A GLANCE EASTWARD
The culture of the oldest lake-dwellings appears suddenly in Europe, and
its beginnings are exotic in all their essentials. The turbary cattle
were quite different from the wild _primigenius_ race of the surrounding
regions; and we find no remains of the intermediate forms which should
occur if domestication had taken place here. The same is true of the
turbary pig. Wild sheep are unknown in northern Europe, and the moufflon
of the Mediterranean islands can hardly have been the ancestor of our
Swiss flocks, and is very possibly descended from domesticated ancestors
which reverted to wild life. Something very similar may be said of our
oldest cereals, wheat and barley.
We must evidently turn eastward or southward to find the cradle of the
whole culture. Even if it came partly from Italy, it could hardly have
developed there. Egypt may have made contributions, but mostly at a
later date. We naturally turn first to Asia, the great centre of
mammalian evolution, probably the oldest seat of cattle-raising and
agriculture, cradle of man and centre of his earliest development. The
true Neolithic cultures in northern Europe can hardly be older than
about 6000 B. C.; the lake-dwellings are probably far younger. We must
first inquire into the location, age, and character of the oldest
agriculture in nearer Asia, where great discoveries have been made
during the last twenty years.
We naturally turn first to Babylonia. Under the temple of Bel, at
Nippur, was an immense platform constructed of sun-dried bricks, most of
them stamped with the name of Sargon or of Naram Sin. The date of Sargon
seems still uncertain; many historians place it at 2800 B. C.; others,
and apparently most archæologists, like Obermaier, still hold to the old
date, 3750 B. C.[70] Without any attempt to decide this question, we
will hold in this chapter to the older date; and believers in the latter
date can subtract 1,000 from our figures for earlier times, though this
does not apply to Pumpelly's estimates.
Says Delitzsch[71] of this mound: "In the deepest layers of these
remains, or what amounts to the same, back many centuries beyond the
fifth millennium, everywhere interesting and valuable remains of human
civilization come to light, fragments of vessels of copper, bronze, and
clay, a quantity of earthenware so beautifully lacquered in red and
black that we might consider them of Greek origin, or at least
influenced by Greek art, had they not been found eight metres deep under
Naram Sin's pavement." Here we find the Bronze period, or possibly late
Copper, before 5000 B. C. A city with a high and complex culture had
already arisen. No one believes that the culture could have originated
in the rank, almost untamable, primitive jungle of Mesopotamia. Its
beginnings must be sought elsewhere and earlier. But the age and
character of Babylonian civilization encourage one to seek further in
western Asia.
In 1904 Pumpelly[72] made most thorough and careful investigations at
Anau, near Askabad in Turkestan, about 300 miles east of the southeast
corner of the Caspian Sea, and 200 miles west of Merv. The remarkable
results of his work are described in two large volumes, and have not
received the attention which they deserve. He excavated in two large
Kurgans or mounds. The north Kurgan is the older and chiefly concerns
us. The Neolithic remains occur in thin compact strata aggregating some
forty-five feet in thickness. The earliest settlement was a town
covering at least five acres, possibly nearly ten.
At the time of the beginning of the settlement, which Pumpelly estimated
as somewhat before 8000 B. C., the inhabitants lived in rectangular
houses built of uniform sun-dried bricks. They were skilful potters,
though unacquainted with the potter's wheel, making different grades of
coarse and fine vessels. These were unglazed, but often painted with a
definite series of geometrical patterns. They had the art of spinning,
for whorls are found in all strata from the lowest up. They cultivated
cereals, for the casts of the chaff of wheat and barley are found in the
clay of the thicker pots. At first they had no domestic animals, only
the bones of wild forms being found. When ten feet of culture strata had
been accumulated the remains of a tame _Bos namadicus_, the Asiatic
variety of the _Bos primigenius_, or urus, occurred. That this animal
had already been domesticated is inferred from the less compact
microscopic structure of the bones modified by artificial conditions. At
this time the change of structure, if not complete, was evident. It had
been for some time under the new conditions. The turbary pig appears
about 7500 B. C.,[73] the turbary sheep about 1500 years later, but
preceded by varieties of the great horned mountain sheep. The turbary
cattle appear to have been a small variety of the _Bos namadicus_,
somewhat dwarfed by drought and hardship.
