Up to the end of the last glaciation, we prehistorians have a relatively comfortable time schedule. The farther back we go the less exact we can be about time and details. Elbow-room of five, ten, even fifty or more thousands of years becomes available for us to maneuver in as we work backward in time. But now our story has come forward to the point where more exact methods of dating are at hand. The radioactive carbon method reaches back into the span of the last glaciation. There are other methods, developed by the geologists and paleobotanists, which supplement and extend the usefulness of the radioactive carbon dates. And, happily, as our means of being more exact increases, our story grows more exciting. There are also more details of culture for us to deal with, which add to the interest.

CHANGES AT THE END OF THE ICE AGE

The last great glaciation of the Ice Age was a two-part affair, with a sub-phase at the end of the second part. In Europe the last sub-phase of this glaciation commenced somewhere around 15,000 years ago. Then the glaciers began to melt back, for the last time. Remember that Professor Antevs (p. 19) isn’t sure the Ice Age is over yet! This melting sometimes went by fits and starts, and the weather wasn’t always changing for the better; but there was at least one time when European weather was even better than it is now.

The melting back of the glaciers and the weather fluctuations caused other changes, too. We know a fair amount about these changes in Europe. In an earlier chapter, we said that the whole Ice Age was a matter of continual change over long periods of time. As the last glaciers began to melt back some interesting things happened to mankind.

In Europe, along with the melting of the last glaciers, geography itself was changing. Britain and Ireland had certainly become islands by 5000 B.C. The Baltic was sometimes a salt sea, sometimes a large fresh-water lake. Forests began to grow where the glaciers had been, and in what had once been the cold tundra areas in front of the glaciers. The great cold-weather animals—the mammoth and the wooly rhinoceros—retreated northward and finally died out. It is probable that the efficient hunting of the earlier people of 20,000 or 25,000 to about 12,000 years ago had helped this process along (see p. 86). Europeans, especially those of the post-glacial period, had to keep changing to keep up with the times.

The archeological materials for the time from 10,000 to 6000 B.C. seem simpler than those of the previous five thousand years. The great cave art of France and Spain had gone; so had the fine carving in bone and antler. Smaller, speedier animals were moving into the new forests. New ways of hunting them, or ways of getting other food, had to be found. Hence, new tools and weapons were necessary. Some of the people who moved into northern Germany were successful reindeer hunters. Then the reindeer moved off to the north, and again new sources of food had to be found.

THE READJUSTMENTS COMPLETED IN EUROPE

After a few thousand years, things began to look better. Or at least we can say this: By about 6000 B.C. we again get hotter archeological materials. The best of these come from the north European area: Britain, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, north Germany, southern Norway and Sweden. Much of this north European material comes from bogs and swamps where it had become water-logged and has kept very well. Thus we have much more complete assemblages4 than for any time earlier.

The best known of these assemblages is the Maglemosian, named after a great Danish peat-swamp where much has been found.

In the Maglemosian assemblage the flint industry was still very important. Blade tools, tanged arrow points, and burins were still made, but there were also axes for cutting the trees in the new forests. Moreover, the tiny microlithic blades, in a variety of geometric forms, are also found. Thus, a specialized tradition that possibly began east of the Mediterranean had reached northern Europe. There was also a ground stone industry; some axes and club-heads were made by grinding and polishing rather than by chipping. The industries in bone and antler show a great variety of tools: axes, fish-hooks, fish spears, handles and hafts for other tools, harpoons, and clubs. A remarkable industry in wood has been preserved. Paddles, sled runners, handles for tools, and bark floats for fish-nets have been found. There are even fish-nets made of plant fibers. Canoes of some kind were no doubt made. Bone and antler tools were decorated with simple patterns, and amber was collected. Wooden bows and arrows are found.

It seems likely that the Maglemosian bog finds are remains of summer camps, and that in winter the people moved to higher and drier regions. Childe calls them the “Forest folk”; they probably lived much the same sort of life as did our pre-agricultural Indians of the north central states. They hunted small game or deer; they did a great deal of fishing; they collected what plant food they could find. In fact, their assemblage shows us again that remarkable ability of men to adapt themselves to change. They had succeeded in domesticating the dog; he was still a very wolf-like dog, but his long association with mankind had now begun. Professor Coon believes that these people were direct descendants of the men of the glacial age and that they had much the same appearance. He believes that most of the Ice Age survivors still extant are living today in the northwestern European area.

SOUTH AND CENTRAL EUROPE PERHAPS AS READJUSTED AS THE NORTH

There is always one trouble with things that come from areas where preservation is exceptionally good: The very quantity of materials in such an assemblage tends to make things from other areas look poor and simple, although they may not have been so originally at all. The assemblages of the people who lived to the south of the Maglemosian area may also have been quite large and varied; but, unfortunately, relatively little of the southern assemblages has lasted. The water-logged sites of the Maglemosian area preserved a great deal more. Hence the Maglemosian itself looks quite advanced to us, when we compare it with the few things that have happened to last in other areas. If we could go back and wander over the Europe of eight thousand years ago, we would probably find that the peoples of France, central Europe, and south central Russia were just as advanced as those of the north European-Baltic belt.

