Mesolithic and Neolithic Ages PDF

Mesolithic to Neolithic Age  Mesolithic Period – Middle Stone Age: 20,000 BCE in the Levant and ended as late as 3,000 BCE in Europe. The years attributed to this period vary from region to region, but it roughly corresponds to the time in Northern Euro...

Mesolithic to Neolithic Age  Mesolithic Period – Middle Stone Age: 20,000 BCE in the Levant and ended as late as 3,000 BCE in Europe. The years attributed to this period vary from region to region, but it roughly corresponds to the time in Northern Europe during which the climate began to warm and the glaciers to recede. The term Mesolithic literally means middle stone concerned. Meso means middle, lith means stone, and ic means concerned with or pertaining to. Put all together the Mesolithic age is literally the middle stone age. It is the period after the Paleolithic (old stone age) and before the Neolithic (new stone age). The Paleolithic Age is the first part of the Stone Age and ended at the end of the Ice Age. The Mesolithic Age is the period that began directly following the Ice Age.  Transition between hunting -gathering and agricultural practices Causes: Climate: During the Ice age, humans relied heavily on hunting for their resources. Because the climate was cooler fewer plant resources were available to human beings either for food or raw material. After the ice age, it became easier to domesticate both animals and plants. This was due to the less severe climate which allowed for both pastoral grazing and the domestication of plants, mainly cereal grains. During this time technology advanced quickly to fill the gap between hunting and farming. The Mesolithic age lasted only about 5,000 years, but the technological advances made during the flex period between the ice age and post ice age set the tone for human advancement for the next several thousand years.  Tools Mesolithic material culture is characterized by greater innovation and diversity than is found in the Paleolithic. Among the new forms of chipped stone tools were microliths, very small stone tools intended for mounting together on a shaft to produce a serrated edge. Polished stone was another innovation that occurred in some Mesolithic assemblage  Tools Backed edge bladelet: Mesolithic tools were generally composite devices manufactured with small chipped small stone tools called microliths and retouched bladelets This collection of flints shows the range of stone tools used by people during the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age). It includes an axe (top left); a flint core (top right); end scrapers (middle left); burin (middle centre); blades (middle right); microliths (bottom left) and blades (bottom right). The axeheads were fixed into a wooden handle and used like axes today. The flint core was the raw material from which other tools could be made. Scrapers were used for cleaning animal skins in the process of making leather. Burins were used for carving or engraving wood and bone, like a chisel. Blades were used as knives and microliths were tiny flints that were glued/fixed to wooden shafts to make arrows or spears for hunting  Gradual domestication of plants & animals The domestication of plants allows for long term storage. While the domestication of animals freed up human labor for more advanced jobs. For the first time in human history people had leisure time en mass. Possibly the most significant and long-lasting development during the Mesolithic is the domestication of the dog. Grains and other food crops could be grown in artificial abundance and then stored for later consumption. Before this invention food rotted within a few days of being harvested and the search for fresh food was endless and consumed a great deal of time/thought.  Gradual domestication of plants & animals Because of the domestication of both plants and animals, humans had to gauge how to manipulate their environment in ways that gave an outcome they desired. New questions and patterns of thought entered the human mind. When to plant, harvest, kill and breed animals, were all new questions. The Mesolithic changed the human mind in a very significant way. They become more dependent on aquatic animals such as fishes for food than mammals. Animals of the Mesolithic era became smaller but faster. Therefore, people needed to develop their skills and weapons to survive  Social Facts The Mesolithic people were both nomadic (a person who wanders from place to place in search of food and other resources) and sedentary (a person who does not wander but stays at one place), depending upon their requirement and availability of resources. The Mesolithic People continuously fought over animals, land, and water. So they started to make leaders solve their quarrels.  Mastery in Astronomy Because Mesolithic age people were becoming farmers the seasons became important in a different sense than they had when people were hunter-gatherers. Reading the stars and understanding the time of the year were crucial to successful planting and harvesting. Because people stayed in one location all year it was important to know what the weather was like during each part of the year. Knowledge of the star became so important that people gathered together to build huge megalithic structures, which could be both places of worship and also calendars. Sites such as Stonehenge were likely built to predict weather by the shifting patterns of the cosmos.  Formation semi-permanent settlement Some Mesolithic settlements were villages of huts that led to the permanent settlements. They made a semi-permanent settlement in the form of huts and kept moving at short intervals for the search of food.  Religion The Mesolithic people had special burial practices indicating the following of some religions. Hunter-gatherer religiosity: animism, belief in an afterlife, shamanism, ancestor worship, high gods, and worship of ancestors or high gods who are active in human affairs. There is evidence of their burial practices. They buried the dead with goods, food, fish stew (remnants of fish have been excavated from some graves). This shows that the people of the Mesolithic era believed in life after death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-CrROAhQC8 Stonehenge, UK Geographic locations of the 33 hunter-gatherer societies Hunter gatherer’s camp at Irish National Heritage Park Exhibit: Demonstration of how a 7000 BCE campsite of Mesolithic period hunter-gatherers would have looked. They were nomadic and built temporary houses. Wood, bone and flint were the materials of their tools. They fished using dugout canoes – there is one in the photo.  