Near East(Western Asia) In the
Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th
millennium BC. Early development occurred in the
Levant (e.g.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are also attested in southeastern
Anatolia, northern
Mesopotamia, and the
Sinai Peninsula by around 8000 BC, reflecting the southward expansion of Pre-Pottery Neolithic traditions across the Levantine corridor.
Anatolian Neolithic farmers derived a significant portion of their ancestry from the
Anatolian hunter-gatherers (AHG), suggesting that agriculture was adopted in site by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by
demic diffusion into the region.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A .
Şanlıurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museum. The Neolithic 1 (PPNA) period began around 10,000 BC in the
Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at
Göbekli Tepe, dated to around 9500 BC, may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, as shown by the absence of permanent housing nearby, and may be the oldest known human-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering , contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in
Palestine, notably in
Tell es-Sultan (ancient
Jericho) and
Gilgal in the
Jordan Valley;
Israel (notably
Ain Mallaha,
Nahal Oren, and
Kfar HaHoresh); in
Byblos,
Lebanon; and in
Sinai, including sites such as
Abu Madi. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic
Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour.
Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated (
animal husbandry and
selective breeding). In 2006, remains of
figs were discovered in a house in Jericho dated to 9400 BC. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were the first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains. Settlements became more permanent, with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of
mudbrick. The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower (as in Jericho). The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. Some of the enclosures also suggest grain and meat storage.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B with
bitumen and stone inlays; from
Tell Fekheriye (
Al-Hasakah Governorate of
Syria);
University of Chicago Oriental Institute (USA) The Neolithic 2 (PPNB) began around 8800 BC according to the
ASPRO chronology in the Levant (
Jericho, West Bank). As with the PPNA dates, there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. This system of terminology, however, is not convenient for southeast
Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin. Studies of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cultural complex indicate that its long-lived and widely distributed tradition extended across the Levant from the Taurus Mountains in the north to the
Sinai in the south, reflecting its broad geographic scope during this phase. A settlement of 3,000 inhabitants called
'Ain Ghazal was found in the outskirts of
Amman,
Jordan. Considered to be one of the largest prehistoric settlements in the
Near East, it was continuously inhabited from approximately 7250 BC to approximately 5000 BC. Settlements have rectangular mud-brick houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an
ancestor cult where people
preserved skulls of the dead, which were plastered with mud to make facial features. The rest of the corpse could have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses.
Pre-Pottery Neolithic C Work at the site of
'Ain Ghazal in
Jordan has indicated a later
Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period.
Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BC, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon domesticated animals, and a fusion with
Harifian hunter gatherers in the Southern Levant, with affiliate connections with the cultures of
Fayyum and the
Eastern Desert of
Egypt. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the
Red Sea shoreline and moved east from
Syria into southern
Iraq.
Late Neolithic The Late Neolithic began around 6,400 BC in the
Fertile Crescent. By then distinctive cultures emerged, with pottery like the
Halafian (Turkey, Syria, Northern Mesopotamia) and
Ubaid (Southern Mesopotamia). This period has been further divided into
PNA (Pottery Neolithic A) and
PNB (Pottery Neolithic B) at some sites. In the southern
Negev and
Sinai deserts, the Late Neolithic is characterised by the pastoralist Timnian culture, which persisted into the Bronze Age. Around 9000 BC during the PPNA, one of the world's first towns,
Jericho, appeared in the Levant. It was surrounded by a stone wall, may have contained a population of up to 2,000–3,000 people, and contained a massive stone tower. Around 6400 BC the
Halaf culture appeared in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia. In 1981, a team of researchers from the
Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, including
Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche, divided Near East Neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics. In 2002,
Danielle Stordeur and
Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with a division into five periods. •
Natufian between 12,000 and 10,200 BC, •
Khiamian between 10,200 and 8800 BC,
PPNA:
Sultanian (Jericho),
Mureybetian, • Early PPNB (
PPNB ancien) between 8800 and 7600 BC, middle PPNB (
PPNB moyen) between 7600 and 6900 BC, • Late PPNB (
PPNB récent) between 7500 and 7000 BC, • A PPNB (sometimes called PPNC) transitional stage (
PPNB final) in which Halaf and
dark faced burnished ware begin to emerge between 6900 and 6400 BC. They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8800 and 8600 BC at sites like
Jerf el Ahmar and
Tell Aswad.
