#pre-pottery neolithic

[historyfiles]

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B: the PPNB marked the arrival of full agricultural domestication in the Fertile Crescent, a period which lasts longer than its predecessor and is divided by archaeologists into early, middle, and late phases.

[adarkerdai]

Pillar 43, Göbekli Tepe

[niteshade925]

April 13, Xi'an, China, Shaanxi Archaeology Museum/陕西考古博物馆 (Part 1 - Neolithic to pre-Qin dynasty):

Unfortunately I was not able to acquire tickets to the Shaanxi History Museum/陕西历史博物馆, which is one of my biggest regrets from this entire trip, because Shaanxi History Museum is the provincial-level museum, it has a lot more artifacts. Xi’an is the capital city of Shaanxi Province, so it has both the city-level museum and the provincial-level museum; the one I posted about previously, Xi’an museum, is just the city-level museum.

But fortunately Xi’an has a quite a few history museums, which makes sense considering the city’s very long history, so on we go to the Shaanxi Archaeology Museum:

For the longest time I also thought archaeology was a very European thing, but actually? It did also exist in ancient China. The word guxue/古学 (lit. “Antiquity Studies”) existed as early as Eastern Han dynasty (25 - 220 AD), and by Song dynasty (960 - 1279 AD), kaoguxue/考古学/archaeology was pretty well known. Sidenote: the word 考古学 may not mean exactly the same thing as archaeology in Song dynasty, but today it just means archaeology. Below is the Song-era kaoguxue work named 《考古图》 (this book on display was printed in Qing dynasty, judging by the cover):

Compare the above with the notes of a modern archaeologist:

A collection of interesting Neolithic era pottery artifacts with various faces on them. Some are from Yangshao culture/仰韶文化 (5000 - 2700 BC). I swear you can make reaction pics out of these lol

They even have these refrigerator magnet souvenirs lol

Is that a pottery piggy on the right? This piggy looks oddly familiar…

Which reminds me of this other pottery pig found near the Sanxingdui/三星堆 site (Picture from Douyin user 姜丝炒土豆丝). Looks very familiar indeed lol

A pottery drum reminiscent of an udu drum. The one in the front is a replica that visitors can try out

Left: a pottery artifact with a frog face on it. Right: a pottery tiger I think? Not sure.

Shang dynasty (1600 - 1046 BC) jade dragon:

Carved stone bricks from the neolithic site of Shimao/石峁 (~2000 BC). These were originally found in the outer walls of the site, which is why they are presented this way:

Mouth harp artifacts from Shimao culture (top one is a modern one, for comparison). There’s also a map on the many variations of mouth harps from cultures around the world, which is really cool:

Fragments of bone flutes. These were flutes fashioned from crane bones, the most famous of which were the intact flutes unearthed from the Jiahu/贾湖 site dating back to 7000 - 5700 BC, and they were still playable (first link is the 1999 Nature article regarding this discovery, second link goes to a recording of a modern musician playing the song 小白菜 on one of these bone flutes)

A Western Zhou dynasty (1046 – 771 BC) bone hairpin. There were quite a few hairpins in the exhibition, but this is my fav:

And now comes the really cool stuff: oracle/divination bones. Oracle/divination bones were animal bones that ancient Chinese people (mostly of Shang-era) used for divination. These bones have holes drilled into them in a pattern and have oracle bone script/jiaguwen/甲骨文 carved into them (the carved text consists of questions presented to the gods), and then they were heated slowly over a fire until the bone starts to crack. A priest or priestess would then interpret these cracks, as they were seen as answers from the gods, and record the answer on the bone. Sometimes these bones were used purely as records for important events:

Since oracle bone script is the oldest form of Chinese written language, it is possible to decipher the text carved onto these bones:

[moodymisty]

Emperor was born on Old Earth during prehistoric times before even the Age of Terra, somewhere in ancient central Anatolia (modern Turkey) in the 8th Millennium B.C.

The 8th millennium BC spanned the years 8000 BC to 7001 BC (c. 10 ka to c. 9 ka). In chronological terms, it is the second full millennium of the current Holocene epoch and is entirely within the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) phase of the Early Neolithic. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis, or by radiometric dating.

