The Epipalaeolithic Near East designates the Epipalaeolithic in the prehistory of the Near East. It is the period after the Upper Palaeolithic and before the Neolithic, between approximately 20,000 and 10,000 years Before Present (BP). The people of the Epipalaeolithic were nomadic hunter-gatherers who generally lived in small, seasonal camps rather than permanent villages. They made sophisticated stone tools using microliths—small, finely-produced blades that were hafted in wooden implements. These are the primary artifacts by which archaeologists recognise and classify Epipalaeolithic sites.
Mehrgarh is a Neolithic archaeological site situated on the Kacchi Plain of Balochistan in modern-day Pakistan. It is located near the Bolan Pass, to the west of the Indus River and between the modern-day Pakistani cities of Quetta, Kalat and Sibi. The site was discovered in 1974 by the French Archaeological Mission led by the French archaeologists Jean-François Jarrige and Catherine Jarrige. Mehrgarh was excavated continuously between 1974 and 1986, and again from 1997 to 2000. Archaeological material has been found in six mounds, and about 32,000 artifacts have been collected from the site. The earliest settlement at Mehrgarh, located in the northeast corner of the 495-acre (2.00 km2) site, was a small farming village dated between 7000 BCE and 5500 BCE.
The Neolithic or New Stone Age is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Europe, Asia, Mesopotamia and Africa. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming, domestication of animals, and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement. The term 'Neolithic' was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system.
The 4th millennium BC spanned the years 4000 BC to 3001 BC. Some of the major changes in human culture during this time included the beginning of the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, which played a major role in starting recorded history.
How and when horses became domesticated has been disputed. Although horses appeared in Paleolithic cave art as early as 30,000 BC, these were wild horses and were probably hunted for meat. The clearest evidence of early use of the horse as a means of transport is from chariot burials dated c. 2000 BC. However, an increasing amount of evidence began to support the hypothesis that horses were domesticated in the Eurasian Steppes in approximately 3500 BC. Discoveries in the context of the Botai culture had suggested that Botai settlements in the Akmola Province of Kazakhstan are the location of the earliest domestication of the horse. Warmuth et al. (2012) pointed to horses having been domesticated around 3000 BC in what is now Ukraine and Western Kazakhstan.
Najd is the central region of Saudi Arabia, in which about a third of the country's modern population resides. It is the home of the House of Saud, from which it pursued unification with Hejaz since the time of the Emirate of Diriyah.
In the history of art, prehistoric art is all art produced in preliterate, prehistorical cultures beginning somewhere in very late geological history, and generally continuing until that culture either develops writing or other methods of record-keeping, or makes significant contact with another culture that has, and that makes some record of major historical events. At this point ancient art begins, for the older literate cultures. The end-date for what is covered by the term thus varies greatly between different parts of the world.
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it is one of the countries situated in the Gulf region. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about 2,150,000 km2 (830,000 sq mi), making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the largest in the Middle East, and the 12th-largest in the world. It is bordered by the Red Sea to the west; Jordan, Iraq, and Kuwait to the north; the Persian Gulf, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to the east; Oman to the southeast; and Yemen to the south. The Gulf of Aqaba in the northwest separates Saudi Arabia from Egypt and Israel. Saudi Arabia is the only country with a coastline along both the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, and most of its terrain consists of arid desert, lowland, steppe, and mountains. The capital and largest city is Riyadh; other major cities include Jeddah and the two holiest cities in Islam, Mecca and Medina. With a population of almost 32.2 million, Saudi Arabia is the fourth most populous country in the Arab world.
Ḥaʼil Province, also known as the Ha'il Region, is one of the 13 provinces of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is the eighth-largest province by area at 103,887 km2 (40,111 sq mi) and the ninth-largest by population, with the population in 2019 being 731,147. The province accounts for roughly 2% of the population of the country and is named for its largest city, Ha'il. Other populous cities in the province include al-Ghazalah, Shinan and Baq'aa. The region is famous for the twin mountain ranges of 'Aja and Salma, and for being the homeland of historic symbol of curiosity and generosity, Hatim al-Ta`i.
The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.
The domestication of vertebrates is the mutual relationship between vertebrate animals including birds and mammals, and the humans who have influence on their care and reproduction.
