Part 8

We archeologists shall have to depend much more than we ever have on the natural scientists who can really help us. I can tell you this from experience. I had the great good fortune to have on my expedition staff in Iraq in 1954-55, a geologist, a botanist, and a zoologist. Their studies added whole new bands of color to my spectrum of thinking about _how_ and _why_ the revolution took place and how the village-farming community began. But it was only a beginning; as I said earlier, we are just now learning to ask the proper questions.

ABOUT STAGES AND ERAS

Now come some definitions, so I may describe my material more easily. Archeologists have always loved to make divisions and subdivisions within the long range of materials which they have found. They often disagree violently about which particular assemblage of material goes into which subdivision, about what the subdivisions should be named, about what the subdivisions really mean culturally. Some archeologists, probably through habit, favor an old scheme of Grecized names for the subdivisions: paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic. I refuse to use these words myself. They have meant too many different things to too many different people and have tended to hide some pretty fuzzy thinking. Probably you haven’t even noticed my own scheme of subdivision up to now, but I’d better tell you in general what it is.

I think of the earliest great group of archeological materials, from which we can deduce only a food-gathering way of culture, as the _food-gathering stage_. I say “stage” rather than “age,” because it is not quite over yet; there are still a few primitive people in out-of-the-way parts of the world who remain in the _food-gathering stage_. In fact, Professor Julian Steward would probably prefer to call it a food-gathering _level_ of existence, rather than a stage. This would be perfectly acceptable to me. I also tend to find myself using _collecting_, rather than _gathering_, for the more recent aspects or era of the stage, as the word “collecting” appears to have more sense of purposefulness and specialization than does “gathering” (see p. 91).

Now, while I think we could make several possible subdivisions of the food-gathering stage--I call my subdivisions of stages _eras_[5]--I believe the only one which means much to us here is the last or _terminal sub-era of food-collecting_ of the whole food-gathering stage. The microliths seem to mark its approach in the northwestern part of the Old World. It is really shown best in the Old World by the materials of the “Forest folk,” the cultural adaptation to the post-glacial environment in northwestern Europe. We talked about the “Forest folk” at the beginning of this chapter, and I used the Maglemosian assemblage of Denmark as an example.

[5] It is difficult to find words which have a sequence or gradation of meaning with respect to both development and a range of time in the past, or with a range of time from somewhere in the past which is perhaps not yet ended. One standard Webster definition of _stage_ is: “One of the steps into which the material development of man ... is divided.” I cannot find any dictionary definition that suggests which of the words, _stage_ or _era_, has the meaning of a longer span of time. Therefore, I have chosen to let my eras be shorter, and to subdivide my stages into eras. Webster gives _era_ as: “A signal stage of history, an epoch.” When I want to subdivide my eras, I find myself using _sub-eras_. Thus I speak of the _eras_ within a _stage_ and of the _sub-eras_ within an _era_; that is, I do so when I feel that I really have to, and when the evidence is clear enough to allow it.

The food-producing revolution ushers in the _food-producing stage_. This stage began to be replaced by the _industrial stage_ only about two hundred years ago. Now notice that my stage divisions are in terms of technology and economics. We must think sharply to be sure that the subdivisions of the stages, the eras, are in the same terms. This does not mean that I think technology and economics are the only important realms of culture. It is rather that for most of prehistoric time the materials left to the archeologists tend to limit our deductions to technology and economics.

I’m so soon out of my competence, as conventional ancient history begins, that I shall only suggest the earlier eras of the food-producing stage to you. This book is about prehistory, and I’m not a universal historian.

THE TWO EARLIEST ERAS OF THE FOOD-PRODUCING STAGE

The food-producing stage seems to appear in western Asia with really 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!

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.