Because of this, the man probably gooned over figures such as Venus of Willendorf or Venus of Moravany. He HAS to be into bigger people (the exception being Malcador because they definitely fucked and the man was definitely thinner than a twig, in contrast to the Emperor's perfect, oiled form). The Emperor is a bisexual and kinky mf, with the genetic makeup going onto his sons and some of his creations

Comrade it is 5 in the morning we are not timelining the Emperor’s kinky genes right now XD

[blueiscoool]

A Very Rare 9,000-year-old Neolithic Stone Mask Unveiled

A rare stone mask from the Neolithic period has been unveiled for the first time by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The mask was recovered by the Anti-Robbery Unit at the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), and transferred to the Archaeology Department of the Civil Administration in Judea and Samaria for further study.

The mask was discovered near Pnei Hever, an Israeli settlement east of Hebron in the West Bank. Ronit Lupu, an archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) said that a man had been walking through a field when he picked up the mask from the ground and eventually turned it over to the IAA's Antiquities Theft Prevention Unit.

"This was an innocent find, and the person who found it was the person who showed us where he found it," Lupu said.

Lupu and her colleagues think the mask probably was brought to the surface by agricultural activities that disturbed the soil. The field is full of Neolithic artifacts, indicating that there is an archaeological site underground, which the researchers hope to excavate eventually, Lupu said.

According to a press statement by the IAA, the mask is made of yellow-rose limestone and was crafted during the Neolithic period around 9,000-years-ago.

Ronit Lupo from the IAA, said: “The design of the mask has facial features that are perfect and symmetrical, even shaped cheekbones, an impressive nose, and a mouth showing the teeth”.

Only 16 stone masks from this period have been unearthed, many of which were discovered in the southern area of the Mount Hebron-Jehuda Desert. They all share similar traits and characteristics in their production, suggesting that they belong to the same Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) culture group.

People living during this period saw the onset of the Agricultural Revolution and relied heavily upon domesticated animals to supplement their earlier agrarian and hunter-gatherer diet.

PPNB sites found in the Levant feature human skulls covered in layers of plaster or buried beneath the floors of ancient dwellings. According to experts, this type of activity represents an early form of ancestor worship. “These stone masks are somewhat similar to human faces, and so they tend to be linked to this worship,” added Lupo.

The PPNB culture disappeared during the 8.2 kiloyear event, a term that climatologists have adopted for a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200-years-ago and lasted for up to two centuries.

A representative of the IAA explained: “The discovery of the mask confirms our assumption that the southern area of Mount Hebron was a centre for the production of stone masks, and apparently also for religious activity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic.”

By Mark Milligan and Megan Gannon.

[whencyclopedia]

Neolithic Period

The term Neolithic Period refers to the last stage of the Stone Age - a term coined in the late 19th century CE by scholars which covers three different periods: Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic. The Neolithic period is significant for its megalithic architecture, the spread of agricultural practices, and the use of polished stone tools.

Chronology

The term Neolithic or New Stone Age is most frequently used in connection with agriculture, which is the time when cereal cultivation and animal domestication was introduced. Because agriculture developed at different times in different regions of the world, there is no single date for the beginning of the Neolithic. In the Near East, agriculture was developed around 9,000 BCE, in Southeast Europe around 7,000 BCE, and later in other regions. Even within a specific region, agriculture developed during different times. For example, agriculture first developed in Southeast Europe about 7,000 BCE, in Central Europe about 5,500 BCE, and Northern Europe about 4,000 BCE. In East Asia, the Neolithic goes from 6000 to 2000 BCE.

Pottery is another element that makes the dating of the Neolithic problematic. In some regions, the appearance of pottery is considered a symbol of the Neolithic, but this notion makes the term Neolithic even more ambiguous, since the use of pottery does not always occur after agriculture: in Japan, pottery appears before agriculture, while in the Near East agriculture pre-dates pottery production.

All these factors make the starting point of the Neolithic somewhat fuzzy. It should be remembered that the origin of the term lies in a late 19th century CE classification system (detailed above) and we must keep in mind its limitations.

Continue reading...

