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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.
Natufian culture is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Neolithic prehistoric Levant in Western Asia, 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. 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 in Raqefet Cave on Mount Carmel, although the beer-related residues may simply be a result of a spontaneous fermentation.
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.
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.
Ofer Bar-Yosef was an Israeli archaeologist and anthropologist whose main field of study was the Palaeolithic period.
A proto-city is a large, dense Neolithic settlement that is largely distinguished from a city by its lack of planning and centralized rule. While the precise classification of many sites considered proto-cities is ambiguous and subject to considerable debate, common examples include Jericho, Çatalhöyük and the mega-sites of the Cucuteni-Trypillia culture. Sites of the Ubaid period in Mesopotamia have also been classed as proto-cities. These sites pre-date the Mesopotamian city-states of the Uruk period that mark the development of the first indisputable urban settlements, with the emergence of cities such as Uruk at the end of the Fourth Millennium, B.C.
The prehistory of the Levant includes the various cultural changes that occurred, as revealed by archaeological evidence, prior to recorded traditions in the area of the Levant. Archaeological evidence suggests that Homo sapiens and other hominid species originated in Africa and that one of the routes taken to colonize Eurasia was through the Sinai Peninsula desert and the Levant, which means that this is one of the most occupied locations in the history of the Earth. Not only have many cultures and traditions of humans lived here, but also many species of the genus Homo. In addition, this region is one of the centers for the development of agriculture.
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.
The Khiamian culture is a Neolithic archaeological culture of Southwest Asia, dating to the earliest part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), around 9,700 to 8,600 BC. It is primarily characterised by a distinctive type of stone arrowhead—the "El Khiam point"—first found at the type site of El Khiam.
El Kowm or Al Kawm is a circular, 20 km (12 mi) gap in the Syrian mountains that houses a series of archaeological sites. The El Kowm oasis is located northeast of Palmyra in Syria, near Al-Sukhnah. It shows some of the longest and most important cultural sequences in the Middle East, with periods of occupation by humans for over 1 million years.
Abu Madi is a cluster of prehistoric, Neolithic tell mounds in Southern Sinai, Egypt. It is located east of Saint Catherine's Monastery at the bottom of a granite ridge. It was suggested to have been a seasonal encampment for groups of hunter gatherers and contained the remains of two major settlements; Abu Madi I and Abu Madi III. Abi Madi I is a small site with the remains of a partially buried 4 metres (13 ft) building containing deposits up to a depth of 1.3 metres (4.3 ft). Abu Madi III was an area of roughly 20 square metres (220 sq ft) that was excavated close to a large nearby boulder. Dwellings were found to have stone built silos next to them. It was first excavated in the early 1980s by Ofer Bar-Yosef.
Avi Gopher is an Israeli archaeologist. He is a professor at the University of Tel Aviv.
Professor Jacques Cauvin was a French archaeologist who specialised in the prehistory of the Levant and Near East.
The Sands of Beirut were a series of archaeological sites located on the coastline south of Beirut in Lebanon.
Qdeir is a prehistoric, Neolithic Tell and plateau in the El Kowm oasis, a 20 km (12 mi) gap in the Syrian mountains that houses a series of archaeological sites. It is located northeast of Palmyra in Syria, near Al-Sukhnah.
Cafer Hoyuk or Cafer Höyük is an archaeological site located around 40 kilometres (25 mi) northeast of Malatya, Turkey in the Euphrates valley. It was inhabited over ten thousand years ago during the Neolithic Revolution.
Anna Belfer-Cohen is an Israeli archaeologist and paleoanthropologist and Professor Emeritus at the Institute of Archaeology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Belfer-Cohen excavated and studied many important prehistoric sites in Israel including Hayonim and Kebara Caves and open-air sites such as Nahal Ein Gev I and Nahal Neqarot. She has also worked for many years in the Republic of Georgia, where she made important contributions to the study of the Paleolithic sequence of the Caucasus following her work at the cave sites of Dzoudzuana, Kotias and Satsrublia. She is a specialist in biological Anthropology, prehistoric art, lithic technology, the Upper Paleolithic and modern humans, the Natufian-Neolithic interface and the transition to village life.
The Neolithic demographic transition was a period of rapid population growth following the adoption of agriculture by prehistoric societies. It was a demographic transition caused by an abrupt increase in birth rates due to the increased food supply and decreased mobility of farmers compared to foragers. Eventually the mortality rate in farming societies also increased to the point where the population stabilised again, possibly because settling down in one place, in close proximity to animals, encouraged the spread of zoonotic and waterborne diseases. The transition is estimated to have taken about a thousand years on average, although the onset and duration of the transition varied widely in the different parts of the world.
Netiv HaGdud is a Neolithic archaeological site in the West Bank. It was discovered in the 1970s during the construction of an Israeli settlement and excavated by Ofer Bar-Yosef in the 1980s.
References
- ↑ "About our staff: Professor Trevor Watkins". School of History, Classics & Archaeology. University of Edinburgh . Retrieved 26 May 2021.
- ↑ Watkins, Trevor (September 2010). "New light on Neolithic revolution in south-west Asia". Antiquity. 84 (325): 621–634. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00100122. ISSN 0003-598X.
- ↑ Cauvin, Jacques; Hodder, Ian; Rollefson, Gary O.; Bar-Yosef, Ofer; Watkins, Trevor (April 2001). "The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture by Jacques Cauvin, translated by Trevor Watkins (New Studies in Archaeology.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000; ISBN 0-521-65135-2 hardback £37.50 & $59.95 Reviewed by Ian Hodder, Gary O. Rollefson, Ofer Bar-Yosef with a response by Trevor Watkins" (PDF). Cambridge Archaeological Journal. 11 (1): 105–121. doi:10.1017/S0959774301000063. ISSN 1474-0540.
- ↑ Joffe, Alexander H. (1 July 2003). "Jacques Cauvin and Trevor Watkins, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture" . Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 62 (3): 207–209. doi:10.1086/380323. ISSN 0022-2968.
