PPNB

The PPNB followed the PPNA in the Middle East. In the PPNB, towns were established with both farms and domesticated animals, and the synergy between domesticated crop and animal production led to a dramatic increase in wealth. Technology also led to improved living standards. House construction incorporated plaster and rectilinear construction methods (Figure 14‑26). The villages were able to provide for their population without needing everyone to be involved in agriculture. This enabled people to devote more time to arts, crafts, and technologies.

There is a natural symbiotic relationship between farmers and herders in which farmers grow grain to feed the flocks. This combination led to reliable grain and meat supplies and much greater wealth than communities without both farmers and herders. Nevertheless, the melding of herders and farmers had its problems. One disadvantage was that diseases were transferred from humans to animals and vice versa. New towns were then established that segregated animals and humans and efficiently addressed waste disposal.

Rectangular construction began in the PPNB. It was much stronger then circular construction. The PPNB communities also developed other new techniques such as air vent shafts for cooling in the walls of the buildings.

Ain Ghazal is a PPNB Stone Age ruin with hundreds of houses near Amman Jordan (east side of Jordan Valley). The homes had plaster walls and floors. It had about 3,000 people living in square houses along the upper end of the Zarqa River, below Amman. The river originates in a spring, which provided a steady year-round supply of water.

The people of Ain Ghazal had some interesting religious/ancestor worship practices. They exposed bodies to birds of prey in order to have the flesh picked off. Then, they covered the skulls with plaster in order to form a plaster head. They also made plaster figures and attached the plaster skulls to the tops of the figures. A few had dual skulls on top of the figures (Figure 14‑26), which seem to have represented a symbolic joining of Jericho (Figure 14‑26) on one side of the Jordan Valley with Ain Ghazal on the other. From Amman, one can look across the Jordan Valley and see the lights of Jerusalem. Jericho is at the base of the valley and can be seen when one is driving down to the rod from Amman to the Jordan Valley.

Plaster production led to environmental problems. At Ain Ghazal the production of plaster by burning wood began to deplete the forest. Also, goats ate the saplings so that no new trees grew. This caused an environmental collapse and the Ain Ghazal population dropped from 3,000 to several hundred. Survivors became herders ranging across the highlands. The community at Jericho also collapsed at the end of the PPNB. The collapse took place during a massive drought that took place between 6200 to 6000 BC. This drought impacted much of the world and caused the collapse of all farming communities in the Fertile Crescent. As with the Younger Dryas, this global drought and climate change event was initiated by the drainage of an enormous glacial lake into the North Atlantic and the resultant disruption of the North Atlantic current. The North Atlantic Current normally brings warm waters and a warmer and wetter climate to the North Atlantic.

Catal Huyuk underwent changes during the drought between 6,200 and 6,000 BC, but it was at the edge of the drought region and was not wiped out. Soil cores reveal that alluvial deposition (flooding) ceased after the drought, and a stable ground surface formed.[2] Thus, scientists conclude that the river flowed through wet marshes and flooded prior to the drought, but the river stopped flooding, and the marshes dried up during the drought. Apparently, this caused the people of Catal Huyuk to move from a mound on the east side of the river to a mound on the west side.

Due to the drought, there was a general trend of people moving westward to Europe, first occupying sites in the west (Greece, western Turkey, and Bulgaria), and abandoning sites such as Jericho.[3] The drought did not impact Europe to the extent that it impacted the Middle East. The Middle Easterners transferred their knowledge to the hunter gatherers in Europe. Native Europeans and Middle Eastern migrants began to chop down trees with stone axes in order to clear the land for agriculture. Those who eventually moved northward initially found it impossible to farm in northern Europe, but they developed heavier plows to farm the more difficult soils.

References

[1] Roberts, Neil, and Arlene Rosen. "Diversity and complexity in early farming communities of southwest Asia: new insights into the economic and environmental basis of Neolithic Çatalhöyük." Current Anthropology 50, no. 3 (2009): 393-402.

[2] Roberts, Diversity. p. 395.

[3] Bonsall, C, Mark Macklin, Robert Payton, and Adina Boroneant. “Climate, floods, and river gods: environmental change and the Meso-Neolithic transition in southeast Europe.” Before Farming 2002, no. 3-4 (2002): 1-15.

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"Fertile crescent Neolithic B circa 7500 BC; black squares indicate pre-agricultural sites " Credit: GFDL. Used here per CC BY-SA 3.0.