The Times History of the World

Lakeshore and riverine sites were important for their rich and varied resources, while the utilitarian date palm flourished in marsh areas in southern Mesopotamia, rich also in fish and waterfowl. The earliest permanent settlements tend to be found at the junctions of discrete environmental zones, with greater access to a variety of resources (for example Abu Hureyra on the boundary of the dry steppe and the Euphrates flood plain, and Ain Mallaha in the Jordan valley). The importance of ritual house fittings and skull cults, perhaps suggestive of the increasing importance of the family and property, is attested at some of the earliest sites (Qermez Dere), while 9th-millennium villages in Anatolia, with early evidence for the cultivation of cereals, contain impressive ritual buildings (Çayönü, Nevali Çori). The carving of stone (Göbekli Tepe, Jerf al Ahmar, Nemrik) and the working of copper (Çayönü) are found well before the appearance of true farming villages. The early use of clay for containers is attested at Mureybet on the Euphrates (9000 BC) and at Ganj Dareh in the Zagros; white lime plaster vessels are characteristic of the latest pre-pottery Neolithic phases, especially at sites in the Levant and Anatolia.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF VILLAGES

Among the best-known pre-pottery Neolithic sites is Jericho, in the 9th millennium BC already a settlement of some 1.5ha (4 acres) with, uniquely, a rock-cut ditch and stone wall with a huge circular tower ascended by means of an internal circular stair. A millennium later Basta and Ain Ghazal in Jordan are farming settlements of over 9.5ha (24 acres). Human skulls on which faces had been realistically modelled were kept by the inhabitants of these sites, while at Ain Ghazal deposits of cultic statues have been recovered.

In the 7th and 6th millennia BC, developed Neolithic villages appear over much of the landscape. They are characterized by economies dependent on domesticated plants and animals, and on sophisticated technological developments (for example an “industrial” area of two-stage pottery kilns, and the presence of lead and copper at Yarim Tepe around 6000 BC). Well-fired painted pottery characterizes these villages, which are often classified by their ceramic styles. One of the most spectacular early pottery sites is Çatalhöyük, 13ha (32 acres) in area, with extensive evidence for wealth in the form of valuable commodities such as obsidian and semi-precious stones. The house fittings bear elaborate ornaments including wall paintings and the plastered skulls of wild cattle.

TRADE AND TEMPLES

An important development attested in the Neolithic villages of north Mesopotamia and Syria is the earliest record-keeping, effected by the use of combinations of small clay tokens and the stamping of distinctive clay or stone seals onto clay lids and other fastenings (most importantly at Sabi Abyad in the Samarran period and slightly later at Arpachiyah). Such simple methods of validating social contracts and other transactions formed the basis of later literate urban recording systems.

Mesopotamia had no metals or semi-precious stones, and by the 5th millennium BC demand for such luxury goods led to the establishment of small colonies in Anatolia, even as far as the Malatya plain (Değirmentepe) and the sea-borne exploitation of the resources of the Persian Gulf (Dosariyah, Abu Khamis), even as far as the Musandam peninsula. The first temples were built at this time in southern Mesopotamia, precursors of the institutions around which the earliest urban states were organized. There was a temple on the same site at Eridu for 3500 years, striking evidence of the continuity of tradition which was one remarkable feature of the world’s earliest city-states.

Despite their precocious development, sites like Jericho and Çatalhöyük did not form the focus of more complex polities. By 4000 BC the foundations of literate, urban civilization had been laid in Mesopotamia, where it was the organizational and economic potential of the highly productive irrigation economy in the south and the powerful, strategic positions of sites like Nineveh in the north, controlling access to areas rich in raw materials, that saw the growth of the world’s first complex states.

7000 TO 2000 BC

EARLY EUROPE: THE COLONIZATION OF A CONTINENT

Farming first spread from the Near East to southeast Europe c. 7000 BC and then along the Mediterranean coast and across central Europe, reaching the Low Countries by 5000 BC. After a brief pause it spread to Britain and northern continental Europe by 4000 BC. It was only c. 2000 BC that farming reached the more northerly parts of European Russia and the Baltic.

The earliest farming villages in Europe, dating to immediately after 7000 BC, were on the western side of the Aegean (eg Argissa) and on Crete (eg Knossos), but by 5500 BC such villages were distributed widely across the Balkans. They consisted of clusters of mudbrick buildings, each with a similar layout of hearth and cooking and sleeping areas. Their economy was based on keeping sheep and cultivating wheat and legumes. Such villages were situated in areas of good soil with a plentiful water supply and were often occupied for hundreds of years.

AGRICULTURAL VILLAGES

Villages of this kind spread inland as far as Hungary but from here northwards a new pattern developed. The mudbrick dwellings were replaced by wooden long-houses whose remains did not build up into settlement mounds. Agricultural settlement spread in a broad band from northeast France to southwest Russia on soils produced by the weathering of loess—a highly fertile windblown dust laid down during the Ice Age. Over this area the characteristic pottery was decorated with incised lines in spiral or meandering bands, a uniformity which reflects the rapid spread of settlement between 5500 and 5000 BC. Cattle were more important than sheep in the forested interior of Europe but wheat continued as the main cereal crop. The settlers did not clear wide areas of land but practised intensive horticulture in the valleys around their settlements.

