The Birth of Civilisation - The First Farmers (20000 BC to 8800 BC)

Key Concepts

Notes

The Scale and Speed of Civilisation's Rise

• At the LGM (~20,000 BC) global population was ~2 million, entirely nomadic
• Today: 7.7 billion, majority urban — all of this emerged in a geologically tiny window
• For 250,000+ years humans remained nomadic; complex societies appeared within ~10,000 years of the LGM

Defining Civilisation

• Criteria: organized political state, dense urban environments, reliance on agriculture, visible social hierarchy, monumental architecture, administrative tools (writing, literacy)
• Problem: these features appear at different times and in varying degrees — no clean threshold
• Some features (seasonal settlement, wild grain harvesting) appear early; writing and complex hierarchy appear millennia later

Where Agriculture Emerged Independently

• **China**: Yangtze and Yellow River basins, ~7,000 BC
• **Egypt**: Along the Nile, ~7,000 BC
• **New Guinea highlands**: ~7,000 BC
• **South America**: ~5,000 BC
• **Central Mexico**: ~5,000 BC
• **North America**: ~2,000 BC
• Local fauna availability shaped outcomes: large herd animals (cattle, pigs, sheep) in Egypt and China; protein via plant cultivation (beans, squash, maize) in South America

The World During the Last Glacial Maximum (~21,000–15,500 BC)

• Northern Europe and America under glacial sheets up to 3 km thick
• **Doggerland** connected Britain to Europe; **Sundaland** connected modern Indonesian/Malaysian islands
• Human lifestyle: nomadic bands, seasonal camps, simple dwellings
• Diet: large and small game, fish, shellfish, nuts, berries, tubers, occasional wild grass seeds
• Cultural complexity already increasing: **Aurignacian culture** (~40,000 BC) introduced refined stone blades, bone/ivory tools, awls, tailored clothing, baskets

Growing Cultural Complexity Before Farming

• Cave art appearing from ~35,000 BC: hand stencils, geometric shapes, then complex animal depictions (Chauvet Cave: lions, bears, rhinos, horses, bison)
• **Venus figurines** with exaggerated female features throughout Europe — associated with fertility motifs
• Personal decoration: pierced shells, mammoth ivory, animal teeth and bones — predates cave painting
• Red ochre pigment in use for decoration

Ohalo 2 — Evidence of Early Sedentism (~20,000 BC)

• Site on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, northern Israel; discovered late 1980s
• Six brush huts with oval floors cut into the ground, walls of willow, tamarisk, and oak branches
• Features: hearths, designated waste disposal area, preserved bedding
• Carbon dated ~20,000 BC; occupied permanently across successive generations; deliberately burned at abandonment, then submerged — excellent preservation
• **~150,000 seeds and fruits** recovered: acorns, legumes, wild emmer wheat, wild barley
• Stone sickles and grindstones found bearing plant residue
• Possible weed species associated with cultivation — hints at systematic plant management
• Ohalo 2 was exceptional; surrounding communities remained small and mobile

Middle Epipaleolithic Camps (~18,000 BC)

• Large seasonal camps appear: **Kharaneh 4**, **Nahal Hadera 5**, **Azariq 13**
• Hut structures similar to Ohalo 2; evidence of prolonged habitation
• Kharaneh 4: rich assemblages of stone tools, worked bone, red ochre, decorated shell beads found ~200 km inland — evidence of long-range exchange networks
• Faunal remains: gazelle, aurochs; ground stone tools show exploitation of wild grasses

The Natufian Culture (~14,900 BC onward)

• Discovered 1928 by Dorothy Garrod; found in cave sites and open settlements across the southern Levant
• Key sites: **El-Wad**, **Tell Abu Hureyra**, **Tell es-Sultan** (Jericho)
• **Permanent circular buildings** on stone foundations in open areas; cave sites show early terracing of surrounding slopes
• Deliberately placed settlements near multiple biomes to maximise resource access
• Diet: gazelle, red deer, wild boar, small mammals, birds, tortoise, wild cereals, pulses
• Stone mortars carved from black basalt — larger capacity than predecessors
• Sickles set in long ivory or bone handles — more effective at cutting grass stems
• Significant refinement over Ohalo 2 equivalents
• **Raqefet Cave** (near Mount Carmel): earliest known brewing evidence — mortars contain starchy residues linked to local wild wheat and barley; grains were malted, ground, and fermented → very low-alcohol beer
• Brewing may have had ritual associations
• **Shubayqa 1** and **Ain Ghazal**: 24 charred bread-like fragments recovered from a hearth — made from wild wheat, barley, and club-rush tuber; demonstrates de-husking, milling, drying, and baking
• Graves contain elaborate clothing, facial coverings decorated with pierced shells, bracelets, armlets, necklaces of animal teeth and bones
• **Hilazon Tachtit Cave**: disabled woman (~45 years old) buried with 50+ tortoise shells, pine marten skulls, a human foot, wild boar, cattle, leopard parts, a golden eagle wing — interpreted as a shaman or medicine woman burial
• Suggests special social status already being marked in death

The Younger Dryas (~11,000–9,600 BC)

• Sudden return to cooler, drier conditions after a warmer, wetter period
• Natufian permanent sites abandoned in favor of more mobile living
• **Abu Hureyra** (northern Syria): population initially responded by diversifying plant exploitation including earliest confirmed cultivation of wild rye; ultimately abandoned
• **Zazian culture** (Zagros Mountains, ~18,000–8,000 BC): came to an end
• Current leading cause theory: meltwater from retreating North American glaciers disrupted Atlantic Ocean circulation, cutting off warm tropical water flow to the north
• Key point: farming was **not** suddenly triggered by the Younger Dryas — cultivation predates it, and fully domesticated crops/animals don't appear for millennia after