South of the north European belt the hunting-food-collecting peoples were living on as best they could during this time. One interesting group, which seems to have kept to the regions of sandy soil and scrub forest, made great quantities of geometric microliths. These are the materials called Tardenoisian. The materials of the “Forest folk” of France and central Europe generally are called Azilian; Dr. Movius believes the term might best be restricted to the area south of the Loire River.

HOW MUCH REAL CHANGE WAS THERE?

You can see that no really basic change in the way of life has yet been described. Childe sees the problem that faced the Europeans of 10,000 to 3000 B.C. as a problem in readaptation to the post-glacial forest environment. By 6000 B.C. some quite successful solutions of the problem—like the Maglemosian—had been made. The upsets that came with the melting of the last ice gradually brought about all sorts of changes in the tools and food-getting habits, but the people themselves were still just as much simple hunters, fishers, and food-collectors as they had been in 25,000 B.C. It could be said that they changed just enough so that they would not have to change. But there is a bit more to it than this.

Professor Mathiassen of Copenhagen, who knows the archeological remains of this time very well, poses a question. He speaks of the material as being neither rich nor progressive, in fact “rather stagnant,” but he goes on to add that the people had a certain “receptiveness” and were able to adapt themselves quickly when the next change did come. My own understanding of the situation is that the “Forest folk” made nothing as spectacular as had the producers of the earlier Magdalenian assemblage and the Franco-Cantabrian art. On the other hand, they seem to have been making many more different kinds of tools for many more different kinds of tasks than had their Ice Age forerunners. I emphasize “seem” because the preservation in the Maglemosian bogs is very complete; certainly we cannot list anywhere near as many different things for earlier times as we did for the Maglemosians (p. 94). I believe this experimentation with all kinds of new tools and gadgets, this intensification of adaptiveness (p. 91), this “receptiveness,” even if it is still only pointed toward hunting, fishing, and food-collecting, is an important thing.

Remember that the only marker we have handy for the beginning of this tendency toward “receptiveness” and experimentation is the little microlithic blade tools of various geometric forms. These, we saw, began before the last ice had melted away, and they lasted on in use for a very long time. I wish there were a better marker than the microliths but I do not know of one. Remember, too, that as yet we can only use the microliths as a marker in Europe and about the Mediterranean.

CHANGES IN OTHER AREAS?

All this last section was about Europe. How about the rest of the world when the last glaciers were melting away?

We simply don’t know much about this particular time in other parts of the world except in Europe, the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East. People were certainly continuing to move into the New World by way of Siberia and the Bering Strait about this time. But for the greater part of Africa and Asia, we do not know exactly what was happening. Some day, we shall no doubt find out; today we are without clear information.

REAL CHANGE AND PRELUDE IN THE NEAR EAST

The appearance of the microliths and the developments made by the “Forest folk” of northwestern Europe also mark an end. They show us the terminal phase of the old food-collecting way of life. It grows increasingly clear that at about the same time that the Maglemosian and other “Forest folk” were adapting themselves to hunting, fishing, and collecting in new ways to fit the post-glacial environment, something completely new was being made ready in western Asia. Unfortunately, we do not have as much understanding of the climate and environment of the late Ice Age in western Asia as we have for most of Europe. Probably the weather was never so violent or life quite so rugged as it was in northern Europe. We know that the microliths made their appearance in western Asia at least by 10,000 B.C. and possibly earlier, marking the beginning of the terminal phase of food-collecting. Then, gradually, we begin to see the build-up towards the first basic change in human life.

This change amounted to a revolution just as important as the Industrial Revolution. In it, men first learned to domesticate plants and animals. They began producing their food instead of simply gathering or collecting it. When their food-production became reasonably effective, people could and did settle down in village-farming communities. With the appearance of the little farming villages, a new way of life was actually under way. Professor Childe has good reason to speak of the “food-producing revolution,” for it was indeed a revolution.

QUESTIONS ABOUT CAUSE

We do not yet know how and why this great revolution took place. We are only just beginning to put the questions properly. I suspect the answers will concern some delicate and subtle interplay between man and nature. Clearly, both the level of culture and the natural condition of the environment must have been ready for the great change, before the change itself could come about.

It is going to take years of co-operative field work by both archeologists and the natural scientists who are most helpful to them before the how and why answers begin to appear. Anthropologically trained archeologists are fascinated with the cultures of men in times of great change. About ten or twelve thousand years ago, the general level of culture in many parts of the world seems to have been ready for change. In northwestern Europe, we saw that cultures “changed just enough so that they would not have to change.” We linked this to environmental changes with the coming of post-glacial times. In western Asia, we archeologists can prove that the food-producing revolution actually took place. We can see the important consequence of effective domestication of plants and animals in the appearance of the settled village-farming community. And within the village-farming community was the seed of civilization. The way in which effective domestication of plants and animals came about, however, must also be linked closely with the natural environment. Thus the archeologists will not solve the how and why questions alone—they will need the help of interested natural scientists in the field itself.