[gothhabiba]

here's one that's even more bonkers that I didn't report on. it involves writers over at Haaretz being very incompetent.

on the age of chickpea cultivation in Palestine, people variously say 10,000 BC, 8400 BC, 8000 BC, 7000 BC &c. as if at random.

foodtimeline.org (which supposedly provides sources to the researcher but has betrayed me many, many times) cites: Food in the Ancient World From A to Z, Andrew Dalby [Routledge: London] 2003 (p. 84).

Dalby says:

Chickpea, one of the oldest cultivated pulses in the Near East. Chickpeas were grown in Palestine by 8000 BC.

this book is actually useless from a research perspective and belongs to what I like to call the "just some guy saying something" approach to making claims. none of the works cited at the end of the page on chickpeas (yes! none of the claims are associated with a particular work! there are no footnotes! so if you want to trace a particular claim, you've gotta look in each work mentioned! lol!) are scholarly works either, all of them also belong to the "some guy saying something" school of thought, and, most dizzyingly, none of them contain the 8000 BC claim!

okay, let's take another tack. wikipedia says:

"The earliest well-preserved archaeobotanical evidence of chickpea outside its wild progenitor's natural distribution area comes from the site of Tell el-Kerkh, in modern Syria, dating back to the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic period around (c.8400BCE). [12]"

[12] turns out to be an article titled "The Strange Origin Story of the Chickpea" on Haaretz (ugh), which is hardly a scholarly source, but perhaps it cites one! Haaretz says:

The question addressed in a new paper published in May in the journal of Molecular Biology and Evolution is historic: how the domestic chickpea arose and spread, first apparently to the Middle East – signs of chickpea domestication were identified in el-Kerkh, Syria, that may be as old as the 10th millennium B.C.E. – and onwards, the western Mediterranean and to Asia, and to eastern Africa (specifically, Ethiopia).

the particularly sharp-eyed among you may notice that "10th millennium BC" (10,000 to 9,001 BC) is a different claim from "8400 BC," but, oh well, let's click that link.

it's a paper titled "Historical Routes for Diversification of Domesticated Chickpea Inferred from Landrace Genomics." it contains no references to the finds in el-Kerkh, or to a 10th millennium BC claim, or a 9th century BC (which the year 8400 belongs to) claim; it's more about developing a model to trace spread, rather than attesting evidence for any particular date. the author of this article must have just added the information about the site in Syria from, idk, their own background knowledge? lol.

but let's keep pushing this. elsewhere in the same article, a paper titled "Draft genome sequence of Cicer reticulatum L., the wild progenitor of chickpea provides a resource for agronomic trait improvement" is linked. this paper contains in its introduction the claim:

Chickpea was domesticated with wheat, barley, peas and lentil as a member of West Asian Neolithic crops during the origin of agriculture around 10,000 years ago with the oldest archaeological evidence from 7500 B.C.4,5 

also a very different claim from both "8400" and "10th millennium BC", but okay, let's try to trace this one.

citation 4 is a paper titled "Evolution of cultivated chickpea: four bottlenecks limit diversity and constrain adaptation," and it also has to do with something completely different from archaeological evidence for chickpea cultivation. in reference to the claim it is cited to support, it contains only the sentence:

Chickpea is [...] associated with the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent some 10000 years ago.

for this rather vague claim, they themselves cite two other sources: 2000, Lev-Yadun et al. "The cradle of agriculture," Science 288, 1602-1603; and 1999, Zohary D, Hoph M "Monophyletic vs. polyphyletic origin of the crops on which agriculture was founded in the Near East," Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 46, 133-142.

citation 5 is Harlan J. R. 1971, "Agricultural origins: centers and noncenters," Science, 174, 468–474. this one says, summarizing other research, that in the "Near East" (bleucgh)

barley, einkorn, emmer, peas, lentils, flax, vetch, and chickpeas appear to have been domesticated, together with sheep, goats, pigs, and possibly cattle.

the source for this sentence is G. Wright and A. Gordus, Amler. J. Archaeol. 73, 75 (1969).

okay, well, this is starting to get obviously silly; trying to trace these claims further and further back until a primary report of an actual archaeology site is found is clearly pointless, especially since at this rate the find would be from like 1954 and almost certainly new evidence has come to light since then.

let's try something else. despite the fact that Haaretz's "signs of chickpea domestication were identified in el-Kerkh, Syria, that may be as old as the 10th millennium B.C.E" claim didn't actually come from the source that they cited, surely it must have come from somewhere?