Southern Mesopotamia Alluvial plains (
Sumer/
Elam). Low rainfall makes
irrigation systems necessary.
Ubaid culture originated from 6200 BC.
Northeastern Africa The earliest evidence of Neolithic culture in northeast Africa was found in the archaeological sites of
Bir Kiseiba and
Nabta Playa in what is now southwest Egypt. Domestication of
sheep and
goats reached
Egypt from the
Near East possibly as early as 6000 BC.
Graeme Barker states "The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nile valley is not until the early fifth millennium BC in northern Egypt and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild plants" and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange. Other scholars argue that the primary stimulus for agriculture and domesticated animals (as well as mud-brick architecture and other Neolithic cultural features) in Egypt was from the Middle East.
Northwestern Africa corresponded to the arrival of European migration circa 5500 BC (), and a wave of Levantine migration circa 5000 BC (), with some local admixture (). The neolithization of
Northwestern Africa was initiated by
Iberian,
Levantine (and perhaps
Sicilian) migrants around 5500–5300 BC. During the Early Neolithic period, farming was introduced by Europeans and was subsequently adopted by the locals. or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The term "Pastoral Neolithic" is used most often by
archaeologists to describe early pastoralist periods in the
Sahara, as well as in
eastern Africa. The
Savanna Pastoral Neolithic or SPN (formerly known as the
Stone Bowl Culture) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the
Rift Valley of
East Africa and surrounding areas during a time period known as the
Pastoral Neolithic. They were
South Cushitic speaking pastoralists, who tended to bury their dead in cairns whilst their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls, pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots. Through archaeology, historical linguistics and archaeogenetics, they conventionally have been identified with the area's first
Afroasiatic-speaking settlers. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest center of
pastoralism and stone construction in the region.
Europe ,
North Macedonia , 3500 BC , Scotland. Evidence of home furnishings (shelves) In southeast
Europe agrarian societies first appeared in the
7th millennium BC, attested by one of the earliest farming sites of Europe, discovered in
Vashtëmi, southeastern
Albania and dating back to 6500 BC. In most of Western Europe in followed over the next two thousand years, but in some parts of Northwest Europe it is much later, lasting just under 3,000 years from c. 4500 BC–1700 BC. Recent advances in
archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with the migration of
early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange. Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in the Balkans from 6000 BC, and in Central Europe by around 5800 BC (
La Hoguette). Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are the
Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving rise to
Starčevo-Körös (Cris),
Linearbandkeramik, and
Vinča. Through a combination of
cultural diffusion and
migration of peoples, the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC. The
Vinča culture may have created the earliest system of writing, the
Vinča signs, though archaeologist Shan Winn believes they most likely represented
pictograms and
ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing. The
Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine from 5300 to 2300 BC. The
megalithic temple complexes of
Ġgantija on the Mediterranean island of
Gozo (in the Maltese archipelago) and of
Mnajdra (Malta) are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to around 3600 BC. The
Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni,
Paola, Malta, is a subterranean structure excavated around 2500 BC; originally a sanctuary, it became a
necropolis, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and shows a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to the Maltese islands. After 2500 BC, these islands were depopulated for several decades until the arrival of a new influx of
Bronze Age immigrants, a culture that
cremated its dead and introduced smaller megalithic structures called
dolmens to Malta. In most cases there are small chambers here, with the cover made of a large slab placed on upright stones. They are claimed to belong to a population different from that which built the previous megalithic temples. It is presumed the population arrived from
Sicily because of the similarity of Maltese dolmens to some small constructions found there. With some exceptions, population levels rose rapidly at the beginning of the Neolithic until they reached the
carrying capacity. This was followed by a population crash of "enormous magnitude" after 5000 BC, with levels remaining low during the next 1,500 years. Populations began to rise after 3500 BC, with further dips and rises occurring between 3000 and 2500 BC but varying in date between regions. Around this time is the
Neolithic decline, when populations collapsed across most of Europe, possibly caused by climatic conditions, plague, or mass migration.
