil as part of an attack on the concept of the Mesolithic, which he insisted was a period of "transition" and an "interim" rather than "transformation": But in my opinion this term is not justified, as it would be if these phases presented a natural evolutionary development – a progressive transformation from Paleolithic to Neolithic
Israel
Israel the State of Israel, is a country in Western Asia, located on the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and the northern shore of the Red Sea. It has land borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan on the east, the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the east and west and Egypt to the southwest; the country contains geographically diverse features within its small area. Israel's economic and technological center is Tel Aviv, while its seat of government and proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, although the state's sovereignty over Jerusalem has only partial recognition. Israel has evidence of the earliest migration of hominids out of Africa. Canaanite tribes are archaeologically attested since the Middle Bronze Age, while the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emerged during the Iron Age; the Neo-Assyrian Empire destroyed Israel around 720 BCE. Judah was conquered by the Babylonian and Hellenistic empires and had existed as Jewish autonomous provinces.
The successful Maccabean Revolt led to an independent Hasmonean kingdom by 110 BCE, which in 63 BCE however became a client state of the Roman Republic that subsequently installed the Herodian dynasty in 37 BCE, in 6 CE created the Roman province of Judea. Judea lasted as a Roman province until the failed Jewish revolts resulted in widespread destruction, expulsion of Jewish population and the renaming of the region from Iudaea to Syria Palaestina. Jewish presence in the region has persisted to a certain extent over the centuries. In the 7th century CE, the Levant was taken from the Byzantine Empire by the Arabs and remained in Muslim control until the First Crusade of 1099, followed by the Ayyubid conquest of 1187; the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt extended its control over the Levant in the 13th century until its defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1517. During the 19th century, national awakening among Jews led to the establishment of the Zionist movement in the diaspora followed by waves of immigration to Ottoman Syria and British Mandate Palestine.
In 1947, the United Nations adopted a Partition Plan for Palestine recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an internationalized Jerusalem. The plan was accepted by the Jewish Agency, rejected by Arab leaders; the following year, the Jewish Agency declared the independence of the State of Israel, the subsequent 1948 Arab–Israeli War saw Israel's establishment over most of the former Mandate territory, while the West Bank and Gaza were held by neighboring Arab states. Israel has since fought several wars with Arab countries, since the Six-Day War in 1967 held occupied territories including the West Bank, Golan Heights and the Gaza Strip, it extended its laws to the Golan East Jerusalem, but not the West Bank. Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories is the world's longest military occupation in modern times. Efforts to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict have not resulted in a final peace agreement. However, peace treaties between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan have been signed.
In its Basic Laws, Israel defines itself as a democratic state. The country has a liberal democracy, with a parliamentary system, proportional representation, universal suffrage; the prime minister is head of government and the Knesset is the legislature. Israel is a developed country and an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member, with the 32nd-largest economy in the world by nominal gross domestic product as of 2017; the country benefits from a skilled workforce and is among the most educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree. Israel has the highest standard of living in the Middle East, has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Furthermore, Israel ranked 11th in the UN's 2018 World Happiness Report. Upon independence in 1948, the country formally adopted the name "State of Israel" after other proposed historical and religious names including Eretz Israel and Judea, were considered but rejected.
In the early weeks of independence, the government chose the term "Israeli" to denote a citizen of Israel, with the formal announcement made by Minister of Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett. The names Land of Israel and Children of Israel have been used to refer to the biblical Kingdom of Israel and the entire Jewish people respectively; the name "Israel" in these phrases refers to the patriarch Jacob who, according to the Hebrew Bible, was given the name after he wrestled with the angel of the Lord. Jacob's twelve sons became the ancestors of the Israelites known as the Twelve Tribes of Israel or Children of Israel. Jacob and his sons had lived in Canaan but were forced by famine to go into Egypt for four generations, lasting 430 years, until Moses, a great-great grandson of Jacob, led the Israelites back into Canaan during the "Exodus"; the earliest known archaeological artifact to mention the word "Israel" as a collective is the Merneptah Stele of ancient Egypt. The area is known as the Holy Land, being holy for all Abrahamic religions including Judaism, Christianity and the Bahá'í Faith.
