revolutionary suddenness. It is seen by the relative speed with which
the traces of new crafts appear in the earliest village-farming
community sites we’ve dug. It is seen by the spread and multiplication
of these sites themselves, and the remarkable growth in human
population we deduce from this increase in sites. We’ll look at some
of these sites and the archeological traces they yield in the next
chapter. When such village sites begin to appear, I believe we are in
the _era of the primary village-farming community_. I also believe this
is the second era of the food-producing stage.
The first era of the food-producing stage, I believe, was an _era of
incipient cultivation and animal domestication_. I keep saying “I
believe” because the actual evidence for this earlier era is so slight
that one has to set it up mainly by playing a hunch for it. The reason
for playing the hunch goes about as follows.
One thing we seem to be able to see, in the food-collecting era in
general, is a tendency for people to begin to settle down. This
settling down seemed to become further intensified in the terminal
era. How this is connected with Professor Mathiassen’s “receptiveness”
and the tendency to be experimental, we do not exactly know. The
evidence from the New World comes into play here as well as that from
the Old World. With this settling down in one place, the people of the
terminal era--especially the “Forest folk” whom we know best--began
making a great variety of new things. I remarked about this earlier in
the chapter. Dr. Robert M. Adams is of the opinion that this atmosphere
of experimentation with new tools--with new ways of collecting food--is
the kind of atmosphere in which one might expect trials at planting
and at animal domestication to have been made. We first begin to find
traces of more permanent life in outdoor camp sites, although caves
were still inhabited at the beginning of the terminal era. It is not
surprising at all that the “Forest folk” had already domesticated the
dog. In this sense, the whole era of food-collecting was becoming ready
and almost “incipient” for cultivation and animal domestication.
Northwestern Europe was not the place for really effective beginnings
in agriculture and animal domestication. These would have had to take
place in one of those natural environments of promise, where a variety
of plants and animals, each possible of domestication, was available in
the wild state. Let me spell this out. Really effective food-production
must include a variety of items to make up a reasonably well-rounded
diet. The food-supply so produced must be trustworthy, even though
the food-producing peoples themselves might be happy to supplement
it with fish and wild strawberries, just as we do when such things
are available. So, as we said earlier, part of our problem is that
of finding a region with a natural environment which includes--and
did include, some ten thousand years ago--a variety of possibly
domesticable wild plants and animals.
NUCLEAR AREAS
Now comes the last of my definitions. A region with a natural
environment which included a variety of wild plants and animals,
both possible and ready for domestication, would be a central
or core or _nuclear area_, that is, it would be when and _if_
food-production took place within it. It is pretty hard for me to
imagine food-production having ever made an independent start outside
such a nuclear area, although there may be some possible nuclear areas
in which food-production never took place (possibly in parts of Africa,
for example).
We know of several such nuclear areas. In the New World, Middle America
and the Andean highlands make up one or two; it is my understanding
that the evidence is not yet clear as to which. There seems to have
been a nuclear area somewhere in southeastern Asia, in the Malay
peninsula or Burma perhaps, connected with the early cultivation of
taro, breadfruit, the banana and the mango. Possibly the cultivation
of rice and the domestication of the chicken and of zebu cattle and
the water buffalo belong to this southeast Asiatic nuclear area. We
know relatively little about it archeologically, as yet. The nuclear
area which was the scene of the earliest experiment in effective
food-production was in western Asia. Since I know it best, I shall use
it as my example.
THE NUCLEAR NEAR EAST
The nuclear area of western Asia is naturally the one of greatest
interest to people of the western cultural tradition. Our cultural
heritage began within it. The area itself is the region of the hilly
flanks of rain-watered grass-land which build up to the high mountain
ridges of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Palestine. The map on page
125 indicates the region. If you have a good atlas, try to locate the
zone which surrounds the drainage basin of the Tigris and Euphrates
Rivers at elevations of from approximately 2,000 to 5,000 feet. The
lower alluvial land of the Tigris-Euphrates basin itself has very
little rainfall. Some years ago Professor James Henry Breasted called
the alluvial lands of the Tigris-Euphrates a part of the “fertile
crescent.” These alluvial lands are very fertile if irrigated. Breasted
was most interested in the oriental civilizations of conventional
ancient history, and irrigation had been discovered before they
appeared.