At the same time as it was spreading into continental Europe, aspects of an agricultural way of life were also spreading westwards along the northern shore of the Mediterranean, reaching Spain by around 5500 BC; in this zone environmental conditions were much closer to those where agriculture started and fewer adjustments had to be made.

Alongside the early agricultural communities, small groups of foragers pursued their way of life in areas untouched by the new economy. Hunting populations were rather sparse in the areas first selected by agriculturists, and the rapidity with which farming spread across the loess lands may in part reflect a lack of local competition, but elsewhere foragers were more numerous. They were especially well-established in the lake-strewn landscapes left by the retreating ice sheets around the Alps and on the northern edge of the North European Plain.

There has been much debate about whether the spread of agriculture was due to the expansion of colonizing populations from the southeast or to the adoption of the new way of life by existing foragers. Current evidence from archaeology and the analysis of the DNA of modern populations suggests that there was a colonizing element, probably associated with the expansion through the Balkans and the loess lands of central Europe, but that in most of Europe the dominant process was the adoption of agriculture and its material attributes by existing populations, perhaps in part because of the prestige of the new way of life.

MEGALITHIC EUROPE

In much of western Europe, farming was first adopted around 4000 BC and the clearance of land in rocky terrain provided the opportunity to build large stone (megalithic) monuments as burial places and mortuary shrines for the scattered hamlets of early farmers. Some of the earliest megalithic tombs were built in Brittany and Portugal around 4500 BC, but particularly elaborate forms were made in Ireland and Spain up to 2000 years later. Alongside the tombs, other kinds of megalithic monuments were constructed in some regions, such as the stone circles of the British Isles.

From 4500 to 2500 BC, important developments occurred which were to change the established pattern of life. Early metallurgy of copper and gold developed in the Balkans from 4500 BC, although whether this was an independent invention or came from the Near East is still in dispute. Fine examples of the products come from the rich Copper Age cemetery of Varna on the Black Sea coast.

From around 3500 BC there is evidence of contact between eastern Europe and the steppe zone north of the Black Sea; some link this to the spread of Indo-European languages to Europe. The time around 3500 BC also saw the rapid spread across Europe of wheeled vehicles and the plough, both associated with the first large-scale use of draught animals. These slowly changed the nature of agricultural production. Widespread clearance of forests took place and flint mines produced stone for large quantities of axes. It was only after 2000 BC that stone axes were superseded by metal ones in western Europe.

TO 900 BC

AFRICAN PEOPLES AND CULTURES

Archaeology is revealing evidence that strongly suggests that the evolution of humans began in Africa. Virtually every stage of our development—stretching back over 5 million years—can be traced in the African record. Almost throughout this vast span of prehistory our ancestors lived in mobile groups engaged in scavenging, gathering and hunting.

From about the 10th millennium BC onwards, conditions in large parts of Africa were wetter than they are today, and human settlements began to spring up by lakes and rivers, from the Rift valley and Sudanese Nile valley in the east, across what are now the central and southern Saharan regions, to the Senegal River in the west. These earliest African settlements were based on fishing and were characterized by certain shared aspects of material culture, most notably barbed, bone harpoon heads. Such similarities between the disparate settlements have led to the view that these communities were part of one cultural complex. However, there is considerable local variation in associated stone-tool industries, and it may therefore be more accurate to consider the appearance of these sedentary hunting-gathering-fishing communities as the result of a broadly contemporary, but independent, adaptation of different groups of people to the changing environment.

It was this ability to adapt to changing circumstances that led to the gradual transition to food production, that is, the cultivation of domesticated plants and herding of domesticated animals. It must be stressed that our current understanding of African food production is far from comprehensive. However, the view that food-producing techniques spread from the Fertile Crescent via the Nile valley to the rest of Africa is no longer tenable as far as plant cultivation (with the exception of wheat and barley) is concerned, and it may not be so for cattle domestication. From the 7th millennium BC onwards there is evidence of cattle-herding in present-day Algeria and the Egyptian Western Desert at Nabta Playa, which may be indicative of local domestication. At about the same time barley, wheat and domestic small stock, such as sheep and goats, were introduced from the Near East into the Nile delta. In central and southern Sahara early food production involved a move from fishing to livestock herding. The domestication of plants in these regions seems to be associated with progressive dessication after about the 5th millennium BC. As water and grazing land disappeared in the emerging desert, cattle-herding communities dispersed. These climatic and demographic factors initiated, or perhaps accelerated, the independent development of tropical agriculture.