I find two papers describing the finds in el-Kerkh, written by the same team. "The origins of cultivation of Cicer arietinum L. and Vicia faba L.: early finds from Tell el-Kerkh, north-west Syria, late 10th millennium B.P." is the one that deals specifically with the chickpea findings.

aha! here, perhaps, is the source of the "10th millennium BC" claim! I suspect someone misread the title of this article, and read nothing else!!

the trouble is twofold: 1. "10th millennium BP" is given as the age of the site, not specifically of the cultivated chickpeas that were found; and 2:

"BP" is not "BC"!!!

"BP" is a metric of time used in carbon dating. it means "before present." the "present" is set to the year 1950, since this is close to when carbon dating was introduced. 10,000 years before 1950 is 8050 BC, and this is the absolute oldest date allowable based on just the title of the paper.

however, if we actually read the paper (or, I mean, skim it for a date, lol), we finally find something concerned with dating a particular site rather than making a genetic model; still better, we find this beautiful, readily comprehensible table shewing us "Archaeobotanical records for C. arietinum [...] in the early Neolithic periods", citing a specific site, the number of beans found there, the estimated date BP of those beans based on carbon dating, and a reference to the paper that details each find:

the "this paper" reference based on the Tell el-Kerkh site gives the date

9350-9165 B.P.! that's 7400-7215 BC! we have a date range at last!

other papers in this chart give estimates that are more recent (e.g. 9320 - 9175 BP), based on papers from the 80s and 90s.

so, if this paper is more recent that any other citation I found during this whole journey (2006), and it claims to have pushed the date on the earliest piece of archaeological evidence for cultivation of the chickpea back (note that archaeological is different than evidence based on literature, genetics, &c.), then where on earth are "8000 BC" and "8400 BC" coming from? I still don't know.

tl;dr: a lot of people say that wikipedia, research blogs online, popular news publications, and things of that ilk are not sources on their own, but that they can be a good starting point to help you find sources. I no longer believe that to be the case. you are better off just starting in jstor or google scholar &c. and ignoring everything else. the claims you find in the latter way may, however, still be wild goose chases even if they are published in scholarly journals. the citation webs in academic journals are dizzying and people rarely trace a claim back to its actual origin, instead content to cite a source that cites a source that cites a source that cites a source........

anyway. I share my humble stories simply for entertainment purposes only.

[fromthedust]

Dilhaar - THE DREAM IS GONE Dilhaar (green skull) Dilhaar (purple skull) Dilhaar (sketchbook skull) - ink Lord Ego - Idèe Fixe - 2021 Andrea Chiampo - (skeleton within skull) Jeremy Mann - Homo Sapien - charcoal on paper - 8"x 10½" - 2013 skull with clay and shell - Jericho, Palestine - from the pre-pottery Neolithic period skull & crossbones - mosaic George Rozen - detail of cover painting for The Shadow - The Creeper & Death’s Masquerade La Tène copper crown & its owner - Kent England - c. 250-150 BCE (skull in space helmet) Mictlantecuhtli - the God of Death - Aztec Godmachine - Not Waving, Drowning - woodcut Memento Mori - a tomb Inscription In Anwoth Old Kirk, Ireland Thomas Elliott - Yorick - oil on doorskin - 6"x 4" - 2008 Thomas Elliott - skull study - oil Thomas Elliott - skull study - oil Thomas Elliott - Skull - 4''x 6'' - 2009 skulls from the Last Judgement mosaic - the west wall of the nave of Torcello Cathedral Wayne Taylor - Black Skull - photography child skull doll Robert Mappelthorpe - Skull + Crossbones - photography

[dieletztepanzerhexe]

my replicas of stroked pottery culture pots ^_^ which existed 4900-4400 BC in Central Europe. ppl from this culture also constructed many roundels aka neolithic circular ditched enclosures (one of my favourite pre megalithic concepts).

i made them from white clay which is available in the studio and ofc they're unglazed. you can see how the clay changes colour as liquids penetrate deeper into the walls (i only used it to drink herbal teas for about a week). i will soon try waterproofing them with pine tree resin.