The country of hilly flanks above Breasted’s crescent receives from
10 to 20 or more inches of winter rainfall each year, which is about
what Kansas has. Above the hilly-flanks zone tower the peaks and ridges
of the Lebanon-Amanus chain bordering the coast-line from Palestine
to Turkey, the Taurus Mountains of southern Turkey, and the Zagros
range of the Iraq-Iran borderland. This rugged mountain frame for our
hilly-flanks zone rises to some magnificent alpine scenery, with peaks
of from ten to fifteen thousand feet in elevation. There are several
gaps in the Mediterranean coastal portion of the frame, through which
the winter’s rain-bearing winds from the sea may break so as to carry
rain to the foothills of the Taurus and the Zagros.
The picture I hope you will have from this description is that of an
intermediate hilly-flanks zone lying between two regions of extremes.
The lower Tigris-Euphrates basin land is low and far too dry and hot
for agriculture based on rainfall alone; to the south and southwest, it
merges directly into the great desert of Arabia. The mountains which
lie above the hilly-flanks zone are much too high and rugged to have
encouraged farmers.
THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT OF THE NUCLEAR NEAR EAST
The more we learn of this hilly-flanks zone that I describe, the
more it seems surely to have been a nuclear area. This is where we
archeologists need, and are beginning to get, the help of natural
scientists. They are coming to the conclusion that the natural
environment of the hilly-flanks zone today is much as it was some eight
to ten thousand years ago. There are still two kinds of wild wheat and
a wild barley, and the wild sheep, goat, and pig. We have discovered
traces of each of these at about nine thousand years ago, also traces
of wild ox, horse, and dog, each of which appears to be the probable
ancestor of the domesticated form. In fact, at about nine thousand
years ago, the two wheats, the barley, and at least the goat, were
already well on the road to domestication.
The wild wheats give us an interesting clue. They are only available
together with the wild barley within the hilly-flanks zone. While the
wild barley grows in a variety of elevations and beyond the zone,
at least one of the wild wheats does not seem to grow below the hill
country. As things look at the moment, the domestication of both the
wheats together could _only_ have taken place within the hilly-flanks
zone. Barley seems to have first come into cultivation due to its
presence as a weed in already cultivated wheat fields. There is also
a suggestion--there is still much more to learn in the matter--that
the animals which were first domesticated were most at home up in the
hilly-flanks zone in their wild state.
With a single exception--that of the dog--the earliest positive
evidence of domestication includes the two forms of wheat, the barley,
and the goat. The evidence comes from within the hilly-flanks zone.
However, it comes from a settled village proper, Jarmo (which I’ll
describe in the next chapter), and is thus from the era of the primary
village-farming community. We are still without positive evidence of
domesticated grain and animals in the first era of the food-producing
stage, that of incipient cultivation and animal domestication.
THE ERA OF INCIPIENT CULTIVATION AND ANIMAL DOMESTICATION
I said above (p. 105) that my era of incipient cultivation and animal
domestication is mainly set up by playing a hunch. Although we cannot
really demonstrate it--and certainly not in the Near East--it would
be very strange for food-collectors not to have known a great deal
about the plants and animals most useful to them. They do seem to have
domesticated the dog. We can easily imagine them remembering to go
back, season after season, to a particular patch of ground where seeds
or acorns or berries grew particularly well. Most human beings, unless
they are extremely hungry, are attracted to baby animals, and many wild
pups or fawns or piglets must have been brought back alive by hunting
parties.
In this last sense, man has probably always been an incipient
cultivator and domesticator. But I believe that Adams is right in
suggesting that this would be doubly true with the experimenters of
the terminal era of food-collecting. We noticed that they also seem
to have had a tendency to settle down. Now my hunch goes that _when_
this experimentation and settling down took place within a potential
nuclear area--where a whole constellation of plants and animals
possible of domestication was available--the change was easily made.