The camel appears at Anau somewhat after 6000 B. C., and seems to be a
means of intercourse and transport far antedating the horse, in a region
already showing signs of dessication.
Spherical mace-heads occur reminding us of those used in Egypt. But no
lance-head or arrow-point or other stone weapon was found in the lower
levels. We do not know how they killed or captured the larger animals;
they may have used the sling or bolero. In the lowest strata we find the
bones of young children, but not of adults, buried in a contracted
position under the floors of the dwellings. The first objects of copper
and lead appear about 6000 B. C., and, open the Æneolithic period.
Pumpelly distinguishes a Copper period, here longer and more distinctly
marked than in Europe. The turquoise bead found in one of the graves
came, in all probability, from the Iranian plateau, as did probably the
copper and lead also.
He has shown us that even on the steppe the cultivation of cereals
precedes the domestication of sheep and cattle. The nomadic life
follows instead of preceding agriculture. The pioneers in this region
cultivated the zone of steppe, into which rivers poured from the
mountains. When cattle and sheep and goats had multiplied, the herdsmen
drove them farther and farther on the rich pasturage of the boundless
steppe. Thus nomads gradually appear. There are also different varieties
of nomadism. Nomadic tribes were far less active and dangerous neighbors
even after the domestication of the camel than when, about 2000 B. C.,
they had domesticated the horse. The first herdsman may have differed
from the latter nomad almost as much as the most pacific sheep-herder of
our Western plains differs from the liveliest cowboy.
Pumpelly's time-estimates have been criticised by Doctor H. Schmidt, of
Berlin.[74] He makes the rate of growth far more rapid than Pumpelly
thought and shortens the periods. In determining length of periods he
relies far more on artifacts and less on probable rate of accumulation.
The criticisms seem hardly well founded. Pumpelly's estimate of rate of
increase was based upon a careful and broad comparison of accumulations
in the deserted city, Anau, in Merv, and other localities. They seem
conservative, but we must recognize that such estimates are always only
approximate. His estimates result in a series of dates generally in
close agreement with those of most students of oriental archæology.
In the Third Culture Epoch there was found "copper, with sporadic
appearance of low percentage of tin." This describes well the close of
the Copper period or the beginning of the Bronze Age, the rest of which
is not represented at Anau, the settlement being deserted, probably
because of aridity. Pumpelly thinks that the last strata deposited
before the desertion comes down to the Bronze Age, and, assuming the
latest possible date for the beginning of this period, places it about
2200 B. C. This is almost surely much too late. Obermaier dates the
beginning of the Bronze period at 4000 B. C.[75] (If we substitute the
later date, 2750 B. C., for Sargon's region, the Bronze period would
begin about 3000 B. C., the date accepted by Montelius.[76]) Pumpelly
places the beginning of the Copper Epoch at 5000 B. C., again agreeing
with Montelius. His estimates seem generally somewhat too conservative,
as he doubtless intended they should be; the earliest remains may be
considerably older than he thought. Investigations made during the last
twenty years seem generally to lead us to believe that the beginnings
of Neolithic culture are far older in western Asia than we had supposed,
while in middle and northern Europe they are probably somewhat younger
than we had thought. In this connection we may well remember that Evans
found eight metres of Neolithic remains under the palace at Cnossus, in
Crete, and estimated their age at about 14,000 years.