Neolithic Period – New Stone age around 10,000 BCE until 3,000 BCE Use of wild & domestic crops & animal domestication. Beginning of Agriculture. Behavioral & Cultural characteristics of New Stone Age. Use of pottery Introduction of Bronze tools. Development of material culture. Barter system. Agricultural revolution, surplus production. Population densities, Labor diversification. Development of non-portable art, architecture and culture, centralized administrations and political structures.  Behavioral & Cultural characteristics of New Stone Age. Facts: The massive changes in the way people lived also changed the types of art they made. Neolithic sculpture became bigger, in part, because people didn’t have to carry it around anymore; pottery became more widespread and was used to store food harvested from farms. Alcohol was first produced during this period and architecture, as well as its interior and exterior decoration, first appears. In short, people settled down and began to live in one place, year after year.  The nutritional standards of Neolithic populations were generally inferior to that of hunter-gatherers, and they worked longer hours and had shorter life expectancies. Life today, including our governments, specialized labor, and trade, is directly related to the advances made in the Neolithic Revolution Immigrant Neolithic farmers probably absorbed many indigenous Mesolithic hunters and fishers, and some Neolithic communities seem to have been composed entirely of Mesolithic peoples who adopted Neolithic equipment (these are sometimes called Secondary Neolithic) The earliest example of writing develops in Sumer in Mesopotamia in the late 4th millennium BCE However, there are scholars that believe that earlier proto-writing developed during the Neolithic period).  There were deep social divisions and inequality between the sexes, with women’s status declining as men took on greater roles as leaders and warriors. Social class was determined by occupation, with farmers and craftsmen at the lower end, and priests and warriors at the higher.  The site of Jericho, just north of the Dead Sea and due west of the Jordan River, is one of the oldest continuously lived-in cities in the world  Jericho: Looking down from the tower at Jericho. Jericho (8500-7000 BCE), archaeologists found remains of a very large settlement of circular homes made with mud-brick and topped with domed roofs  Rituals Perhaps most fascinating are the plaster skulls found around the area of the Levant, at six sites, including Jericho. At this time in the Neolithic, c. 7000-6,000 BCE, people were often buried under the floors of homes, and in some cases, their skulls were removed and covered with plaster in order to create very life-like faces, complete with shells inset for eyes and paint to imitate hair and mustaches  Skulls with plaster and shell from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, 6,000-7,000 B.C.E., found at the Yiftah'el archeological site in the Lower Galilee, Israel The city of Çatalhöyük, south-central Turkey  Facts It was inhabited 9000 years ago by up to 8000 people who lived together in a large town. Çatalhöyük, across its history, witnesses the transition from exclusively hunting and gathering subsistence to increasing skill in plant and animal domestication. It is also a site at which we see art, both painting and sculpture, appear to play a newly important role in the lives of settled people. Çatalhöyük had no streets or footpaths; the houses were built right up against each other and the people who lived in them travelled over the town’s rooftops and entered their homes through holes in the roofs, climbing down a ladder. Communal ovens were built above the homes of Çatalhöyük and we can assume group activities were performed in this elevated space as well. 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. United Kingdom, Avebury Newgrange, Ireland Knowth, Ireland  Ggantija, Malta, (Island country in Southern Europe) Entrance to a megalithic temple at Ggantija, Malta: The Ġgantija temples are older than the pyramids of Egypt and have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site  Plant and animal domestication Cereals such as emmer wheat, einkorn wheat and barley were among the first crops domesticated by Neolithic farming communities in the Fertile Crescent. These early farmers also domesticated lentils, chickpeas, peas and flax. Livestock: The first livestock were domesticated from animals that Neolithic humans hunted for meat. Domestic pigs were bred from wild boars, for instance, while goats came from the Persian ibex. Domesticated animals made the hard, physical labor of farming possible while their milk and meat added variety to the human diet. They also carried infectious diseases: smallpox, influenza and the measles all spread from domesticated animals to human. Pottery: Dawenkou tombs, Shandong, China Ceramic vessel  Material Culture Anthropology: Material culture can be described as any object that humans use to survive, define social relationships, represent facets of identity, or benefit peoples' state of mind, social, or economic standing. Archaeology : Material culture is a term used in archaeology and other anthropology-related fields to refer to all the corporeal, tangible objects that are created, used, kept and left behind by past and present cultures Sociology: Material culture refers to the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. These include homes, neighborhoods, cities, schools, churches, synagogues, temples, mosques, offices, factories and plants, tools, means of production, goods and products, stores, and so forth. Birth of Law, Government and Military The Neolithic Revolution made government more important for three reasons; property ownership, public works, and a military. Property ownership caused people to argue over who owned certain land and without any laws put in place to distinguish people owned. As civilizations grew, there was a high demand for public works for the people, so the government created them. Before civilizations and forms of government, there were not any active and organized militaries leaving people to fight for themselves against others, so government created a military.