Nomadic pastoralism also known as Nomadic herding, is a form of pastoralism in which livestock are herded in order to seek for fresh pastures on which to graze. True nomads follow an irregular pattern of movement, in contrast with transhumance, where seasonal pastures are fixed. However, this distinction is often not observed and the term 'nomad' used for both—and in historical cases the regularity of movements is often unknown in any case. The herded livestock include cattle, water buffalo, yaks, llamas, sheep, goats, reindeer, horses, donkeys or camels, or mixtures of species. Nomadic pastoralism is commonly practised in regions with little arable land, typically in the developing world, especially in the steppe lands north of the agricultural zone of Eurasia. Pastoralists often trade with sedentary agrarians, exchanging meat for grains; however, they have been known to raid.
The domestication of the dog was the process which led to the domestic dog. This included the dog's genetic divergence from the wolf, its domestication, and the emergence of the first dogs. Genetic studies suggest that all ancient and modern dogs share a common ancestry and descended from an ancient, now-extinct wolf population – or closely related wolf populations – which was distinct from the modern wolf lineage. The dog's similarity to the grey wolf is the result of substantial dog-into-wolf gene flow, with the modern grey wolf being the dog's nearest living relative. An extinct Late Pleistocene wolf may have been the ancestor of the dog.
The Houli culture was a Neolithic culture in Shandong, China. The people of the culture lived in square, semi-subterranean houses. The most commonly found artefacts at Houli sites are pottery and stone tools. Jade artefacts and bone, antler, shell tools were also found at Houli sites. While the remains of domesticated dogs and pigs in the early stages of domestication were found at some sites associated with the culture, the people of the Houli culture relied mostly on hunting and fishing. The remains of rice, broomcorn millet, and foxtail millet were discovered at Houli sites.
Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of symbols, marks, and images appears very early among humans, but the earliest known writing systems appeared c. 5,200 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing having spread to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Bir Hima is a rock art site in Najran province, in southwest Saudi Arabia, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) north of the city of Najran. An ancient Palaeolithic and Neolithic site, the Bir Hima Complex covers the time period of 7000–1000 BC. Bir Hima contains numerous troughs whose type is similar from North Arabia to Yemen.
Rock Art in the Ha'il Region is the fourth site in Saudi Arabia to be inscribed on the UNESCO List of World Heritage Sites. The rock art includes two components situated in the desert of the Ha'il Region: the first is Om Sinman mountain at the city of Jubbah, and the second is al-Manjor and Raat at Al-Shuwaymis. An ancient population left traces of their passings in petroglyphs on the rock's surface, holding 8,000 years of history.
Pastoral rock art is the most common form of Central Saharan rock art, created in painted and engraved styles depicting pastoralists and bow-wielding hunters in scenes of animal husbandry, along with various animals, spanning from 6300 BCE to 700 BCE. The Pastoral Period is preceded by the Round Head Period and followed by the Caballine Period. The Early Pastoral Period spanned from 6300 BCE to 5400 BCE. Domesticated cattle were brought to the Central Sahara, and given the opportunity for becoming socially distinguished, to develop food surplus, as well as to acquire and aggregate wealth, led to the adoption of a cattle pastoral economy by some Central Saharan hunter-gatherers of the Late Acacus. In exchange, cultural information regarding utilization of vegetation in the Central Sahara was shared by Late Acacus hunter-gatherers with incoming Early Pastoral peoples.
An Son is a mounded archaeological site located in the An Ninh Tay commune of the Đức Hòa district along the Vam Co Dong River in Long An province, Southern Vietnam. The site was originally discovered in 1938 by Louis Malleret and Paul Levy. Multiple excavations over a period of six decades have revealed that An Son was continuously occupied during the Neolithic period between approximately 2300-1200 B.C. During the excavations, archaeologists found many artifacts indicative of a Neolithic lifestyle similar to other Neolithic sites in Southern Vietnam and Thailand. Excavations have found pottery as well as ceramic productions. Furthermore, the burials found from excavations at An Son have gathered evidence of ritual ceremonies, an indication of the belief system of this area.
In Saudi Arabia, the horse is an integral part of both culture and sport. The country has become a major force in competitive riding, particularly show jumping, thanks to riders like Abdullah Al-Sharbatly, who have won several Olympic medals since the beginning of the 21st century.
