Stone Age Mesopotamia

10,000 year old tower from Jericho

Episode 3: Neolithic Farming, Trading and Pottery

Ancient Mesopotamia: Life in the Cradle of Civilization

Dr Amanda H Podany

Film Review

This lecture covers the Neolithic (new Stone Age) period in Mesopotamia (9,000 – 5,000 BC). During this period, plants and animals domesticated by pre-Neolithic settlers provided the bulk of people’s diet. However most residents added to their diet by fishing, hunting and gathering berries and other plant-based food.

Remains from the first farming settlements are found in northern Mesopotamia and the Levant [1], both areas with sufficient rainfall not to require irrigation. Peas and Lentils were grown close to the Eastern Mediterranean and Einkorn wheat in the Western Levant. Sheep, pigs, goats and cattle were herded in northern Mesopotamia. The rest of region was uninhabited prior to the advent of irrigation technology, except for Jericho. The latter relied on Persian Gulf agricultural settlements fed by a natural spring.

Tools used during this period relied on obsidian (which made the best knives), imported from Anatolia,[2] and bitumen (made from petroleum deposits), used to waterproof baskets and boats. Early inhabitants of Mesopotamia also adopted a new use of fire, which was first discovered by pre-human hominids. They burned limestone to make plaster, and to cover walls and floors and for food storage vessels and human figurines.[3]

Around 6,000 BC, Mesopotamian farmers moved south into flood plains lying between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Thanks to thousands of years of silt laid down by the two rivers, they found the soil there extremely fertile. Moreover with the fields lying downhill from the rivers, it was easy to exploit early summer floods by building simple dykes, levees and reinforced irrigation channels.

The city of Samarra dates from this later period. Samarra culture is characterized by distinctive clay pots (repaired with bitumen) and figurines. The Samarrans grew barley and several kinds of wheat and herded sheep, goats and cattle. They also hunted and fished.

Tel Halaf in Northeastern Syria was another city (5700 – 5000 BC) appearing during this period. Thanks to abundant rainfall, no irrigation was necessary.

Jericho and a second settlement known as Catal Huyuk grew large enough to qualify as towns (defined as hundreds of residents) during this period.

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[1]The Levant is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia.

[2]Anatolia is a large peninsula in Western Asia that constitute the major part of modern-day Turkey.

[3]Although clay was used to make bricks, there was no clay pottery as yet. The advantage of clay pots is you can use them for cooking (plaster vessels disintegrate when they come in contact with fire. With clay pots, it became possible to make porridge out of grains, as well as clay ovens to cook flatbread.

Film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy.

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/neolithic-farming-trading-and-pottery

The Paleolithic Era and the Origin of Homo Sapiens

Episode 1: Foraging in the Old Stone Age

The Big History of Civilizations

Craig G Benjamin (2016)

Film Review

This is the best presentation I have ever seen about the Paleolithic era (the early Stone age). According to fossil evidence, the species Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa in 200,000 BC. They began migrating out of Africa around 100,000 BC. They reached southwest Asia and Europe by 90,000 BC, Australia by 50,000 BC, and Siberia and the New World by 15,000 BC.*

The most significant advances Homo sapiens made during the Paleolithic era stemmed from their unique ability to employ collective learning. This allowed the species to adapt, though a variety of ingenious technologies to two long ice ages that occurred prior to 10,000 BC.

According to Benjamin, Paleolithic humans lived through two major ice ages, one dating from 190,000 – 123,000 BP and one dating from 110,000 to 11,000 BP.  During each of these periods, ice covered 30% of planet Earth. Areas not covered by ice were dry deserts in which food was extremely scarce.

Paleolithic humans relied on collective foraging for food, using tools they invented and collective earning (garnered over generations) for digging, hunting, carrying and cooking food and collective learning garnered over generations. Like modern foragers, they lived in family groups of 10-50 people and assumed collective responsibility for governance and addressing wrongdoing. Elaborate gift giving rituals evolved to help solidify communities, with different family groups meeting together to exchange gifts, find mates, dance, play games.

