Early Neolithic Communities and Sites
One of the earliest known human settlements is at Jericho. According to Wikipedia the site was a popular camping ground for Natufian hunter-gatherers due to the proximity of a spring; they left behind a scattering of crescent-shaped microlith tools as evidence of their presence there. The first permanent settlement on the site developed began around 9600 BC as weather conditions improved. The first settlers seem to have been pre-agricultural. According to Ancient at around 9400 BCE the settlement comprised around 70 homes: circular dwellings about 5 meters across, built with clay and straw.
Evidence of grain cultivation begins between 8500 and 7500 BC, but it was carried out alongside the hunting of wild game. The famous “walls of Jericho” first appeared around 7000 BC, but far from being built for defensive purposes, evidence suggests they were built to prevent the low-lying city from being flooded by a nearby river during the rainy season. Excavations from the oldest part of the site show no signs of weaponry. This is consistent with my speculation that the earliest experimenters with agrticulture were not warlike.
Some Scholars have suggested the oldest tower at Jericho (c8000 BC) was used as a gathering place to encourage people to take part in a communal lifestyle. With population estimates in the 300 to 3000 range, Jericho would then have been the size of a small English village, and the priesthood would have been more like the local gymkhana committee than a ruling council. In those days, priests were the clever people. They were the people who observed the skies, and the seasons, and accumulated the knowledge required to fuel and further the agricultural revolution. They were revered not as spokesmen for God or gods, but as dudes with knowledge. They didn’t need weapons. They were working with a small community, by consensus.
Goebekli Tepe is perhaps the world’s first temple
Located in Anotolia, and dated from 9000 BC (6000 years older than Stonehenge), Goebekli Tepe is another ancient “gathering place” which has been described as the world’s first temple, or perhaps more accurately, group of temples. It is also the earliest evidence of social organisation, predating agriculture (the domestication of species) in the area by 500 years. Some of the columns in the temple had ellaborate carving, which implies either a division of labour or a division of time. You can’t hunt and carve at the same time. And some of the columns weigh up to 20 tonnes, and may have required hundreds of people to move them into place. This implies large scale organisation of labour. That is stretching my gymkhana committee analogy. Constructing these temples was a major organisational feat. Those priest dudes must have been very well respected to persuade so many people to do so much work for no obvious hedonistic or consumptive return.
Recent archaeoastronomical research has suggested some of the temples have interesting celestial alignments. One of them is oriented towards the rising Sun approximately halfway between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox (a date suitable for harvesting) and another is oriented to the rising point of the moon at its major standstill. This research also offered evidence supporting previous research suggesting that the central pillars in four of the temples are oriented toward the setting point of the star Deneb (alpha Cyg). These alignments imply not only that neolithic priests had knowledge of celestial events (they were astronomers) but also that they wanted to share their knowledge and extend it to future generations, prior to the advent of writing. And that knowledge, of the regularity of celestial events, and the association between celestial events and the ripening of fruits and grains, was enabling people to live in harmony with nature: to live off the land without destroying it. There seems to be no evidence that these people were hell bent on the accumulation of personal wealth, or the destruction of people or property. Compare the carvings at Goebekli Tepe with say the Bayeux Tapestry, and you get very different pictures of social values.
Egypt, perhaps the best known Bronze Age civilisation, was also host to a large number of neolithic settlements. The Nabta Playa basin plays host to the earliest of these, with remains indicating settlement as early as the 10th millennium BC, around the same time as Jericho. Of note among these remains, the Nabta Playa “calendar circle” aligned with various celestial events, including the Summer solstice sunrise, the rise of stars in Orion’s belt and Sirius, the dog star. It has been suggested that observations of Sirius enabled the Egyptians to become the first people to move from a lunar to a solar calendar.
Asikh Hoyuk is one of the oldest known Neolithic settlements in Anatollia
Located in Anotolia not far from Goebekli Tepe, and dated from 8200 to 7400 BC, Asikh Hoyuk is is the oldest known Neolithic settlement in the region. The dwellings were rectangular, included a rectangular fireplace, and were grouped around shared public spaces. There were also some larger buildings without fireplaces, which might have been used for community activities. Interestingly, no symbolic icons have been found, either in the public buildings or the dwellings, but also interestingly, around 100 small copper beads have been found and dated at around 8500 BC.
As a non-historian just looking at all this with an untrained eye, the absence of religious icons, the presence of copper beads, and dare I say “modern” rectangular architecture and hearths, seems quite interesting. Millenia later at the end of the Bronze age, a group of semi nomadic tribesmen settled in the Negev and took over the copper mines at Timna. They also took over the nearby Temple of Hathor, swept it clean of artifacts, and apparently dedicated it to their own nameless formless god. It could be a coincidence, but to me it is interesting.
