The Neolithic: Roots of a Revolution in Subsistence and Society

1. The Neolithic: Roots of a Revolution in Subsistence and Society The Past in Perspective 10

2. Roots of a Revolution in Subsistence and Society • Chronicle • Humans Taking the Place of Nature: Artificial Selection • The Domestication of Plants and Animals • Why Agriculture? • The Near East • Mesoamerica

3. Roots of a Revolution in Subsistence and Society • Africa • East Asia • Europe • North America • South America • Issues and Debates • Cast Study Close-up • Summary

4. Chronicle • For most of human history, people have relied for their subsistence on foraging—hunting, fishing, and collecting wild plant foods. • Within the past 12,000 years, human groups began actively controlling their food sources by artificially producing conditions under which these sources could thrive and then, by manipulating them, resulting in their alteration from a natural state.

5. Humans Taking the Place of Nature: Artificial Selection • Settled agricultural life is one step in a process stretch out along a lengthy continuum of change. • It begins with collecting wild foods and continues through a lengthy period of tending and encouraging wild plants or animals. • This may lead to manipulation of the reproduction of economically important plants or animals through artificial selection—the directed breeding of plants and animals

6. Why Agriculture? • Why Agriculture? • Between 11,000 and 2,000 years ago, most of the world’s people either developed a domesticated food base independently or adopted the agricultural pattern of their neighbors. • Environmental change • Cultural Evolution • Population Growth • An Accident

7. Evidence of Human Control of Plant and Animal Species • Geography • Size • Seed Morphology • Osteological Changes • Population Characteristics • The Fertile Crescent • The Late Pleistocene inhabitants of this region that now makes up parts of the nations of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran long exploited wild varieties of cereal grasses, especially wheat and barley.

8. Evidence of Human Control of Plant and Animal Species Archaeological sites in the Middle East where evidence of early food production has been found.

9. Evidence of Human Control of Plant and Animal Species The Fertile Crescent in the Near East provided rich habitats for late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gathers where the wild ancestors of some of the earliest domesticated crops grew.

10. The Near East • Late-Pleistocene Foragers in the Near East • The period from 14,500 to 11,000 years ago is marked by increasing precipitation in the Middle East. • The Geometric Kebaran, beginning at about 14,500 B.P. and lasting until 12,500 B.P., is located in the moist Mediterranean woodlands of the central Levant, southward into the margins of the Negev and Sinai Deserts, and across southern Jordan (Henry 1989). • Kebaran sites vary in size in complexity, indicting a pattern of population aggregation to take advantage of rich and seasonally available resources.

11. The Near East • Late-Pleistocene Foragers in the Near East • The contemporary late Pleistocene Mushabian culture is located to the south in the steppe and arid zones of what today are the cores of the Negev and Sinai Deserts. • The Mushabian sites seem to reflect the remains of small groups of highly mobile simple foragers with no particular focus on or commitment to any one food resource.

12. The Near East • The Origins of a Sedentary Life: The Natufian • Natufian sites are located in the Mediterranean woodland zone, part of the same area occupied by the Bevaran from which it almost certainly developed. • At about 13,000 years ago, we see a dramatic shift in subsistence from simple to complex foraging. • In complex foraging, subsistence is focused on a few rich resources. • At Mureybet and Abu Hureya, in Syria, wild einkorn wheat and vetch (a legume—a plant that produces pods with seeds) have been found in roasting pits dated to more than 11,000 years ago and as much as 13,000 years ago.

13. The Near East • The First Agriculturists • At Aswad in Syria and Çayönü in Turkey, domesticated wheats known as emmer and einkorn have been dated to more than 10,000 B.P. • The evolution of dependence on domesticated plants can be traced at the site of Ali Kosh in southwestern Iran. • In the Zagros Mountains, the site of Zwai Chemi Shanidar has produced a substantial faunal assemblage of sheep bones dated to 10,600 B.P. (Wright 1971).

14. The Near East • A Model of the Shift to a Food-Producing Way of Life in Southwest Asia • Archaeologist Donald O. Henry (1989) has proposed that when Natufians abandoned a mobile pattern of simple foraging and adopted a complex foraging strategy, they produced an inherently unstable subsistence system. • Having committed their subsistence energies to wild cereals whose abundance was declining, the Natufians responded by more actively encouraging those plants.

15. Mesoamerica • Mesoamerica • Mesoamerica includes most of the modern nations located south of the United States and north of South America. • The First Agriculturalists in the New World • In the Guilá Naquitz cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, squash seeds, rind fragments, and stems have been recovered and dated to the period between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago (B. Smith 1997). • Such increases result automatically when people plant and tend initially wild crops as they thin out later-germinating individual sprouts in a process called seedbed selection (B. Smith 1997).

16. Mesoamerica • The First Agriculturalists in the New World • Early steps in the transition of the small spikes of seeds on the wild teosinte plant, from which the domesticated crop we call maize was derived, have now been traced to more than 7,000 years ago in Mexico. • The Tehuacán Valley • The TehuacánValley project provided archaeologists with our most detailed picture of the process of maize domestication.

17. Mesoamerica • The Cultural sequence at Tehuacán • Ajuereado phase (12,000 to 9,000 years ago) • Sites were small and impermanent, leading MacNeish to suggest that small family groups—microbands of fewer than 10 people each—roamed the valley, primarily hunting antelope and jackrabbit. • El Riego phase (9,000 to 7,000 years ago) • Strong evidence for an increasing focus on wild plants at this time. • Coxcatlán phase (7000 to 5400 B.P.) • The reliance on wild plant foods continued among those living in the caves.