Under British Mandate, the whole region was known as Palestine (Hebre
Haifa
Haifa is the third-largest city in Israel – after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv – with a population of 281,087 in 2017. The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the second- or third-most populous metropolitan area in Israel, it is home to the Bahá'í World Centre, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a destination for Bahá'í pilgrims. Built on the slopes of Mount Carmel, the settlement has a history spanning more than 3,000 years; the earliest known settlement in the vicinity was Tell Abu Hawam, a small port city established in the Late Bronze Age. In the 3rd century CE, Haifa was known as a dye-making center. Over the millennia, the Haifa area has changed hands: being conquered and ruled by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hasmoneans, Byzantines, Crusaders and the British. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Haifa Municipality has governed the city; as of 2016, the city is a major seaport located on Israel's Mediterranean coastline in the Bay of Haifa covering 63.7 square kilometres.
It is the major regional center of northern Israel. According to researcher Jonathan Kis-Lev, Haifa is considered a relative haven for coexistence between Jews and Arabs. Two respected academic institutions, the University of Haifa and the Technion, are located in Haifa, in addition to the largest k-12 school in Israel, the Hebrew Reali School; the city plays an important role in Israel's economy. It is home to Matam, one of the largest high-tech parks in the country. Haifa Bay is a center of petroleum refining and chemical processing. Haifa functioned as the western terminus of an oil pipeline from Iraq via Jordan; the ultimate origin of the name Haifa remains unclear. One theory holds; some Christians believe. Another theory holds it could be derived from the Hebrew verb root חפה, meaning to cover or shield, i.e. Mount Carmel covers Haifa. Other spellings in English included Caipha, Caiffa and Khaifa; the earliest named settlement within the area of modern-day Haifa was a city known as Sycaminum.
The remains of the ancient town can be found in a coastal tell, or archaeological mound, known in Hebrew as Tel Shikmona, meaning "mound of the Ficus sycomorus", in Arabic as Tell el-Semak or Tell es-Samak, meaning "mound of the sumak trees", names that preserved and transformed the ancient name, by which the town is mentioned once in the Mishnah for the wild fruits that grow around it. The name Efa first appears during Roman rule, some time after the end of the 1st century, when a Roman fortress and small Jewish settlement were established not far from Tel Shikmona. Haifa is mentioned more than 100 times in the Talmud, a work central to Judaism. Hefa or Hepha in Eusebius of Caesarea's 4th-century work, Onomasticon, is said to be another name for Sycaminus; this synonymizing of the names is explained by Moshe Sharon, who writes that the twin ancient settlements, which he calls Haifa-Sycaminon expanded into one another, becoming a twin city known by the Greek names Sycaminon or Sycaminos Polis.
References to this city end with the Byzantine period. Around the 6th century, Porphyreon or Porphyrea is mentioned in the writings of William of Tyre, while it lies within the area covered by modern Haifa, it was a settlement situated south of Haifa-Sycaminon. Following the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Haifa was used to refer to a site established on Tel Shikmona upon what were the ruins of Sycaminon. Haifa is mentioned by the mid-11th-century Persian chronicler Nasir Khusraw, the 12th- and 13th-century Arab chroniclers, Muhammad al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi; the Crusaders, who captured Haifa in the 12th century, call it Caiphas, believe its name related to Cephas, the Aramaic name of Simon Peter. Eusebius is said to have referred to Hefa as Caiaphas civitas, Benjamin of Tudela, the 12th-century Jewish traveller and chronicler, is said to have attributed the city's founding to Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest at the time of Jesus. Haifa al-'Atiqa is another name used by some locals to refer to Tell es-Samak, when it was the site of Haifa while a hamlet of 250 residents, before it was moved in 1764-5 to a new fortified site founded by Zahir al-Umar 1.5 miles to the east.
The new village, the nucleus of modern Haifa, was first called al-imara al-jadida by some, but others residing there called it Haifa al-Jadida at first, simply Haifa. In the early 20th century, Haifa al'Atiqa was repopulated with many Arab Christians in an overall neighborhood in which many Middle Eastern Jews were established inhabitants, as Haifa expanded outward from its new location. A town known today, it was a fishing village. Mount Carmel and the Kishon River are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. A grotto on the top of Mount Carmel is known as the "Cave of Elijah", traditionally linked to the Prophet Elijah and his apprentice, Elisha. In Arabic, the highest peak of the Carmel range is called the Muhraka, or "place of burning," harking back to the burnt offerings and sacrifices there in Canaanite and early Israelite times In the 6th c
Microlith
A microlith is a small stone tool made of flint or chert and a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa and Australia; the microliths were used in spear arrowheads. Microliths are produced from either a small blade or a larger blade-like piece of flint by abrupt or truncated retouching, which leaves a typical piece of waste, called a microburin; the microliths themselves are sufficiently worked so as to be distinguishable from workshop waste or accidents. Two families of microliths are defined: laminar and geometric. An assemblage of microliths can be used to date an archeological site. Laminar microliths are associated with the end of the Upper Paleolithic and the beginning of the Epipaleolithic era. Geometric microliths may be trapezoid or lunate. Microlith production declined following the introduction of agriculture but continued in cultures with a rooted hunting tradition. Regardless of type, microliths were used to form the points of hunting weapons, such as spears and arrows, other artifacts and are found throughout Africa and Europe.