Their skeletal remains suggest they were well nourished and were free from major epidemics. Their artwork suggests they had plenty of leisure time and viewed themselves as part of the natural world around them.

Their main impact on the environment was to drive all native mega fauna to extinction wherever they migrated. In Eurasia, large animals hunted to extinction included the mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and the giant elk. In the Americas animals hunted to extinction included the prehistoric horse, the elephant, the giant armadillo and the giant sloth. In Australia, the arrival of human beings killed off giant kangaroos and other giant marsupial species.

Benjamin believes human migrants were also responsible for the demise of Homo neanderthalis.

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*Some Native American scholars believe human beings reached North and South America by 30,000 BC.

This film can be viewed free on Kanopy: https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/foraging-old-stone-age

When England Was Connected to the European Continent

When Doggerland Sank Beneath the Waves: Europe’s Lost World

Directed by Pete Kelly (2020)

Film Review

This documentary concerns the continental shelf that connected Ireland, the UK and Europe during the last Ice Age. The filmmakers date the start of the Paleolithic or Stone Age (ie the first human use of stone tools) to 3.3 million years ago.

In Britain the oldest human remains date from 400,000 – 500,000 years ago. For the most part,  they derive the species Homo neanderthalensis. Neanderthals lived during a period when when several human species roamed planet earth. They became extinct around 35,000 BC.

The first British evidence of modern humans (homo sapiens) dates from 31,000 BC. There’s good evidence these early hunter gatherers traveled hundreds of miles, across the Doggerland* land bridge, following herds of woolly mammoth. They would be forced to retreat to more southern areas of Europe when the last ice sheet covered Britain from 31,000 – 11,000 BC.

As northern Europe began to warm in 3,000 BC, tundra throughout Europe gradually changed to savanna and forestland featuring lions, hyenas, saber tooth tigers, bears, hares, badgers and primitive horses. During the period Doggerland connected Britain to the continent, the Thames flowed into the Seine and Danube Rivers.

Between 8,000 – 6,200 BC, rising sea levels steadily shrank the size of Doggerland. By 7,500 BC, Ireland was a separate island and by 7,000 BC, most of Doggerland were so marshy people could only travel to Europe by boat. The Doggerland Hills remained until 6,200 BC, when evidence suggests they were submerged by a mega-tsunami triggered by a landslide off the Norwegian coast.

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*The name Doggerland derives from the Dogger Banks, a shallow region off East Anglia, renowned for abundant fish catches. Dogger is the Dutch word for fisherman.

 

The Stone Age: The Prehistoric Origins of European Peoples.

Secrets of the Stone Age

DW (2018)

Film Review

The main focus of this documentary is the massive stone monuments (eg Stonehenge) all human civilizations built between 6,000 and 2,000 BC and the steady migration of farming peoples from the Middle East to Western Europe during the same period.

In Part 1, archeologists explain how they use DNA and isotope analysis to trace the Middle Eastern origin of prehistoric human and cattle remains they find in Europe. Their findings reveal that following the 10,000 BC agricultural revolution, groups of farmers gradually migrated (by sea and overland) from northern Iran and Anatolia* as far west as the Europe’s western coast.

Large stone monoliths are found throughout the Mediterranean and along the west coast of continental Europe, Britain, Ireland and Scotland. These monoliths aren’t present where migrants traveled overland through the Balkans (where they lacked access large boulders). There’s growing evidence they built similar massive structures out of wood. The latter is more prone to decay.

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*Anatolia is a large peninsula in northern Turkey.

Part 2 is mainly concerned with 7,000 BC stone edifices (used as homes, livestock pens, and tombs)recently  discovered in southwest Jordan. According to archeologists, these structures represent the oldest known “sedentary”* culture (the Ba’ja) in the world.

