15 Neolithic Evolution

Sangay Diki Bhutia and K.R. Rammohan

Contents:

    1.      Introduction

2.      What is Neolithic Revolution?

3.      Why human became food producers?

4.      Neolithic material culture

4.1 Tool making

4.2. Pottery Housing Clothing Social structure

5.      Culture of Neolithic Settlement

6.      The Neolithic and Human Biology

7.      The Neolithic and the idea of progress

SUMMARY

Learning Objectives

• This module will help the students to understand the concept of Neolithic Evolution.
• This module will enable the students to gain insights into various aspects of Neolithic Evolution.
• This module will equip the students about the significance and contributions of Neolithic evolution.

    1. Introduction

The Neolithic was originally identified primarily in terms of the appearance of stone tools made by polishing and grinding rather than chipping or flaking. Today evidence of the presence of farming is the major criterion of the Neolithic. During the Paleolithic period, people depended on wild plants for food or whichever nature provided for them, but whenever these favored sources of food became scarce, people adjusted by increasing the variety of food eaten and incorporating less desirable foods into their diets.

Over time, the subsistence practices of some people began to transform their ways of living as they became food producers rather than food foragers. Food production had important implication for humans; it has led people to lead a more sedentary life. The change of humans as producers is a revolutionary one in human history that brought about many changes in human life. This happened during the Neolithic and is popularly known as Neolithic Revolution.

2.  What is Neolithic Revolution?

The Neolithic revolution involved far more than the adoption of a limited set of food producing technique. It is the only beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Man the hunter had been free; man the farmer was in chain (Sharad, 1974).

The transition from reliance upon hunting and gathering to reliance upon agriculture is referred as the Neolithic revolution. It is one of the great turning points in the human history. Although it is neglected by economists, interest in the topic has grown hand in hand with attention to the determinants of long– run economic growth, including geography and institutions.

The two principle features of this revolution were those concerned with food supply, the domestication of animals and the cultivation of crops, in sub- tropical lands mostly cereals. The former ensured a supply of animal food available at all times without the trouble and risk of hunting, and of secondary products, milk to drink, skin and hair for garments and so on (Davis, 1960).

Today the evidence of the presence of farming is the major criterion of the Neolithic. The reason for this shift is that the farming permits an entirely new way of life where as it makes little difference to a hunter whether his knives and arrow points are flaked or ground into shape. In Europe polished stone tools appear later than farming and their appearance sometimes is used to distinguish between the early Neolithic and the later or full Neolithic. In other parts of the world, however polished stone tools often are found among people without knowledge of farming.

The term Neolithic was first coined by V. Gordon Childe in 1923, to describe in the series of agricultural revolutions in the Middle Eastern history. V. Gordon Childe often called the Neolithic a “revolution,”, because it opened the door to an entirely new way of life. Man began to produce his food and was less dependent upon the vegans of nature. Man also could build more or permanent villages and live in larger clusters. Moreover, these larger clusters required much less land to survive and hence could be close together. More people and more contacts led to a faster rate of invention and a much faster rate of diffusion. Finally the techniques of farming improved in favorable locations, surplus permitted the support of non-farming specialists and the carrying on of more trade.

By a revolution, Childe did not mean a sudden violent change in men’s ways of living, but that the practice of farming, led ultimately to a radical difference in the way people lived. The first farming was carried on as a sort of side-line by people for whom hunting and gathering still remained important. The number of cultivated plants was few and farming techniques relatively unproductive. Initially only a sharpened stick served for cultivating and planting, and grains were cut with crude sickles made by setting small stone blades in wood or baked clay handles. Even the hoe was not a great improvement, and it was not until the invention of the plow and the use of draft animals that farming really became a successful way of life in many parts of the Old World. The first beginning of farming are not yet known, one important center appears to have been the foothill or upland valleys which form a semi-circle about the lowlands of Mesopotamia. This region appears to be one of the oldest known villages of people who definitely were farmers. In other parts of the old world history seems similar. Farming took nearly 1500 years to reach the Sudan in East Africa and perhaps as long to become well-established in northwest India. It may be that a second and perhaps earlier center of farming developed in Southeast Asia, as Carl Sauer strongly believes, centering around the cultivation of a quite different series of plants.

The village farming way of life was accompanied by numerous other innovations. At a fairly early date animals began to be domesticated. Whether the first domestication was made by farmers is still not certain. It is evident, however, that the earliest domesticated animals were kept primarily for their flesh. Animals were used to draw ploughs and vehicles, which is deemed as later developments. Sedentary life also encouraged the use of pottery instead of containers of basketry or leather. The Neolithic pottery offered the archeologist the best evidence of cultural development and relations between cultures. Thus the village-farming of the Neolithic was a successful new type of adaptation that it spread widely throughout the old World (Beals & Hoijer, 2007).