The culture at Anau is very similar in all its essentials to that of the
European lake-dwellers, and is much older. The same cereals and the same
kinds of domesticated animals appear in both. The brick houses are
better and the very fine painted pottery is new and peculiar. These and
the art of spinning and the cultivation of cereals were brought hither
by the first settlers; their development to this stage must have taken
place elsewhere and occupied a long period of time. Sheep could not have
been domesticated here, for they and the goats are natives of the
mountains, and could not survive wild on the steppe. Neither is the pig
a steppe animal, but lives naturally in forest glades and along
watercourses. Pumpelly has evidently discovered a very old and
interesting station in the spread of this ancient culture, but not its
cradle. This was apparently in some mountainous region. The nearest and
most likely place to search for it is somewhere on the Iranian plateau,
to which the turquoise bead and the later-introduced copper and lead
found at Anau also point.
Here at Susa (Shushan), about one hundred miles from the apex of the
Persian Gulf, de Morgan excavated in a mound rising about thirty-four
metres above the level of the plain and continuing some six metres below
the surface, which has been raised that amount since the first
settlement was made.[77] The total thickness of the remains is therefore
about forty metres. The lowest strata as yet have been only slightly
studied. The uppermost ten to fifteen metres cover a period of about
6,000 years. If the lower strata were accumulated at the same rate, the
first settlement was begun about 18,000 years ago at a conservative
estimate. Montelius, the best authority on European prehistoric
chronology, basing his conclusions on de Morgan's discoveries, places
the date of the beginning of Neolithic culture in this part of Asia at
about 18,000 B. C., or somewhat earlier.[78]
Over twenty metres of these remains are purely Neolithic. There was the
usual abundance of flint nuclei, flakes, and utensils. There was
obsidian, evidently brought from a distance--de Morgan thinks from
Armenia, a thousand miles away. This is not impossible; we shall find
that trade or barter was far more extensive at this time than has
usually been supposed.
Here again we find abundant pottery in the lowest strata. It is of a
"dark brown pattern painted on a pale ground, partly imitating basketry
and textiles, partly rendering plants and animals with childish
simplicity.... It resembles in a striking way a few widely scattered
series which are all that have been secured hitherto from a very
ill-explored area: from a Neolithic site underlying the Hittite castle
at Sakye-Giezi, in North Syria, from the surface of early mounds in
Cappadocia, and from low levels of the Hittite capital, at Boghaz-Keui;
and, more surprising still, from an important site, also Neolithic, at
Anau, on the northern edge of the Persian plateau looking over into
Turkestan; and at a number of points scattered over the flat lowland on
the north side of the Black Sea, and thence into the Balkan Peninsula as
far south as Macedonia and Thessaly. These resemblances are general and
their value may be overestimated; there are differences in detail, but
the general similarity seems to link the peoples over this wide area at
the same time in one region of kindred art and culture, if not of
blood."[79]
The discoveries at Susa and elsewhere in this region seem to prove that
compact settlements of fair size had arisen in western Asia long before
the founding of Anau.[80] Such settlements could have been formed only
by sedentary peoples practising agriculture, not by mere wandering
hunters. Our definite knowledge of the domestic animals of Susa is very
small. But, as we have just seen, the peculiar, fine, decorated pottery
found in the oldest strata of Susa, Anau, and many other localities
scattered over a wide area, is certainly a strong argument for believing
that an agriculture in general very similar to that of the oldest strata
at Anau was wide-spread over the Iranian plateau, Asia Minor, and
elsewhere. Where or when it began we do not know. We can only conjecture
as to the place and mode of its beginning. It may not be out of place to
mention a very general hypothesis of this sort, and this we will now
attempt to frame.
The Bühl moraines, in Lake Lucerne, are estimated as having been
deposited between 16,000 and 24,000 B. C., during the Early Magdalenian
stage of post-glacial time, which would, therefore, be contemporaneous
with the earliest settlement at Susa.[81] The climate of Europe was then
somewhat colder and much moister than at present. The ice-cap extended
much farther south in middle Europe than in Russia or Siberia. Under
these circumstances central Asia probably enjoyed a much moister climate
than at present, without extreme cold. The Caspian and Aral Seas
occupied a much larger area than at present, and were very likely
connected. The Tarim basin may well have been a great lake surrounded by
a zone of garden instead of the sandy waste which it is to-day.