Professor Charles A. Reed, our field colleague in zoology, agrees that
year-round settlement with plant domestication probably came before
there were important animal domestications.
INCIPIENT ERAS AND NUCLEAR AREAS
I have put this scheme into a simple chart (p. 111) with the names
of a few of the sites we are going to talk about. You will see that my
hunch means that there are eras of incipient cultivation _only_ within
nuclear areas. In a nuclear area, the terminal era of food-collecting
would probably have been quite short. I do not know for how long a time
the era of incipient cultivation and domestication would have lasted,
but perhaps for several thousand years. Then it passed on into the era
of the primary village-farming community.
Outside a nuclear area, the terminal era of food-collecting would last
for a long time; in a few out-of-the-way parts of the world, it still
hangs on. It would end in any particular place through contact with
and the spread of ideas of people who had passed on into one of the
more developed eras. In many cases, the terminal era of food-collecting
was ended by the incoming of the food-producing peoples themselves.
For example, the practices of food-production were carried into Europe
by the actual movement of some numbers of peoples (we don’t know how
many) who had reached at least the level of the primary village-farming
community. The “Forest folk” learned food-production from them. There
was never an era of incipient cultivation and domestication proper in
Europe, if my hunch is right.
ARCHEOLOGICAL DIFFICULTIES IN SEEING THE INCIPIENT ERA
The way I see it, two things were required in order that an era of
incipient cultivation and domestication could begin. First, there had
to be the natural environment of a nuclear area, with its whole group
of plants and animals capable of domestication. This is the aspect of
the matter which we’ve said is directly given by nature. But it is
quite possible that such an environment with such a group of plants
and animals in it may have existed well before ten thousand years ago
in the Near East. It is also quite possible that the same promising
condition may have existed in regions which never developed into
nuclear areas proper. Here, again, we come back to the cultural factor.
I think it was that “atmosphere of experimentation” we’ve talked about
once or twice before. I can’t define it for you, other than to say that
by the end of the Ice Age, the general level of many cultures was ready
for change. Ask me how and why this was so, and I’ll tell you we don’t
know yet, and that if we did understand this kind of question, there
would be no need for me to go on being a prehistorian!
[Illustration: POSSIBLE RELATIONSHIPS OF STAGES AND ERAS IN WESTERN
ASIA AND NORTHEASTERN AFRICA]
Now since this was an era of incipience, of the birth of new ideas,
and of experimentation, it is very difficult to see its traces
archeologically. New tools having to do with the new ways of getting
and, in fact, producing food would have taken some time to develop.
It need not surprise us too much if we cannot find hoes for planting
and sickles for reaping grain at the very beginning. We might expect
a time of making-do with some of the older tools, or with make-shift
tools, for some of the new jobs. The present-day wild cousin of the
domesticated sheep still lives in the mountains of western Asia. It has
no wool, only a fine down under hair like that of a deer, so it need
not surprise us to find neither the whorls used for spinning nor traces
of woolen cloth. It must have taken some time for a wool-bearing sheep
to develop and also time for the invention of the new tools which go
with weaving. It would have been the same with other kinds of tools for
the new way of life.
It is difficult even for an experienced comparative zoologist to tell
which are the bones of domesticated animals and which are those of
their wild cousins. This is especially so because the animal bones the
archeologists find are usually fragmentary. Furthermore, we do not have
a sort of library collection of the skeletons of the animals or an
herbarium of the plants of those times, against which the traces which
the archeologists find may be checked. We are only beginning to get
such collections for the modern wild forms of animals and plants from
some of our nuclear areas. In the nuclear area in the Near East, some
of the wild animals, at least, have already become extinct. There are
no longer wild cattle or wild horses in western Asia. We know they were
there from the finds we’ve made in caves of late Ice Age times, and
from some slightly later sites.