Fig 1: The shift from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture

Source: https://www.highiqforum.com

3.  Why human became food producers?

There are several theories which have been proposed to account for this change in human subsistence practices. Archaeologist V. Gorden Childe’s theory based on climatic determinism, advanced the idea that the glacial cover over Europe to northern Africa and southwest Asia. When the glaciers retreated northward, so did the rain patterns and as a result Northern Africa and Southwest Asia become dryer, and people were forced to congregate as Oases for water. Because of the relative food in such an environment, necessity drove people to collect the wild grasses and seeds growing around the oases, congregating in a part of Southwest Asia known as the Fertile Crescent.

4. Neolithic material culture

Tool making, pottery, housing and clothing are characterized in the Neolithic villages.

4.1 Tool making

Early harvesting tools were made of wood or bone into which razor sharp flint blades were inserted. Later tools continued to be made by chipping and flaking stone during the Neolithic period, where stone was too hard to be chipped, ground and polished for tools. People developed scythes, forks, hoes and simple plows to replace their simple digging sticks. Mortars and pestles were used to grind and crush grain. Later, when domesticated animals became available for use as draft animals, plows were redesigned.

Fig.1. Flint Arrow Head, 2. Bone Bow and Arrow, 3. Arrow and Quiver, 4. Recreated tools from the Neolithic.

Source: www.alamy.com

4.2 Pottery

In the Neolithic, different forms of pottery was created for transporting and storing food, water and various material possessions. Because pottery vessels are impervious to damage by insects, rodents, etc. In pottery vessels food can be boiled directly over the fire rather than by such ancient techniques as dropping stones heated directly in the fire into the food to be cooked. It was also used for pipes, ladles, lamps and other objects and some cultures used large vessels for disposal of the dead. Pottery container remains important for much of humanity today.

The manufacture of pottery requires artful skill and some technological sophistication. To make a useful vessel requires knowledge of clay: how to remove impurities from it, how to shape it into desired forms, and how to dry it in a way that doesn’t cause cracking. Pottery is decorated in various ways. For example designs can be engraved on the vessels before firing or special rims, legs, bases and other details may be made separated and fastened to the finished pot. Painting is the most common form of pottery decoration and there are literally thousands of painted designs found among the pottery remains of ancient cultures.

Fig 2. Some of Potteries from the Neolithic period.

Source: www.bernardsmith.eu

Housing

Food production and the new sedentary lifestyle brought about another technological development in the mode of human settlement. People started constructing houses for shelter and to protect them from wild animals. Permanent housing is of limited interest to most food foragers who frequently are on the move. In the Neolithic, dwellings became more diverse in type, some were constructed by wood, while others included more elaborate shelters made of stone, sun- dried brick, or branches plastered together with mud or clay sun dried brick, or branches plastered together with mud or clay. Although permanent housing frequently goes along with food production, for example on the Northwestern coast of North America, people live in substantial housing which could exist without food production. For example on the Northwestern coast of North America, people lived in substantial houses made of heavy planks from cedar logs, their food consists entirely of wild plants and animals especially sea mammals.

Clothing

During the Neolithic, clothing was made of woven textiles. The raw material and technology necessary for the production of clothing came from several sources: flax and cotton from farming, wool from domesticated sheep and silk from silk worms.

Social structure

Archeologists draw certain inferences concerning the organization of Neolithic societies. Ceremonial activities existed and little evidence of a centrally organized and directed religious life has been found during Neolithic revolution. Burials, for example show a marked absence of social differentiation, in early Neolithic graves were rarely constructed of or covered by stone slabs and rarely included elaborate objects. Hence, no person from that period had attained the kind of exalted status that would have required an elaborate object. In the smallness of the villages they knew one another very well and were probably highly personal ones, with equal emotional significance (McBride, 2007)

The Neolithic revolution has been studied in lands of cereal cultivation, almost entirely in areas of winter rainfall. For the tropics, with summer rainfall and comparatively few cereals but many root crops, the picture is disjointed. Oswald Menghin made an attempt to work out the Neolithic revolution in the tropics; but although his ideas are interesting, with typically German thoroughness he forced into his picture a large number of imperfectly known facts; and subsequent research has been compelled to reject many of his conclusions. However, little we can accept of what he wrote is that, he pointed the way to an appraisal of non-cereal Neolithic cultures, which it is now possible to explore. (Davies, 1960)

5. Culture of Neolithic Settlement

A number of Neolithic settlements have been excavated, particularly in Southwest Asia. The structures, artifacts, and food debris found at these sites have revealed much about the daily activities of their former inhabitants as they pursued the business of making a living. Perhaps the best known of these sites is Jericho, an early farming community in the Jordan River Valley of Palestine.

Excavations at the Neolithic settlement that later grew to become a city of Jericho, revealed the farming community inhabited as early as 10,350 years ago. To protect their settlement against these floods and associated mudflows, as well as invaders, the people of Jericho built massive walls of stone around it. Within these walls an estimated 400 to 900 people lived in houses of mud brick with plastered floors arranged around courtyards. In addition to these houses, a stone tower that would have taken 100 people and took 104 days to build was located inside one corner of the wall, near the spring.