Conditions of increased moisture would have made the now parched regions
of the Iranian plateau an exceedingly rich and favored region. Toward
the close of the Post-glacial Epoch the mountains were probably well
forested, but alternating dryer times would have brought open glades,
with lakes interspersed.
When Europe changed from tundra to forest man became largely a
fisherman, more or less settled at some favorable spot, and collecting
his vegetable food in all directions. The same may well have been true
of life at this early date in Persia. The man hunted or fished, the
woman and the children gathered all kinds of animals and plant food,
berries and other fruits, acorns and other nuts. One of the richest
sources of food must have been the roots, tubers, and other underground
stems. If there were any patches of richly seeded grasses or grains on
the near-by glade or hill, we may be sure that the woman did not fail to
beat off the ripe seed with a stick, and carry it home with her. The
primitive family was not dainty or particular in its appetite. The women
were the first botanists, the first to notice the nutritive, medicinal,
or poisonous qualities of plants, and the first physicians.[82]
When she turned homeward with her load of spoil, some berries, seeds,
and small bulbs doubtless fell to the ground and escaped her notice.
These grew and flourished in the richer soil around the hut or shelter,
for all the garbage could not have accumulated in the hut. Some
unusually observing woman noticed this, and protected the plants, or
even cultivated them a little with her digging-stick, and pulled out
some of the largest smothering weeds. She began to plant a few others,
and gradually started a garden. The garden is older than the farm, and
hoe and digging-stick vastly older than the plough. This woman had
discovered, and almost created, a new world of science and culture
which was to revolutionize life.
Rice growing wild in large fields under suitable conditions is still
gathered by all savages. This grain needed no preparation except
boiling, while wheat and barley must be crushed or ground between
stones, probably used at first for grinding dry nuts. Peas and beans,
many vetches, and other members of this family so characteristic of the
dryer uplands, were gathered very early, and may have been cultivated
before wheat. Melons and many of the gourds always must have been eaten.
We shall notice later that the zone of Persia and Asia Minor lay on the
boundary line between two great botanical provinces, a northern and a
southern, and furnished a very wide range of plants for this earliest
experiment station.[83] A great variety of plants were tested sooner or
later, and only a few of the very best and most capable of improvement
have been retained to our day. On the steppe at a later date wheat and
barley were most profitable, and most widely cultivated. But even here
hoe-culture was for a long time the only mode. It still exists in
Africa, Asia, and Japan; and was the only mode of culture known in
America at the time of its discovery. Hoe-culture was at first, and has
generally remained, woman's work; ploughing with cattle was a man's
job. This had far-reaching results to which we must return in a later
chapter.
But we must not think that the Iranian plateau, with its great zone of
piedmont steppe stretching eastward and westward along its northern
border across the continent of Asia, was the only place where
agriculture could start and reach a high degree of development in
ancient times. Its possibility lay in the habit of the woman of
collecting the vegetable food and smaller animals, while the men hunted
and fished. Useful food plants furnishing large amounts of food are to
be found in all continents, and differ markedly in different soils and
climatic zones. Hence even the beginnings of agriculture were probably
not confined to any one region, but were wide-spread, manifold, and
independent. The Chinese migrating eastward and southeastward down the
great river valleys from eastern Turkestan may have carried with them
the cultivation of wheat, or adopted it independently. The rice culture
of China may have been borrowed from India or independently evolved.
India and the Malay Archipelago and Africa have every one its own
agriculture, of whose origin and early development we know nothing.
But western Asia, or more precisely the Iranian plateau, had another
piedmont region beside the zone stretching along its northern border.