SITES WITH ANTIQUITIES OF THE INCIPIENT ERA
So far, we know only a very few sites which would suit my notion of the
incipient era of cultivation and animal domestication. I am closing
this chapter with descriptions of two of the best Near Eastern examples
I know of. You may not be satisfied that what I am able to describe
makes a full-bodied era of development at all. Remember, however, that
I’ve told you I’m largely playing a kind of a hunch, and also that the
archeological materials of this era will always be extremely difficult
to interpret. At the beginning of any new way of life, there will be a
great tendency for people to make-do, at first, with tools and habits
they are already used to. I would suspect that a great deal of this
making-do went on almost to the end of this era.
THE NATUFIAN, AN ASSEMBLAGE OF THE INCIPIENT ERA
The assemblage called the Natufian comes from the upper layers of a
number of caves in Palestine. Traces of its flint industry have also
turned up in Syria and Lebanon. We don’t know just how old it is. I
guess that it probably falls within five hundred years either way of
about 5000 B.C.
Until recently, the people who produced the Natufian assemblage were
thought to have been only cave dwellers, but now at least three open
air Natufian sites have been briefly described. In their best-known
dwelling place, on Mount Carmel, the Natufian folk lived in the open
mouth of a large rock-shelter and on the terrace in front of it. On the
terrace, they had set at least two short curving lines of stones; but
these were hardly architecture; they seem more like benches or perhaps
the low walls of open pens. There were also one or two small clusters
of stones laid like paving, and a ring of stones around a hearth or
fireplace. One very round and regular basin-shaped depression had been
cut into the rocky floor of the terrace, and there were other less
regular basin-like depressions. In the newly reported open air sites,
there seem to have been huts with rounded corners.
Most of the finds in the Natufian layer of the Mount Carmel cave were
flints. About 80 per cent of these flint tools were microliths made
by the regular working of tiny blades into various tools, some having
geometric forms. The larger flint tools included backed blades, burins,
scrapers, a few arrow points, some larger hacking or picking tools, and
one special type. This last was the sickle blade.
We know a sickle blade of flint when we see one, because of a strange
polish or sheen which seems to develop on the cutting edge when the
blade has been used to cut grasses or grain, or--perhaps--reeds. In
the Natufian, we have even found the straight bone handles in which a
number of flint sickle blades were set in a line.
There was a small industry in ground or pecked stone (that is, abraded
not chipped) in the Natufian. This included some pestle and mortar
fragments. The mortars are said to have a deep and narrow hole,
and some of the pestles show traces of red ochre. We are not sure
that these mortars and pestles were also used for grinding food. In
addition, there were one or two bits of carving in stone.
NATUFIAN ANTIQUITIES IN OTHER MATERIALS; BURIALS AND PEOPLE
The Natufian industry in bone was quite rich. It included, beside the
sickle hafts mentioned above, points and harpoons, straight and curved
types of fish-hooks, awls, pins and needles, and a variety of beads and
pendants. There were also beads and pendants of pierced teeth and shell.
A number of Natufian burials have been found in the caves; some burials
were grouped together in one grave. The people who were buried within
the Mount Carmel cave were laid on their backs in an extended position,
while those on the terrace seem to have been “flexed” (placed in their
graves in a curled-up position). This may mean no more than that it was
easier to dig a long hole in cave dirt than in the hard-packed dirt of
the terrace. The people often had some kind of object buried with them,
and several of the best collections of beads come from the burials. On
two of the skulls there were traces of elaborate head-dresses of shell
beads.
[Illustration: SKETCH OF NATUFIAN ASSEMBLAGE
MICROLITHS
ARCHITECTURE?
BURIAL
CHIPPED STONE
GROUND STONE
BONE]
The animal bones of the Natufian layers show beasts of a “modern” type,
but with some differences from those of present-day Palestine. The
bones of the gazelle far outnumber those of the deer; since gazelles
like a much drier climate than deer, Palestine must then have had much
the same climate that it has today. Some of the animal bones were those
of large or dangerous beasts: the hyena, the bear, the wild boar,
and the leopard. But the Natufian people may have had the help of a
large domesticated dog. If our guess at a date for the Natufian is
right (about 7750 B.C.), this is an earlier dog than was that in the
Maglemosian of northern Europe. More recently, it has been reported
that a domesticated goat is also part of the Natufian finds.