[bagdemagus]

Karahan Tepe, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (ca. 11,000-9,000 BCE) site in Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey

[mirtadraws]

This year's #Inktober is about #Palestine.

Day 17: Jericho. One of the first human settlements ever, Jericho has been inhabited by many people groups and cultures throughout the centuries. Today it's a Palestinian city in the West Bank. It's famous for the plaster skulls belonging to a neolithic culture known as "Pre-Pottery Neolithic". However, those are too creepy to draw so I drew this statue instead, belonging to the same culture and location.

[historyfiles]

Minoans: excavations have shown that Minoan Crete was inhabited from the Neolithic period (by 6000 BC and perhaps even earlier), with arrivals possibly island-hopping their way from the western Anatolian coast of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B culture.

[dknuth]

Back to the Neolithic

The site Gobekli Tepe is a famous pre-Pottery Neolithic site that has been excavated over the last 20+ years. It is significant as an extensive religious/ceremonial site from a pre-agricultural civilization. That wasn't assumed to have happened. The standard belief was hunter-gatherers started collecting grains for replanting, then developed settlements, and only then built large public buildings. Gobekli Tepe turned this on its head: a pre-agricultural site from 10,000 B.C.!

The amazing thing for me was seeing stone construction over 6,000 years older than less advanced construction in the Shetland and Orkney Islands last month.

The large vertical slabs used as roof supports would be impressive enough, but they have been carefully shaped into "T"s—essentially columns with capitals! In addition, the faces of the columns are carved with animals and human figures.

The complex includes multiple buildings of different sizes but the same design. Ground surveys revealed numerous additional buildings.

The site is on the brow of a hill overlooking a broad, fertile valley.

One question is why the change to a Neolithic life happened here so early. One explanation is that this locale had a broad range of wild grains and animals, including many that could be domesticated. It is

It is also at the center of the fertile crescent, which extends from the Levant along the Mediterranean coast to the Tigris-Euphrates valley. Any new developments in this area would have spread throughout.

We have been reading about Gobekli Tepe for years, but I was unaware of the 3-dimensional sculptures discovered at the site. The local museum had a collection on display.

[cupofmeat]

Stone mask, Peni-Hever, Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, 8th millennium BCE. Red dolomitic limestone.

[whataniceone2]

Urfa Man

11,000 year old statue found in Upper Mesopotamia in SE Turkey

This is believed to be the oldest life-sized stone statue. It dates from the period called Pre-pottery Neolithic

[inspofromancientworld]

The 'stone age' covers a vast span of time and can be loosely divided up into three general ages: The Paleolithic (the old stone age), the Mesolithic (the middle stone age), and the Neolithic (the new stone age).

The Paleolithic can be further divided into three general ages: The lower, middle, and upper Paleolithic. These cover from 3.3 million to 12,000 years ago, which also cover hominoid development from Homo habilis to Homo sapiens.

[Image text below]

Old Stone Age Chronology

01: Lower Paleolithic (3.3 million to 300,000 years ago) Pre-modern humanoids gathered into bands of hunter/gatherer societies that used knapped stone tools as well as wood and bone tools. Artistic expression begins with beads and ‘Venus’ figures. Early evidence of cooking. Evidence of rafts to cross bodies of water.

02: Middle Paleolithic (300,00 to 50,000 years ago) More control over stone tools using prepared cores, which allowed the development of weapons like spears and bows, allowing larger animals to be hunted and larger groups to be supported. Possible flute-like instruments made of bones. Clothing began being used.

03: Upper Paleolithic (50,000 to 12,000 years ago) Development of nets, bolas, spear throwers, as well as the development of pottery. Evidence of navigation as far as 60 km off-shore. Dogs domesticated to aid with hunting (perhaps as early as middle paleolithic). Earliest evidence of lunar calendars. Cave art painted.

04: Human development in this period During this time, the genus Homo developed from Homo habilis through Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, and finally to Homo sapiens, which evolved approximately 300,000 years ago, though behaviorally modern humans evolved approximately 50,000 years ago.

[End image text]