This second piedmont zone of grass-land, or oasis, as Breasted has
pointed out, bends in the form of a horseshoe along the western slope of
the Iranian plateau, then northward and westward around the headwaters
of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and southward through Syria.[84] Here
it dries out in the great Syrian and Arabian deserts. But these also, as
well as the Arabian plateau stretching along the Red Sea, may have been
well watered and inhabitable in early post-glacial time. The Arabian
plateau and its piedmont zone in those days may well have been an
independent centre of agricultural development, which gave place to the
nomadism so characteristic of the Semitic peoples only at a later date.
Of the early history of Arabia we are still completely ignorant. But in
the twilight of history we see those Semites coming into the
Mesopotamian valley from the west while the Sumerians entered from the
east. Those two streams of migration, mingling, founded the great
Babylonian Empire, to which all oriental peoples looked up with an awe
and reverence, as well as fear, which we can scarcely appreciate.
Evidently, and this is the fact of chief importance to us, parts of the
nearer east were highly civilized before anything better than savagery
had developed in northern Europe.
But far older than these cities of the Mesopotamian river valleys is the
culture of the forests, glades, lakes, and riversides of the plateaus.
Evidence seems steadily to accumulate that here we are to seek for the
beginnings of agriculture and the domestication of animals which were
slowly to change the face of the earth and the life and character of
man.
Hoe-tillage of the ground is evidently far older than cattle-raising or
nomadic life. It had been brought to Anau before 8000 B. C., and had
probably already been practised at Susa and elsewhere thousands of years
earlier. But we cannot help asking whether other plants may not have
been cultivated long before cereals. Roots and tubers are much more
conspicuous than the smaller grains. These underground storehouses of
nutriment adapted to give the plant a quick and sure start, during a
short spring period of growth and flowering, are abundant everywhere.
They still form the staple crop in many parts of the world. We remember
the potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, the cassava, and a host of others.
In our northern regions we still cultivate beets, turnips, and carrots,
though now becoming more and more food for cattle. These plants also are
less closely limited to the steppes and plateaus. They occur all through
the mountain or shore regions, and for this reason would have been
likely to attract the attention of "collectors."
Primitive woman had no plough, only the digging-stick, the agricultural
implement of the Australians. Later they learned to make a hoe,
sometimes out of a tine of deer's horn, sometimes of stone or other
material, something half-way between a hoe and a pick. With such an
implement a fair amount of soil could be broken up and well stirred.
When domestic animals were introduced into Africa the plough followed
only in the eastern regions; all through the rest of Africa the old
hoe-culture held its own. Europeans introduced the plough into America.
As a means of breaking up the ground the plough is infinitely superior;
for tillage and cultivation the hoe is far more useful. When wheat has
once been sown it cares for itself; further cultivation is
unnecessary--it is the lazy man's crop. Perhaps that, with a touch of the
spur of necessity, persuaded the male to undertake ploughing. When the
plough was invented many vegetables formerly cultivated probably became
less profitable or attractive, and were given up. A revolution took
place in agriculture. Probably the plough was at first dragged by women.
It is impossible to say just when it was invented. It was used during
the Bronze period, for it is represented in rock-carvings of that age.
Some stone ploughshares may be Neolithic.
Studying European Neolithic agriculture in the light of the methods of
savage and barbarous peoples, or even of our pioneer ancestors, we
imagine them living on the border of the forests which furnished food
and wood for buildings and implements. The first step was to burn and
clear a place where the undergrowth was not too heavy, and to break up
the soil with pick or hoe. Here the patch of grain was sowed. The soil
fertilized by the ashes gave him a fair crop, but became exhausted after
a few years of cultivation, and he was compelled to break up a new
field. Some investigators have thought that the lake-dwellers used the
manure from their cattle on their fields, but in most parts of Europe
cultivation of the soil was probably crude and superficial. On the chalk
downs of England, chief places of settlement by Neolithic peoples in
this region, we find terraces and narrow strips which may have been
prepared at this time, though their age is very uncertain. They often
are of a size and form not well adapted to plough-culture. They have a
look of permanent occupation. These may well have been fertilized. The
evidence is very uncertain. When the loess soil was of fair depth
cultivation may have gone on for many years without fertilizers of any
sort.