South and East Asia Settled life, encompassing the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Asia in the region of
Balochistan, Pakistan, around 7,000 BC. At the site of
Mehrgarh, Balochistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal
Nature that the oldest (and first
Early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of teeth
in vivo (using
bow drills and
flint tips) was found in Mehrgarh. In South India, the Neolithic began by 3000 BC and lasted until around 1400 BC when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by
Ash mounds (created from ritual burning of wood, dung and animal matter) from 2500 BC in
Karnataka region, expanded later to
Tamil Nadu. In East Asia, the earliest sites include the
Nanzhuangtou culture around 9500–9000 BC,
Pengtoushan culture around 7500–6100 BC, and
Peiligang culture around 7000–5000 BC. The
prehistoric Beifudi site near
Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the
Cishan and
Xinglongwa cultures of about 6000–5000 BC, Neolithic cultures east of the
Taihang Mountains, filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chinese cultures. The total excavated area is more than , and the collection of Neolithic findings at the site encompasses two phases. Between 3000 and 1900 BC, the
Longshan culture existed in the middle and lower
Yellow River valley areas of northern China. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the population decreased sharply in most of the region and many of the larger centres were abandoned, possibly due to environmental change linked to the end of the
Holocene Climatic Optimum. The 'Neolithic' (defined in this paragraph as using polished stone implements) remains a living tradition in small and extremely remote and inaccessible pockets of
West Papua. Polished stone
adze and axes are used in the present day () in areas where the availability of metal implements is limited. This is likely to cease altogether in the next few years as the older generation die off and steel blades and chainsaws prevail. In 2012, news was released about a new farming site discovered in
Munam-ri,
Goseong,
Gangwon Province,
South Korea, which may be the earliest farmland known to date in east Asia. "No remains of an agricultural field from the Neolithic period have been found in any East Asian country before, the institute said, adding that the discovery reveals that the history of agricultural cultivation at least began during the period on the
Korean Peninsula". The farm was dated between 3600 and 3000 BC. Pottery, stone projectile points, and possible houses were also found. "In 2002, researchers discovered prehistoric
earthenware,
jade earrings, among other items in the area". The research team will perform
accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating to retrieve a more precise date for the site.
The Americas In
Mesoamerica, a similar set of events (i.e., crop domestication and sedentary lifestyles) occurred by around 4500 BC in South America, but possibly as early as 11,000–10,000 BC. These cultures are usually not referred to as belonging to the Neolithic; in North America,
different terms are used such as
Formative stage instead of mid-late Neolithic,
Archaic Era instead of Early Neolithic, and
Paleo-Indian for the preceding period. The Formative stage is equivalent to the Neolithic Revolution period in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the southwestern United States it occurred from 500 to 1200 AD when there was a dramatic increase in population and development of large villages supported by agriculture based on
dryland farming of corn (maize), and later, beans, squash, and domesticated turkeys. During this period the bow and arrow and ceramic pottery were also introduced. In later periods cities of considerable size developed, and some metallurgy by 700 BC.
Australia Australia, in contrast to
New Guinea, has generally been held not to have had a Neolithic period, with a
hunter-gatherer lifestyle continuing until the arrival of Europeans. This view can be challenged in terms of the definition of agriculture, but "Neolithic" remains a rarely used and not very useful concept in discussing
Australian prehistory. ==Cultural characteristics==