18. Mesoamerica • The Cultural sequence at Tehuacán • Abejas phase (5400-4300 B.P.) • An increasingly sedentary pattern of central-based bands was established. • Purrón phase(4300-3500 B.P.) • Pottery was used for the first time by inhabitants of the valley, but little else is known. • Ajalpán phase (3,500 to 2,850 years ago) • Diet was based on foraging for wild foods as well as on domesticated maize, beans, and squash.

19. Mesoamerica • The Shift to Domesticated Foods Among the People of Tehuacán • It appears that the inhabitants of the valley went through a long period of increasing sedentarism before adopting an agricultural way of life.

20. Mesoamerica Archeological sites in Mesoamerica where evidence of early food production has been found.

21. Africa • Africa • It cannot be said that there was a single agricultural revolution or even that there was a single point of origin for the African shift to a domesticated food base. • Neolithic Culture Complexes in Africa • Jack Harlan (1992) defines three distinct archaeological culture “complexes” of the African Neolithic: • Savanna • Forest Margin • Ethiopian

22. Africa • A Chronology of Food Production • A wet period, or pluvial, began about 8000 B.P., and lakes dotted areas that today are desert. • Faunal evidence indicates that pastoralists raising sheep, goats, and cattle proliferated throughout the Sahara during this wet period. • The indigenous African species Bos primigenius was almost certainly domesticated by Africans as much as 10,000 years ago.

23. Africa Archeological sites in Africa where evidence of early food production has been found.

24. East Asia • Chronology of Food Production in China • The Zengpiyan Cave site in Guilan dates to the period after 10,300 B.P. • In northern China, the earliest Neolithic culture currently recognized is the Peligang. • Later Neolithic culture of China is called Yangshao. • Food Production in Southeast and Northeast Asia • Spirit Cave in northeast Thailand shows a clear reliance by about 12,000 B.P. on foods that were an integral part of the agricultural economies of later Neolithic peoples.

25. East Asia Archeological sites in East Asia where evidence of early food production has been found.

26. Europe • Europe • For the most part, the Neolithic of Europe appears to have been imported from the south and east. • Domesticated cattle became an important element in the subsistence base. • The Shift to Agriculture in Southeast Europe • By about 7,500 years ago, the focus on wild plants seems to have evolved into at least a partial reliance on domesticated crops.

27. Europe • The Shift to Agriculture in Southern Europe • Researcher Joao Zilhao (2001) showed that the earliest agricultural sites in this region do not show a slow development of the domestication of local plants or animals. • The Shift to Agriculture in Western Europe • In the central European, early Neolithic culture called Linienbandkeramik (LBK), a subsistence base has been traced back to about 6500 B.P.

28. Europe Archeological sites in Europe where evidence of early food production has been found.

29. North America • North America • Most historical native cultures in North America that were agricultural were dependent on corn, beans, and squash. • Indigenous Domestication North of Mexico • The primary native crops domesticated by the Indians of the eastern woodlands were sunflower, marsh elder, goosefoot, and lamb’s-quarter (pigweed).

30. North America • The Appearance of Maize in the Eastern Woodlands • Maize begins to turn up in the archaeological record by about 1800 B.P. • The American Southwest • In northern Mexico, very close to the border with New Mexico, recovered maize dates to sometime soon after 3500 B.P.

31. North America Archeological sites in North America where evidence of early food production has been found.

32. South America • Three Regional Neolithics • Low altitude • Mid-altitude • High altitude • Animal Domestication in South America • Animal husbandry played a relatively minor role in the New World. • Cotton • Domesticated cotton has been recovered at Ayacucho Cave dating to just after 5000 B.P.

33. South America Archeological sites in South America where evidence of early food production has been found.

34. Issues and Debates • How Was Domestication Accomplished? • The Domestication of Wheat • The rachis of wild wheat—the area of attachment of the individual kernels of wheat—becomes quite brittle when the wheat ripens. • From Teosinte to Maize • Maize-like teosinte mutants are produced in wild populations. • Beans • People selected mutant beans with straight, limp, nonshattering pods for easier harvesting, and for more permeable varieties (Kaplan 1981).

35. Issues and Debates • The Remarkably Modern Cuisine of the Ancient World • Rice, wheat, potato, corn,beef, chicken, pork, and turkey form the basis for the diet of the world’s burgeoning population at the turn of the twenty-first century. And all were domesticated in antiquity. • Neolithic Nutrition • Prehistoric people in different parts of the world domesticated a range of plants that together provided the essential amino acids needed for them to survive and prosper.

36. Issues and Debates • Was Agriculture the “Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race”? • Older hunter-gatherer groups exhibited higher levels of health and nutrition than did the farmers. • The Roots of Social Complexity • Small nomadic groups likely were largely egalitarian beyond the usual distinctions based on age and sex. • Carrying capacity: the maximum population an area can sustain within the context of a given subsistence system.

37. Summary • Beginning about 10,000 years ago, villages began turning up in the archaeological record with a subsistence base that included a variety of early domesticates. • The Neolithic was not a period during which all people marched down the path to a purely agricultural mode of subsistence. • Domestication complemented foraging but did not replace it. • Only much later did agriculture and animal husbandry become the primary sources of food for most of the world’s people.