They were utilised with wood, bone and fiber to form a composite tool or weapon, traces of wood to which microliths were attached have been found in Sweden and England. An average of between six and eighteen microliths may have been used in one spear or harpoon, but only one or two in an arrow. Laminar microliths date from at least the Gravettian culture or the start of the Upper Paleolithic era, they are found all through the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras. "Noailles" burins and micro-gravettes indicate that the production of microliths had started in the Gravettian culture. This style of flint working flourished during the Magdalenian period and persisted in numerous Epipaleolithic traditions all around the Mediterranean basin; these microliths are larger than the geometric microliths that followed and were made from the flakes of flint obtained ad hoc from a small nucleus or from a depleted nucleus of flint. They were produced either by the application of a variable pressure. There are three basic types of laminar microlith.
The truncated blade type can be divided into a number of sub-types depending on the position of the truncation and according to its form, for example, concave or convex. "Raclette scrapers" are notable for their particular form, being blades or flakes whose edges have been retouched until they are semicircular or shapeless. Raclettes are indefinite cultural indicators, as they appear from the Upper Paleolithic through to the Neolithic. Backed edge blades have one of the edges a side one, rounded or chamfered by abrupt retouching. There are fewer types of these blades, may be divided into those where the entire edge is rounded and those where only a part is rounded, or straight, they are fundamental in the blade-forming processes, from them, innumerable other types were developed. Dufour bladelets are up to three centimeters in length, finely shaped with a curved profile whose retouches are semi-abrupt and which characterize a particular phase of the Aurignacian period. Solutrean backed edge blades display pronounced and abrupt retouching, so that they are long and narrow and, although rare, characterize certain phases of the Solutrean period.
Ouchtata bladelets are similar to the others, except that the retouched back is not uniform but irregular. The Ibero-Maurusian and the Montbani bladelet, with a partial and irregular lateral retouching, is characteristic of the Italian Tardenoisian; these are sharp bladelets formed by abrupt retouching. There are a huge number of regional varieties of these microliths, nearly all of which are hard to distinguish without knowing the archaeological context in which they appear; the following is a small selection. Omitted are the foliaceous tips, which are characterized by a covering retouch and which constitute a group apart; the Châtelperrón point is not a true microlith. Its antiquity and its short, curved blade edge make it the antecedent of many laminar microliths; the Micro-gravette or Gravette micro point is a microlith version of the Gravette point and is a narrow bladelet with an abrupt retouch, which gives it a characteristically sharp edge when compared to other types. The Azilian point links the Magdalenian microlith points with those from the western Epipaleolithic.
They can be identified by a invasive retouching. The Ahrensburgian point is a peripheral paleolithic or western Epipaleolithic piece, but with a more specific morphology, as it is formed on a blade, is obliquely truncated and has a small tongue that served as a haft on a spear point; the next group contains a number of points from the Middle East characterized as cultural markers. The Emireh point from the Upper Paleolithic is the same as one found in Châtelperrón, to be contemporary, although they are shorter and appear to be fashioned from a blade and not a bladelet; the El-Wad point is from the end of the Upper Paleolithic from the same area, made from a long, thin bladelet. The El-Khiam point has been ident
Neolithic
The Neolithic, the final division of the Stone Age, began about 12,000 years ago when the first development of farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, in other parts of the world. The division lasted until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic from about 6,500 years ago, marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age. In Northern Europe, the Neolithic lasted until about 1700 BC, while in China it extended until 1200 BC. Other parts of the world remained broadly in the Neolithic stage of development, although this term may not be used, until European contact; the Neolithic comprises a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, including the use of wild and domestic crops and of domesticated animals. The term Neolithic derives from the Greek νέος néos, "new" and λίθος líthos, "stone" meaning "New Stone Age"; the term was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system. Following the ASPRO chronology, the Neolithic started in around 10,200 BC in the Levant, arising from the Natufian culture, when pioneering use of wild cereals evolved into early farming.