The primitive plough was hardly more than a pointed stout branch or stub
of a tree, whose longer fork was fastened to the yoke. It made a furrow
triangular in cross-section, broad at the top and narrowing to an edge
at the bottom. It did not "turn" a strip, and between two furrows a long
ridge was left unbroken. Even in Roman times cross-ploughing was common
or usual. Even this rude culture needed the strength of cattle to draw
the plough. The plough is associated in our minds with oxen, and the
first man who made his cow, instead of his wife, draw the plough was a
great benefactor.
Even the domestication of cattle was less easy than it seems at first
sight. Wild animals rarely reproduce in captivity. Pumpelly thinks that
the way toward the domestication of our larger cattle may have been
paved by a long period of drought driving them from the steppe into the
better-watered oases, and thus into association with man. But this
could hardly have been true of the mountain sheep and goats, on which
man may well have experimented before he attempted the more difficult
task of domesticating the larger, more powerful, and less manageable
_Bos namadicus_. How did man hit upon the plan of castrating the bull
and thus changing this intractable, ugly beast into the docile and
patient ox? There seems to be a good amount of plausibility in Hehn's
brilliant suggestion that this may have come about in connection with
some ancient systems of religious rites and beliefs.[85] There is
nothing impossible or very improbable in this view. But the very
brilliancy of the conjecture and the clearness with which it is
expressed, and the wealth of learning used to support it, warns us
against too ready acceptance. We can only confess our complete ignorance
and wait for future discoveries as patiently as we can.
At present nearly all our knowledge of what was going on in this dim and
remote past must be gained by a study of savages still holding the
customs of the past in a somewhat or greatly modified form and spirit.
Certain very general inferences may be made without great danger. But to
frame clear and exact conceptions of life in these remote ages from
these sources would demand a union of the boldest genius with the most
wary caution. All these peoples have changed greatly during past
millennia both for better and worse, usually probably in the latter
direction. Customs have all been modified by changed conditions,
surroundings, and inferences. It is exceedingly difficult to distinguish
between what is really primitive and what is degenerate, perhaps of
comparatively recent origin. The problem bristles with tantalizing
questions, which tempt us to spin fascinating hypotheses all the more
dangerous because of their attractiveness and apparent simplicity. Our
great need is new facts and discoveries, and a clearer knowledge and
understanding of old ones.
We may well connect and condense the chief results of our study in this
chapter. It seems to be clear that a culture essentially similar to that
of the European lake dwellers existed at Anau, in the piedmont zone, a
little north or northeast of the Iranian plateau, with which it had
trade relations. The oldest turbary forms of domesticated animals appear
here at least 1,500 years before the founding of the Swiss lake
dwellings. They were mostly introduced from some mountain region, the
nearest probable source being the Iranian plateau, but their first
domestication may have taken place equally well elsewhere in western or
central Asia, or even in Arabia. Susa shows similar remains extending
back into a far more remote past; and the similarity or kinship of the
pottery in the oldest strata at Susa and Anau and elsewhere leads us to
believe that a culture similar in other respects also was widely
distributed at this time. We can hardly doubt that agriculture was
practised by the founders of all these settlements.
We can only frame conjectures as to the origin of agriculture. It seems
to have been introduced by the women of hunting and fishing tribes. The
first agricultural implement was probably the digging-stick, which was
followed by the hoe. Hoe-culture is still common in Asia and Africa.
Finally, during the first part of the Bronze period, or perhaps somewhat
earlier, the plough drawn by cattle and guided by a man superseded the
hoe as a means of breaking up the soil for the culture of grain.