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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.
The Mesolithic or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymously, especially for outside northern Europe, and for the corresponding period in the Levant and Caucasus. The Mesolithic has different time spans in different parts of Eurasia. It refers to the final period of hunter-gatherer cultures in Europe and Western Asia, between the end of the Last Glacial Maximum and the Neolithic Revolution. In Europe it spans roughly 15,000 to 5,000 BP; in Southwest Asia roughly 20,000 to 10,000 BP. The term is less used of areas farther east, and not at all beyond Eurasia and North Africa.
The Natufian culture is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Levant, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. The Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture, at Tell Abu Hureyra, the site of earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. The world's oldest known evidence of the production of bread-like foodstuff has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,400-year-old site in Jordan's northeastern desert, 4,000 years before the emergence of agriculture in Southwest Asia In addition, the oldest known evidence of possible beer-brewing, dating to approximately 13,000 BP, was found at the Raqefet Cave in Mount Carmel near Haifa in Israel, although it may simply be a result of an organic and unintentional fermentation.
Tell Abu Hureyra is a prehistoric archaeological site in the Upper Euphrates valley in Syria. The tell was inhabited between 13,000 and 9,000 years ago in two main phases: Abu Hureyra 1, dated to the Epipalaeolithic, was a village of sedentary hunter-gatherers; Abu Hureyra 2, dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, was home to some of the world's first farmers. This almost continuous sequence of occupation through the Neolithic Revolution has made Abu Hureyra one of the most important sites in the study of the origins of agriculture.
Göbekli Tepe is a Neolithic archaeological site in the Southeastern Anatolia Region of Turkey. Dated to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, between c. 9500 and 8000 BCE, the site comprises a number of large circular structures supported by massive stone pillars – the world's oldest known megaliths. Many of these pillars are richly decorated with figurative anthropomorphic details, clothing, and reliefs of wild animals, providing archaeologists rare insights into prehistoric religion and the particular iconography of the period. The 15 m (50 ft)-high, 8 ha (20-acre) tell also includes many smaller buildings, quarries, and stone-cut cisterns from the Neolithic, as well as some traces of activity from later periods.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 10,800 years ago, that is, 10,000–8800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and Upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent.
Monte Verde is an archaeological site in the Llanquihue Province in southern Chile, located near Puerto Montt, Southern Chile, which has been dated to as early as 18,500 cal BP. Previously, the widely accepted date for early occupation at Monte Verde was about 14,500 years cal BP. This dating added to the evidence showing that the human settlement of the Americas pre-dates the Clovis culture by roughly 1,000 years. This contradicts the previously accepted "Clovis first" model which holds that settlement of the Americas began after 13,500 cal BP. The Monte Verde findings were initially dismissed by most of the scientific community, but the evidence then became more accepted in archaeological circles.
The founder crops are the eight plant species that were domesticated by early Neolithic farming communities in Southwest Asia and went on to form the basis of agricultural economies across much of Eurasia, including Southwest Asia, South Asia, Europe, and North Africa. They consist of three cereals, four pulses, and flax. These species were amongst the first domesticated plants in the world.
The Kebaran culture, also known as the Early Near East Epipalaeolithic, was an archaeological culture in the Eastern Mediterranean area, named after its type site, Kebara Cave south of Haifa. The Kebaran were a highly mobile nomadic population, composed of hunters and gatherers in the Levant and Sinai areas who used microlithic tools.
Ohalo II is an archaeological site in Northern Israel, near Kinneret, on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is one of the best preserved hunter-gatherer archaeological sites of the Last Glacial Maximum, radiocarbon dated to around 23,000 BP (calibrated). It is at the junction of the Upper Paleolithic and the Epipaleolithic, and has been attributed to both periods. The site is significant for two findings which are the world's oldest: the earliest brushwood dwellings and evidence for the earliest small-scale plant cultivation, some 11,000 years before the onset of agriculture. The numerous fruit and cereal grain remains preserved in anaerobic conditions under silt and water are also exceedingly rare due to their general quick decomposition.
Neve David is an Epipalaeolithic archaeological site located at the foot of the western slope of the Mount Carmel hills in northern Israel. It was inhabited in the later part of the Middle Epipalaeolithic, about 15,000–13,000 BC.