6.  The Neolithic and Human Biology

From the studies of human skeletons from the Neolithic burials, physical anthropologists have found evidence for a lessened mechanical stress on peoples’ bodies and teeth. The teeth of the Neolithic people generally show less wear, their bones are less robust and osteoarthritis is not as marked as in the skeletons of the Paleolithic and Mesolithic people. On the other hand, there is clear evidence for marked deterioration in the health and mortality, skeletons from Neolithic village show evidence of severe and chronic nutritional stress as well as pathologies related to infectious and deficiency diseases. High starch diets led to increased dental decay during the Neolithic, scientists have recently documented dental drilling of teeth in the 9,000 year-old Neolithic site in Pakistan.

For the most part, the crops on which Neolithic people came to depend were selected for their higher productivity and storability rather than nutritional balance. The increased incidence of disease and mortality was probably the new mode of life in Neolithic communities. Sedentary life in fixed villages brings with it sanitation problems as garbage and human waste accumulated. Another factor was the close association between humans and their domestic animals, a host of life threatening diseases including smallpox, chickenpox and all the infectious diseases of childhood that were not overcome by medical science until the latter half of the 20th century. And these diseases were transmitted to humans through their close associations with domestic animals.

7.  The Neolithic and the idea of progress

During this revolution, some societies continued to practice various forms of hunting, gathering, others became horticultural-small communities of gardener working with simple hand tools and using neither irrigation nor plow. They typically cultivate a variety of crops in small gardens they have cleared by hand. Some horticultural societies developed agriculture where agriculturalist practice intensive crop cultivation employing plows, fertilizers and possibly irrigation. They use wooden or metal plow pulled by one or more harnessed draft animals, such as the horse, oxen or water buffalo to produce food on larger plots of land.

SUMMARY

The Neolithic Revolution is the transformation of human societies from being hunter-gatherer to agriculture. This revolution brought many changes to human society and culture. The term “Neolithic Revolution” refers to both the period of time when it occurred as well as the enduring changes it caused. This is also known as the transition of many human cultures from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement. The Neolithic revolution involved the adoption of a limited set of food- producing techniques. Archaeological data indicates the domestication of various types of plants and animals evolved in separate locations worldwide, starting the geological epoch of the Holocene. It was first historically verifiable revolution in the agriculture of the world. The changes also include the way people lived and the types of art they invented. Neolithic sculpture became more widespread and it was used to store food harvested from farms.

References

• Begon, M.; Townsend, C.R.; Harper, J.L(2005) Ecology: From Individuals to Ecosystems 4th edn..Blackwell Publishing Malden, MA
• Blute, M. (2008). Cultural Ecology. In D. Pearsall (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Archaeology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Elsevier Science & Technology
• Davis O (1974) “The Neolithic Revolution In Tropical Africa” http://www.jstor.org.stable/41405727 [Accessed:4-5-2016]
• Frake,C.O ( 1962)’ Cultural Ecology and Ethnography.’ American Anthropologist, 64, 53-59
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• Hoijer H Beals R.L (2007) “ An Introduction to Anthropology” New Delhi: Surjeet Publication
• Mcbride B, Walrath D, Prins H. E. L & Haviland W.A (2007) “The Essence of Anthropology” USA: Thomson Wadsworth.
• Sharad D (1974) “The Neolithic Revolution: An Analogical Overview” http://www.jstor.org/stable/3786353/stable/3786353 [Accessed: 5-6-2016]

    Suggested Readings

• Alan H. Simmons. 2007. The Neolithic Revolution in the Near East: Transforming the Human Landscape. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson.
• Bender, Barbara. 1975. Farming in prehistory: from hunter-gatherer to food-producer. New York: St. Martin’s.
• Bocquet-Appel, J.-P., and O. Bar-Yosef, eds. 2008. The Neolithic demographic transition and its consequences. Dordrecht: Springer.
• Gordon Childe,V. 1939. Man Makes Himself. The New American Library. NY.
• Miles, David.2016. The Tale of the Axe: How the Neolithic Revolution Transformed Britain. Thames and Hudson, UK.
• Peltenburg, E.J. and Alexander Wasse.2004. Neolithic Revolution: new perspectives on southwest Asia in light of recent discoveries on Cyprus. Oxbow books. Oxford.
• Rindos, D. 1984 The origins of agriculture: an evolutionary perspective. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
• Smith, Bruce D. 2011. The cultural context of plant domestication in eastern North America.Current Anthropology 52(suppl. 4):S471–S484
• Winterhalder, Bruce, and Douglas J. Kennett, eds. 2006. Behavioral ecology and the transition to agriculture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Zeder, Melinda A. 2011. The origins of agriculture in the Near East. Current Anthropology 52(suppl. 4):S221–S235
• Zohary, D., and M. Hopf. 2000. Domestication of plants in the Old World: the origin and spread of cultivated plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley. 3rd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.