PRECONDITIONS FOR THE REVOLUTION

Especially at this point in our story, we must remember how culture and environment go hand in hand. Neither plants nor animals domesticate themselves; men domesticate them. Furthermore, men usually domesticate only those plants and animals which are useful. There is a good question here: What is cultural usefulness? But I shall side-step it to save time. Men cannot domesticate plants and animals that do not exist in the environment where the men live. Also, there are certainly some animals and probably some plants that resist domestication, although they might be useful.

This brings me back again to the point that both the level of culture and the natural condition of the environment—with the proper plants and animals in it—must have been ready before domestication could have happened. But this is precondition, not cause. Why did effective food-production happen first in the Near East? Why did it happen independently in the New World slightly later? Why also in the Far East? Why did it happen at all? Why are all human beings not still living as the Maglemosians did? These are the questions we still have to face.

CULTURAL “RECEPTIVENESS” AND PROMISING ENVIRONMENTS

Until the archeologists and the natural scientists—botanists, geologists, zoologists, and general ecologists—have spent many more years on the problem, we shall not have full how and why answers. I do think, however, that we are beginning to understand what to look for.

We shall have to learn much more of what makes the cultures of men “receptive” and experimental. Did change in the environment alone force it? Was it simply a case of Professor Toynbee’s “challenge and response?” I cannot believe the answer is quite that simple. Were it so simple, we should want to know why the change hadn’t come earlier, along with earlier environmental changes. We shall not know the answer, however, until we have excavated the traces of many more cultures of the time in question. We shall doubtless also have to learn more about, and think imaginatively about, the simpler cultures still left today. The “mechanics” of culture in general will be bound to interest us.

It will also be necessary to learn much more of the environments of 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. In which regions of the world were the natural conditions most promising? Did this promise include plants and animals which could be domesticated, or did it only offer new ways of food-collecting? There is much work to do on this problem, but we are beginning to get some general hints.

Before I begin to detail the hints we now have from western Asia, I want to do two things. First, I shall tell you of an old theory as to how food-production might have appeared. Second, I will bother you with some definitions which should help us in our thinking as the story goes on.

AN OLD THEORY AS TO THE CAUSE OF THE REVOLUTION

The idea that change would result, if the balance between nature and culture became upset, is of course not a new one. For at least twenty-five years, there has been a general theory as to how the food-producing revolution happened. This theory depends directly on the idea of natural change in the environment.

The five thousand years following about 10,000 B.C. must have been very difficult ones, the theory begins. These were the years when the most marked melting of the last glaciers was going on. While the glaciers were in place, the climate to the south of them must have been different from the climate in those areas today. You have no doubt read that people once lived in regions now covered by the Sahara Desert. This is true; just when is not entirely clear. The theory is that during the time of the glaciers, there was a broad belt of rain winds south of the glaciers. These rain winds would have kept north Africa, the Nile Valley, and the Middle East green and fertile. But when the glaciers melted back to the north, the belt of rain winds is supposed to have moved north too. Then the people living south and east of the Mediterranean would have found that their water supply was drying up, that the animals they hunted were dying or moving away, and that the plant foods they collected were dried up and scarce.

According to the theory, all this would have been true except in the valleys of rivers and in oases in the growing deserts. Here, in the only places where water was left, the men and animals and plants would have clustered. They would have been forced to live close to one another, in order to live at all. Presently the men would have seen that some animals were more useful or made better food than others, and so they would have begun to protect these animals from their natural enemies. The men would also have been forced to try new plant foods—foods which possibly had to be prepared before they could be eaten. Thus, with trials and errors, but by being forced to live close to plants and animals, men would have learned to domesticate them.

THE OLD THEORY TOO SIMPLE FOR THE FACTS

This theory was set up before we really knew anything in detail about the later prehistory of the Near and Middle East. We now know that the facts which have been found don’t fit the old theory at all well. Also, I have yet to find an American meteorologist who feels that we know enough about the changes in the weather pattern to say that it can have been so simple and direct. And, of course, the glacial ice which began melting after 12,000 years ago was merely the last sub-phase of the last great glaciation. There had also been three earlier periods of great alpine glaciers, and long periods of warm weather in between. If the rain belt moved north as the glaciers melted for the last time, it must have moved in the same direction in earlier times. Thus, the forced neighborliness of men, plants, and animals in river valleys and oases must also have happened earlier. Why didn’t domestication happen earlier, then?

Furthermore, it does not seem to be in the oases and river valleys that we have our first or only traces of either food-production or the earliest farming villages. These traces are also in the hill-flanks of the mountains of western Asia. Our earliest sites of the village-farmers do not seem to indicate a greatly different climate from that which the same region now shows. In fact, everything we now know suggests that the old theory was just too simple an explanation to have been the true one. The only reason I mention it—beyond correcting the ideas you may get in the general texts—is that it illustrates the kind of thinking we shall have to do, even if it is doubtless wrong in detail.

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 eras5—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.

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.

SKETCH OF NATUFIAN ASSEMBLAGE

MICROLITHS
ARCHITECTURE?
BURIAL
CHIPPED STONE
GROUND STONE
BONE