The Ḥarrat al-Shām, also known as the Black Desert, is a region of rocky, basaltic desert straddling southern Syria and the northern Arabian Peninsula. It covers an area of some 40,000 km2 (15,000 sq mi) in the modern-day Syrian Arab Republic, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Vegetation is characteristically open acacia shrubland with patches of juniper at higher altitudes
Gordon Hillman was a British archaeobotanist and academic at the UCL Institute of Archaeology. He has been described as "a pivotal figure in the development of archaeobotany at the Institute of Archaeology at University College London, [who] through his research, publications and teaching had a major influence on the field worldwide."
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 8,500 years ago,. It succeeds the Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic Near East, as the domestication of plants and animals was in its formative stages, having possibly been induced by the Younger Dryas.
Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first 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. 5000 years ago. It took thousands of years for writing systems to be widely adopted, with writing spreading to almost all cultures by the 19th century. The end of prehistory therefore came at very different times in different places, and the term is less often used in discussing societies where prehistory ended relatively recently.
Adrian Nigel Goring-Morris is a British-born archaeologist and a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel. He completed his PhD there in 1986 and is notable for his work and discoveries at one of the oldest ritual burial sites in the world; Kfar HaHoresh. The earliest levels of this site have been dated to 8000 BC and it is located in the northern Israel, not far from Nazareth.
Wadi Jilat is a seasonal stream (wadi) in the Badia of eastern Jordan. Part of its course runs through a steeply-incised ravine that retains water for much of the year, an unusual feature in the desert region.
The Paleolithic dog was a Late Pleistocene canine. They were directly associated with human hunting camps in Europe over 30,000 years ago and it is proposed that these were domesticated. They are further proposed to be either a proto-dog and the ancestor of the domestic dog or an extinct, morphologically and genetically divergent wolf population.
ʿAyn Qasiyya is an Early Epipalaeolithic archaeological site in the Azraq Oasis, Jordan; the remains of a lakeside camp used by hunter-gatherers around 20,000 years ago. Located near the aquifer-fed spring, at the time the site was occupied it was surrounded by a substantial wetland, attracting a wide range of animals which were hunted by the inhabitants. The stone tools found at the site are associated with both the Kebaran and Nebekian cultures, suggesting that it was visited by people from different cultural groups. Human burials have also been found at the site, which is rare for this period.
Azraq 18 is an Epipalaeolithic archaeological site in the Azraq oasis, eastern Jordan. First recorded in a survey by Andrew Garrard and Nicholas Stanley-Price in 1975, and excavated by Garrard in 1985, it is one of many sites of prehistoric occupation around the perennial springs that feed the oasis. Of these, Azraq 18 is the only one associated with the Late Epipalaeolithic Natufian culture, which is dated to between around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Maher, Lisa A.; Richter, Tobias; Macdonald, Danielle; Jones, Matthew D.; Martin, Louise; Stock, Jay T. (2012-02-15). "Twenty Thousand-Year-Old Huts at a Hunter-Gatherer Settlement in Eastern Jordan". PLOS ONE. 7 (2): e31447. Bibcode:2012PLoSO...731447M. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031447 . PMC 3280235 . PMID 22355366.
- ↑ Zeuner, F. E. (2013-07-19). "Stone Age Exploration in Jordan, I". Palestine Exploration Quarterly. 89: 17–54. doi:10.1179/peq.1957.89.1.17.
- ↑ Garrard, Andrew; Byrd, Brian (2013). Beyond the Fertile Crescent: Late Palaeolithic and Neolithic Communities of the Jordanian Steppe. Oxford: Oxbow Books. ISBN 978-1-78297-006-4.
- ↑ "Kharaneh IV Project". Archaeological Research Facility. University of California, Berkeley . Retrieved 2020-08-18.
- ↑ Macdonald, Danielle; Maher, Lisa (November 2018). "Kharaneh IV". Archaeology in Jordan: 2016–2017. ACOR: 9–10.
- ↑ Jones, Matthew D.; Maher, Lisa A.; Macdonald, Danielle A.; Ryan, Conor; Rambeau, Claire; Black, Stuart; Richter, Tobias (2016-03-07). "The environmental setting of Epipalaeolithic aggregation site Kharaneh IV". Quaternary International. 396: 95–104. Bibcode:2016QuInt.396...95J. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.08.092. S2CID 78087468.
- ↑ Lisa A. Maher; Danielle A. Macdonald; Emma Pomeroy; Jay T. Stock (2020). "Life, death, and the destruction of architecture: Hunter-gatherer mortuary behaviors in prehistoric Jordan". Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 61: 101262. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2020.101262. ISSN 0278-4165. S2CID 230578271.
Coordinates: 31°43′25.5″N36°27′16″E / 31.723750°N 36.45444°E