End of the Younger Dryas and the Neolithic Begins (~9,600 BC)

• Global temperature rose ~7°C within ~50 years
• Expansion of wooded and grassland areas throughout the Near East
• Beginning of the **Neolithic (New Stone Age)**
• **Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPN-A)**: ~9,600–8,800 BC
• **Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPN-B)**: ~8,800 BC to mid-7th millennium BC
• Distinguished from later **Pottery Neolithic** by absence of fired clay vessels

Early PPN-A Settlements

• Communal living: hunting, crop cultivation, cooking conducted collectively across households
• **Jerf el-Ahmar** (northern Syria): large communal halls between houses; central subterranean building (~9 m diameter) with limestone-walled cells used to store lentils and barley; surrounding rectangular buildings with heavy corn-stones for flour processing
• Building repeatedly rebuilt over the settlement's lifetime — suggests ceremonial as well as practical role
• Human and animal remains deposited within
• **Wadi Feynan**: similar communal grain storage structures

Jericho — Tell es-Sultan (~9,600 BC)

• Site of a spring; seasonally occupied since Natufian period
• Early PPN-A: permanent settlement of dome-shaped stone and mudbrick buildings
• Enclosed by a **massive stone wall**: up to 5 m tall, 2 m thick, built of undressed stone and mud mortar; complemented by a rock-cut ditch
• **Stone tower**: ~7 m tall, inside the wall, with internal staircase to a platform
• Disputed function:
• **Defensive interpretation** (Kathleen Kenyon): destruction layer in tower, 12 bodies with signs of violence at staircase base
• **Counter-arguments**: tower is inside the wall (unusual for defense); surrounded by plant storage structures; no similar structures elsewhere; no clear external threat identified
• Alternative theories: flood control from nearby spring; status signaling to surrounding communities; ritual function (stone pedestals found at base)
• Construction would have required significant organized labor

Göbekli Tepe — The World's First Ritual Center (~9,600 BC)

• Located on a limestone ridge in southeastern Anatolia; discovered early 1990s by Professor Klaus Schmidt
• Artificial earthen mound >300 m in diameter
• **Five enclosures** currently excavated: roughly circular, carved into bedrock hollows, walls lined with T-shaped limestone pillars at regular intervals
• Two larger central T-shaped pillars dominate each enclosure — largest: **5.5 m tall, ~8 metric tons** (requiring hundreds of people to transport)
• Pillars carved with wild animals: aurochs, boars, birds, scorpions, spiders, snakes, canines (possibly early dogs)
• High-relief figures: enigmatic four-legged predators
• **Anthropomorphic features** on pillars 18 and 31: arms, hands, loincloth-like carvings, stoller motifs — interpreted as ancestor figures or deities
• Enclosure floors: polished limestone; **Enclosure B** has an artificial terrazzo floor (fired lime) with a bowl-shaped depression in front of one pillar
• Various sculptures found: phallic human statues, animal sculptures, enigmatic rings
• T-shaped pillar symbolism appears at other contemporary sites across a wide radius (Jerf el-Ahmar tablets show similar animal motifs) — suggests shared symbolic language across communities
• Likely built by **multiple semi-mobile hunter-gatherer communities** from across northern Syria, Iraq, and southeastern Turkey
• Explains the abundance of wild animal imagery — these were still hunter-gatherer peoples
• Acted as a **periodic gathering place** — ritual center and sanctuary
• **Death cult theory** (Schmidt): elevated position ideal for sky burial/body exposure; vultures and predatory animals prominently depicted; enclosure walls may have screened this activity; however, no confirmed burials found from this period
• **Feasting**: large quantities of gazelle and aurochs bones in backfill rubble, many cracked for marrow; volume suggests repeated feasting events, not a single occasion; bones may have been transported from a nearby location
• **Brewing**: residues in later buildings suggest brewing activity; alternatively beverages brewed elsewhere and transported; feasting and alcohol likely used to recruit and incentivize the large workforce needed for construction
• Access to enclosure interiors may have been restricted to select individuals — possible early elite or ritual specialists
• Later enclosures built on smaller scale with less animal symbolism
• Grain processing activity increasingly takes center stage
• Eventually deliberately backfilled and abandoned
• Its decline coincides with the rise of domestic animals making hunting-based symbolism less central

Broader Trends by End of PPN-A (~8,800 BC)

• Communal structures growing in scale and organizational complexity
• Ritual and practical functions increasingly intertwined in architecture
• Long-range exchange networks already established
• Evidence of brewing, bread-making, communal storage — proto-agricultural behaviors
• Domesticated crops and animals still **not fully established** — that comes in PPN-B
• **Skull cult** emerging: plastered human skulls kept as ceremonial objects, spanning the entire Near East
• **Mega-sites** begin appearing capable of housing unprecedented numbers of people

Quotes Worth Keeping

Instead of there being a sudden changeover from hunting and gathering to farming, it seems agriculture took many millennia to develop.

Fully domesticated forms of both animals and crops do not emerge for millennia to come. Instead, the hunter-gatherers of this region simply seem to have adopted a more mobile lifestyle, returning to a more sedentary existence only after more favorable conditions returned.

The complex animal carvings seen in its pillars and statues represent one of the last great flowerings of hunter-gatherer symbology.