This episode also looks at research into the technologies used to transport and position stone monuments that could weigh as much as 130 tonnes. There is compelling evidence the stones were transported over water in massive sailing vessels and over flat inland distances with ramps and teams of oxen.

Fertility statues from this period, along with cultural artifacts found in Stone Age tombs, suggest men and women shared equal status during this period. Likewise forensic examination of skeletal remains reveals a total absence of warfare during this period.

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*In cultural anthropology, sedentism refers to the practice of living in one area over and extended period – in contrast to hunter gatherers who were nomadic.

 

Archeologists Find Indoor Stone Toilet from 3,300 BC

The World of Stonehenge – Part 3 The Age of Cosmology

BBC (2018)

Film Review

The Age of Cosmology describes Britain’s late Neolithic Age between 4,000 and 3,00 BC. The age Stonehenge dates from, this period is mainly characterized by the rise of a priestly class and an interest in spirituality and cosmology. Both Britain and Ireland are home to hundreds of large stone monuments like Stonehenge. They are all astronomically aligned to the summer and winter solstice and are unknown anywhere else. Some of Ireland’s neolithic stone monuments predate the Egyptian pyramids.

In addition to circular stone monuments, archeologists also find remains of large green stone axe “factories” and stone beads from this period, along with evidence of cremation. The latter was reserved for the priestly classes, to hasten their journey to the afterlife.

Archeologists have also found the remains of an indoor stone toilet in the Orkney Islands dating from 3,300 BC.

 

The Coming Collapse

Surviving Progress

Harold Crooks and Mathieu Roy (2011)

Film Review

Surviving Progress is based on Canadian Ronald Wright’s 2004 book A Short History of Progress and takes up where the book leaves off. The book’s main focus is the collapse of historic civilizations due to dangerous technological innovation. It introduces the term (originally coined by German economist Walter Kramer) “progress trap,” to designate technological innovations that have dangerous and unforeseen unintended consequences. An example used in both the book and the film is the case of the wooly mammoth – how new Stone Age techniques that vastly improved efficiency caused the species to become extinct.

The film, in contrast, focuses on our present “progress trap,” and the biological determinants that cause civilizations to produce progress traps. It features a broad range of experts in addition to Wright, including psychologists, geneticists, primatologist Jane Goodell, environmentalist David Suzuki, economist Michael Hudson and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking.

The filmmakers start from the premise that humanity has entered a final progress trap. In the past when civilizations collapsed, homo sapiens simply moved on and started new ones somewhere else. Our present civilization covers the entire planet, and this is no longer possible. The technologies we’ve devised over 200 years have become so ecologically destructive the coming collapse could easily spell the extinction of our species.

The case the Stephen Hawking, the psychologists, geneticists put forward is that our Stone Age brains are incapable of dealing appropriately with advanced technology – that the only conceivable way to prevent collapse is through some kind of human genetic engineering. I have a major problem with any hypothesis that blames the failure of capitalist civilization on human nature. In my experience, it’s not human nature that makes people into greedy, individualistic sociopaths, but an economic system that rewards people for being greedy and competitive and punishes them for being compassionate.

I also had a problem with the way the filmmakers left out half of humanity by designating male competitive behaviors as typical of the entire human species. As geneticist Bryan Sykes argue in Adam’s Curse, the Stone Age reptilian traits described in the documentary are extremely rare in human females (and most males for that matter). In fact, it’s extremely rare for women to commit violent crimes, become tyrants or start wars. (I will post a review of Adam’s Curse later in the week).

I found economist Michael Hudson’s contributions far more valuable. He talks about the role oligarchy, extreme inequality and ecological destruction in causing past civilizations to collapse. He gives the example of Rome, in which confiscation of public land by aristocrats led to rapid overgrazing and topsoil depletion. Two hundred years later Rome collapsed, owing to their inability to feed their empire.