According to History the 7100-5700 BC site of Çatalhöyük in southern Turkey is one of the best-preserved Neolithic settlements. Archaeologists have unearthed more than a dozen mud-brick dwellings at the site. They estimate that as many as 8,000 people may have lived here at one time. The houses were clustered so closely back-to-back that residents had to enter the homes through a hole in the roof, and they were all similar in size and style, which might suggest an egalitarian society.
The inhabitants of Çatalhöyük appear to have valued art and spirituality. They buried their dead under the floors of their houses. The walls of the homes are covered with murals of men hunting, cattle, and female goddesses. Some have suggested that Çatalhöyük was a matriarchal society, others that the genders had equal status. The English Wikipedia has something about Çatalhöyük being the first place in the world to mine and smelt lead, but evidence from elsewhere suggests this might have been erroneous, and should probably be ignored. A very small collection of tiny copper artifacts was found there.
To me, the worship of mostly female goddesses in such an ancient settlement, is more worth noting. By the time of the Bronze Age, people were worshipping a mixed gender pantheon of gods, and during the Iron Age, the dominant cultures of Europe and the near East purged the worship of lady gods and acknowledged only boy gods.
Cayonu Tepesi is a neolithic settlement which was inhabited for over 3000 years from 10500 BC, which makes it quite similar in age to Jericho. I mention it now, partly because I have only just found it, and partly because it is the site where what are believed to be the oldest native copper objects were found, and metallurgy is a precondition for warfare.
Cayonu Tepesi is also believed to provide the first examples animal husbandry (first pigs, then sheep and goats), terrazzo floors (stone pieces pressed into a cement base), woven cloth, and a double headed female figurine possible representing a female deity, or yin and yang, or life and death, or the balance of nature, which subsequenty appeared all over the world. In fact the few hundred people living here may actually have been the world’s first farmers; which makes it a bit strange that you really have to dig (the web) to find any reference to it.
Cayonu Tepesi was located in Anotolia (Turkey) 800km north north east of Jericho, 600km east of Çatalhöyük and just 120km north east of Goebekli Tepe. The first occupants (c10500-9000 BC) lived in small circular wattle-and daub huts, built on virgin soil with plastered, slightly sunken floors. There were no temples or communal structures. The second stage (c9000-8500BC) comprised rectangular dwellings and one larger building with a flagstone floor; this may have been a community building. Subsequent phases to 7000BC and beyond continued to use rectangular buildings of increasing complextity, with some two storey dwellings and a large community building with an alter featuring a stylised human face in raised relief. Finally there is the “skull building” so named because about 70 skulls were unearthed in small antechambers. The main room in this building contained a cut and polished stone block (possibly an altar) and a large flint knife. Traces of both animal and human blood have been found on the stone and dated at about 7000c. This certainly seems to be evidence of psychotic behaviour. Even if the heads were removed post mortem, it seems to betray a strange mindset, and it rather undermines my initial premise that the first farmers were peace loving and mentally well balanced. It also casts some doubt on my gymkhana committee analogy for the early priesthoods. My parents served on many gymkhana committees, and to my knowledge they never beheaded anyone, alive or dead.
And while I reel from that revelation, let’s have a look at the metallurgy; well, the copper artifacts. According to the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel web site cited above (I’ve found the author’s picture, but not his name yet) around 113 copper beads, hooks, awls, and pins and have been found in the phase dated c8200-7500 BC. The objects were made from native copper believed to from an ore deposit at Ergani Maden, 20 km away. They were hammered into shape, and possibly heated, but not tempered.
Can Hasan is a neolithic settlement located 60km south west of Çatalhöyük, where the largest native copper artifact ever found was found. And what was that artifact? Of course it had to be a 5cm diameter mace head, knocking another nail in the coffin of my peace loving neolithic farmers idea. On the plus side, no trace evidence of the mace head having been used has been found.
From the evidence available, people were collecting copper and hammering it a bit from 2000 years before copper smelting began, and 4000 years before the first bronze appeared. But while most people were using the native copper to make trinkets, at least one psycho was thinking about how to weaponise it. An unanswered question is how this particular dude came to own such a large piece. Was it a coincidence that the guy with the criminal mindset stumbled across the largest copper nugget, or did he take it from someone else? Adding to the mystery the macehead was found in the debris of a group of houses which had burnt to the ground. Is this evidence of a violent conflict? Had the macehead been stolen, and maybe the owners were trying to get it back. Or was it an just an unfortunate accident. We will probably never know.
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