Neolithic Age

The Neolithic Age:

In the Neolithic (ne uh lith’ ik), or New Stone Age, about 8000 B.C., people changed from food gatherers to food producers. Over several thousand years they began to obtain most of their food from farming. This brought about such great changes in the way they lived that experts call the beginning of farming the Neolithic Revolution.

Farmers and Herders:

Two important discoveries brought on the Neolithic Revolution. One was learning to grow food. The other was learning to herd animals.

Experts believe that people discovered that seed from wild grains, such as wheat and barley, could be planted and harvested. This probably came about when they noticed that new shoots had grown from spilled grain. Scientists believe agriculture developed independently in different parts of the world. In southwestern Asia, early people grew wheat and barley, and in eastern Asia, they grew millet, rice, and soy beans. In Mexico, they grew corn, squash, and potatoes, and they grew peanuts and a grain called sorghum in Africa.

People probably learned they could herd animals when a hunting band built fences to enclose a herd of wild animals they had chased into a ravine. The hunters killed one animal at a time, saving the rest for later. Soon captured animals began to lose their fear of people and became domesticated, or tamed, and the hunters became herders. In time, Neolithic people were breeding animals to improve the animals’ qualities. People also began using certain animals such as donkeys, camels, and llamas as pack animals.

The Neolithic Revolution greatly increased people’s food supplies. With more food available, the population, or number of people, began to grow. Experts think there were about 5 million people in the world in 8000 B.C. Within 4,000 years the population grew to about 90 million. People were also living longer.

Specialization:

A result of increased food supplies was specialization, or the development of occupations. Fewer people were needed to produce food so they began to do jobs that had nothing to do with food. They became potters, weavers, and metal workers. They exchanged the things they made for grain, fruit, and meat.

Specialization was aided by a number of developments. One was that people learned to make pottery by baking clay. They used pottery for carrying, cooking, and storing food. This enabled them to add such things as soups and stews to their diet.

In addition, people learned to weave cloth. People took wool from sheep, spun it into thread, and wove the thread into cloth on a loom, which was invented during the Neolithic Age. They dyed the cloth bright colors and used it for clothing.

Neolithic people also learned to work metals. They picked up lumps of copper, lead, gold, and silver that they found lying on the ground and hammered these metals into beads and jewelry. Soon they learned how to shape the metal into weapons. Because metals found on the ground were scarce, however, people continued to work mostly in stone, bone, and wood.

Government and Religion:

Another development of Neolithic times was village government. It was more complex than government in earlier times due to land ownership. People’s lives depended on the use of a given piece of land. As a result, people began to protect what they had. They set boundaries and passed their land on to their children.

Even so, disputes often arose over land ownership. To keep order in Neolithic villages, a single chief was chosen. Besides settling disputes, the chief, with the help of a small group of people, directed village activities.

Experts believe that the chiefs of most Neolithic villages were also priests. They handled religious duties for the village which included offering prayers for things people needed, such as rich soil, healthy animals, and water for crops.

At first, Neolithic people prayed to the forces of nature that they saw around them. After a time, they created gods and goddesses to represent these forces. The most important was the Earth Mother, the goddess of fertility. Many of the houses in Catal Hüyük, for example, had altars for this goddess.

Archaeologists believe that more elaborate religious customs and ceremonies appeared at this time. Neolithic people began to build separate altars and other places of worship for their many gods and goddesses.

Early Villages:

Once people began to produce food, they were able to settle in one place. They built permanent shelters and formed villages of about 150 to 200 people in areas with a good soil and water supply. The earliest known villages in the world have been found in southwestern Asia. One of the oldest is Jericho (jer´ uh ko¯) in the West Bank between Israel and Jordan. It dates back to about 8000 B.C.E Another is Abu Hureyra (ah bu hu ra´ rah) in Syria, which was founded about 500 years later. A third early village is Catal Hüyük (kat’ uhl hu´ yuk) located in Turkey. People lived there from about 6500 to 5700 B.C.

CATAL HUYUK, a Neolithic proto-city of 7,000 b.c.e. Dorling Kindersley "Knowledge Encyclopedia". Based off archaeological findings. Archaeologists know a great deal about Catal Hüyük because it was struck by a fire that blackened rather than destroyed wooden and cloth objects. The blackening helped preserve the objects. Evidence shows the houses in Catal Hüyük were made of sun-dried mud brick. They had flat roofs made of reeds plastered over with mud. The walls and roofs were supported by a post-and-lintel, or a horizontal length of wood or stone placed across two upright poles. The post-and-lintel was an important contribution to architecture because it enabled buildings to support weight above an open space.

The End of the Neolithic Age

During the late Neolithic Age, people made more technological advances. Toolmakers created better farming tools as the need for them arose. These included hoes for digging soil, sickles for cutting grain, and millstones for grinding flour. In some regions, people began to work with metals, including copper. Workers heated rocks and discovered melted copper inside them. They then experimented with making the copper into tools and weapons. These proved to be easier to make and use than those made of stone.

Craftspeople in western Asia discovered that mixing copper and tin formed bronze. This was a technological breakthrough because bronze was stronger than copper. Bronze became widely used between 3000 and 1200 b.c.e This period is known as the Bronze Age. Few people, however, could afford bronze and continued to use tools and weapons made of stone.

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