The study of the human bones from the Natufian burials is not yet
complete. Until Professor McCown’s study becomes available, we may note
Professor Coon’s assessment that these people were of a “basically
Mediterranean type.”
THE KARIM SHAHIR ASSEMBLAGE
Karim Shahir differs from the Natufian sites in that it shows traces
of a temporary open site or encampment. It lies on the top of a bluff
in the Kurdish hill-country of northeastern Iraq. It was dug by Dr.
Bruce Howe of the expedition I directed in 1950-51 for the Oriental
Institute and the American Schools of Oriental Research. In 1954-55,
our expedition located another site, M’lefaat, with general resemblance
to Karim Shahir, but about a hundred miles north of it. In 1956, Dr.
Ralph Solecki located still another Karim Shahir type of site called
Zawi Chemi Shanidar. The Zawi Chemi site has a radiocarbon date of 8900
± 300 B.C.
Karim Shahir has evidence of only one very shallow level of occupation.
It was probably not lived on very long, although the people who lived
on it spread out over about three acres of area. In spots, the single
layer yielded great numbers of fist-sized cracked pieces of limestone,
which had been carried up from the bed of a stream at the bottom of the
bluff. We think these cracked stones had something to do with a kind of
architecture, but we were unable to find positive traces of hut plans.
At M’lefaat and Zawi Chemi, there were traces of rounded hut plans.
As in the Natufian, the great bulk of small objects of the Karim Shahir
assemblage was in chipped flint. A large proportion of the flint tools
were microlithic bladelets and geometric forms. The flint sickle blade
was almost non-existent, being far scarcer than in the Natufian. The
people of Karim Shahir did a modest amount of work in the grinding of
stone; there were milling stone fragments of both the mortar and the
quern type, and stone hoes or axes with polished bits. Beads, pendants,
rings, and bracelets were made of finer quality stone. We found a few
simple points and needles of bone, and even two rather formless unbaked
clay figurines which seemed to be of animal form.
[Illustration: SKETCH OF KARIM SHAHIR ASSEMBLAGE
CHIPPED STONE
GROUND STONE
UNBAKED CLAY
SHELL
BONE
“ARCHITECTURE”]
Karim Shahir did not yield direct evidence of the kind of vegetable
food its people ate. The animal bones showed a considerable
increase in the proportion of the bones of the species capable of
domestication--sheep, goat, cattle, horse, dog--as compared with animal
bones from the earlier cave sites of the area, which have a high
proportion of bones of wild forms like deer and gazelle. But we do not
know that any of the Karim Shahir animals were actually domesticated.
Some of them may have been, in an “incipient” way, but we have no means
at the moment that will tell us from the bones alone.
WERE THE NATUFIAN AND KARIM SHAHIR PEOPLES FOOD-PRODUCERS?
It is clear that a great part of the food of the Natufian people
must have been hunted or collected. Shells of land, fresh-water, and
sea animals occur in their cave layers. The same is true as regards
Karim Shahir, save for sea shells. But on the other hand, we have
the sickles, the milling stones, the possible Natufian dog, and the
goat, and the general animal situation at Karim Shahir to hint at an
incipient approach to food-production. At Karim Shahir, there was the
tendency to settle down out in the open; this is echoed by the new
reports of open air Natufian sites. The large number of cracked stones
certainly indicates that it was worth the peoples’ while to have some
kind of structure, even if the site as a whole was short-lived.
It is a part of my hunch that these things all point toward
food-production--that the hints we seek are there. But in the sense
that the peoples of the era of the primary village-farming community,
which we shall look at next, are fully food-producing, the Natufian
and Karim Shahir folk had not yet arrived. I think they were part of
a general build-up to full scale food-production. They were possibly
controlling a few animals of several kinds and perhaps one or two
plants, without realizing the full possibilities of this “control” as a
new way of life.
This is why I think of the Karim Shahir and Natufian folk as being at
a level, or in an era, of incipient cultivation and domestication. But
we shall have to do a great deal more excavation in this range of time
before we’ll get the kind of positive information we need.
SUMMARY