The Natufian period or "proto-Neolithic" lasted from 12,500 to 9,500 BC, is taken to overlap with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of 10,200–8800 BC. As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, 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 10,200–8800 BC farming communities had arisen in the Levant and spread to Asia Minor, North Africa and North Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BC. Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat and spelt, the keeping of dogs and goats. By about 6900–6400 BC, it included domesticated cattle and pigs, the establishment of permanently or seasonally inhabited settlements, 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.
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, which arose independently of those in Europe and Southwest Asia. Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture. In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC. Early development occurred from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC; the prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 6000–5000 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 yards, the collection of neolithic findings at the site encompasses two phases.
The Neolithic 1 period began around 10,000 BC in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe, dated to around 9500 BC, may be regarded as the beginning of the period; this site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, as evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity, may be the oldest known human-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres, contain limestone pillars carved with animals and birds. Stone tools were used by as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Jericho, West Bank, Gilgal in the Jordan Valley, Byblos, Lebanon; the start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, early seed selection and re-seeding occurred; the grain was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, animals were herded and domesticated.
In 2006, 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, 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 a stone tower. The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned; some of the enclosures suggest grain and meat storage. The Neolithic 2 began around 8800 BC according to the ASPRO chronology in the Levant; as with the PPNA dates, there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. This system of terminology, however, is not convenient for southeast Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin.
A settlement of 3,000 inhabitants was found in th
Stone tool
A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either or out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric cultures that have become extinct. Archaeologists study such prehistoric societies, refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis. Ethnoarchaeology has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of different tools throughout history, including arrow heads and querns. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or chipped stone, a person who creates tools out of the latter is known as a flintknapper. Chipped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as chert or flint, chalcedony, obsidian and quartzite via a process known as lithic reduction. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus of material using a hammerstone or similar hard hammer fabricator.
If the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial or bifacial preform, further reduced using soft hammer flaking techniques or by pressure flaking the edges. More complex forms of reduction include the production of standardized blades, which can be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers, knives and microliths. In general terms, chipped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in all pre-metal-using societies because they are manufactured, the tool stone is plentiful, they are easy to transport and sharpen. Archaeologists classify stone tools into industries that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics. In 1969 in the 2nd edition of World Prehistory, Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5.
He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower Palaeolithic, 3 to the Middle Palaeolithic, 4 to the Advanced and 5 to the Mesolithic. They were not to be conceived, however, as either universal—that is, they did not account for all lithic technology. Mode 1, for example, was in use in Europe. Clark's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; the transitions are of greatest interest. In the literature the stone tools used in the period of the Palaeolithic are divided into four "modes", each of which designate a different form of complexity, which in most cases followed a rough chronological order. KenyaStone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at Lake Turkana in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, predate the genus Homo by half million years. The oldest known Homo fossil is 2.8 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. The stone tools may have been made by Australopithecus afarensis —also called Kenyanthropus platyops— the species whose best fossil example is Lucy, which inhabited East Africa at the same time as the date of the oldest stone tools.
Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found and dating the magnetic signature of the rock at the site. EthiopiaGrooved and fractured animal bone fossils, made by using stone tools, were found in Dikika, Ethiopia near the remains of Selam, a young Australopithecus afarensis girl who lived about 3.3 million years ago. The earliest stone tools in the life span of the genus Homo are Mode 1 tools, come from what has been termed the Oldowan Industry, named after the type of site found in Olduvai Gorge, where they were discovered in large quantities. Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction; these cores were river pebbles, or rocks similar to them, struck by a spherical hammerstone to cause conchoidal fractures removing flakes from one surface, creating an edge and a sharp tip. The blunt end is the proximal surface. Oldowan is a percussion technology. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the distal surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter, such as a bone or tuber.
The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are unsure which Hominan species first developed them, with some speculating that it was Australopithecus garhi, others believing that it was in fact Homo habilis. Homo habilis was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, but at about 1.9-1.8 million years ago Homo erectus inherited them. The Industry flourished in southern and eastern Africa between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, but was spread out of Africa and into Eurasia by travelling bands of H. erectus, who took it as far east as Java by 1.8 million years ago and Northern China by 1.6 million years ago. More complex, Mode 2 tools began to be developed through the Acheulean Industry, named after the site
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Material was adapted from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License Nadel, Dani; Weiss, Ehud; Groman-Yaroslavski, Iris (23 November 2016). "Composite Sickles and Cereal Harvesting Methods at 23,000-Years-Old Ohalo II, Israel". PLOS ONE. 11 (11): e0167151. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0167151. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 5120854. PMID 27880839.