However, it was only in the Nile valley that the advantages of food production led to state formation before about the 1st millennium BC. This is seen most spectacularly in the rise of dynastic Egypt at the end of the 4th millennium; but as early as about 2400 BC there is evidence of a substantial town at Kerma, near the third cataract, which includes fortifications, facilities for copper-smelting and eight large mound graves. Because of the many Egyptian artefacts recovered from the site, Kerma was once thought to have been an Egyptian colony. But there is plentiful evidence to support the view that it was a Nubian site and that the indigenous people had a prolonged, primarily commercial, contact with Egypt. Kerma reached a political and cultural peak during Egypt’s Second Intermediate Period (c. 1720–1550 BC) but failed to survive the militaristic imperialism of the New Kingdom. The kingdom of Napata, which succeeded Kerma, did not emerge until about 900 BC.

TO 300 BC

PEOPLES OF THE AMERICAS

First colonized by Siberians during the Ice Age, the Americas then developed in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Nonetheless, ways of life and forms of social organization evolved in much the same ways as in the Old World, though languages and customs were distinct as was much of the technology that was developed.

When were the Americas first peopled and by whom? Long controversy is now deepening with the results of new research on genetics. But the general view remains that humans first entered the Americas from Siberia around 15,000 years ago. A second Asiatic immigration in about 8000 BC brought the first speakers of the Na-Dene languages of northern and western North America, and then came the ancestors of the Aleuts and Inuit. From this point on, the Americas remained almost entirely isolated from further human contact until the European discovery of the continent 500 years ago.

Linguistic diversity today shows that these early colonists soon spread. Archaeology confirms that the southernmost tip of South America was inhabited by 9000 BC and northernmost Greenland by 1750 BC (by “Independence” cultures). The way of life—travelling in small bands, gathering, fishing and hunting—encouraged such wide dispersal. Yet in some areas large groups assembled regularly. Buffalo hunts on the Great Plains of North America called for extensive cooperation. Gatherings on this scale would have been annual highlights for the people involved. They continued in remoter areas into the early 1900s, allowing anthropologists to discover something of the organization, knowledge and skills of this largely unchanged way of life.

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS

With the end of the Ice Age, peoples in the temperate and tropical zones of the region came to rely increasingly on both non-migratory prey and migratory wildfowl, on shellfish beds and on seasonal farming, all of which encouraged settled ways of life and population growth. Along the west coast of North America and the southeast coast of South America, fishing was to remain a mainstay but elsewhere—in Mesoamerica, the Central Andes and Amazonia—gathering and hunting gradually declined in favour of farming. Both cause and effect, villages were flourishing in many areas by 1500 BC.

The most widely grown crop was maize, though manioc (cassava) became important in lowland South America and potatoes and cotton in the Andes. Other early crops included gourds, squashes, beans, tomatoes, avocados, chillies and aloes. Turkeys and dogs were kept for food in Mesoamerica, guinea pigs in the Andes. Herding was restricted to the Andes, where llamas were important as pack animals, and both llamas and alpacas were raised for wool.

Settled village life did not preclude long-distance trade. Sea shells and metal tools and ornaments were circulated widely in eastern North America. Pottery provides evidence that sailors ranged along much of the west coast of South America as well as north to Central America. It is not known whether it is diffusion of this kind or a common and older Siberian heritage that explains the cultural similarities widespread among native Americans even today.

EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

Settled life permitted rising populations. Similarly, the need for farm labour may have encouraged the trend. But how were larger groups to live together? Across the continent, political leaders emerged. They used religious institutions to reflect and mould new forms of organization. Across the eastern half of North America, families gathered around ceremonial earthworks for festivals. Their tombs suggest that funerals were political occasions, too. There is evidence from these burial places of distinctions between rich and poor, governors and governed.

In the Central Andes, temples stood guard over warehouses built to store seasonal surpluses and precious imports. Community assets were the objects not only of local rivalry but of outsiders’ jealousy as well. Gruesome sculptures at Cerro Sechín may depict warfare. Later, around 700–400 BC, the Chavín cult transcended local rivalries. Associated with ideas about supernatural spirits, its rites, architecture, sculpture, goldwork and fine textiles were used in many districts, probably partly to justify the privileges of chieftains. These ideas were to last long (see p. 36).

In Mesoamerica during the same period religion was almost certainly used to the same ends by the Olmecs, whose cult was also widespread and also part of a tradition that lived on. Chiefs seem to have claimed pivotal roles in the organization of the cosmos. Earthworks, rock art, sculpture and decorated pottery served the cult and illustrated it. Again probably for the same reasons, the Maya adorned their pyramids with similar religious and political symbols.

All the while, chiefs were supposed not to order their people but to depend on them. The break came in Mexico, in about 500 BC, with the foundation of Monte Albán as a new capital for the Zapotecs. Whether or not this move was prompted by a need for local cooperation in managing water resources or by common interests in defence, it was soon evident—from the site’s architecture, its symbolism, and the rulers’ effects on the surrounding villages and their conquests further afield—that a more powerful and centralized form of rule had arisen: the state. From the same period at Monte Albán is the earliest evidence for hieroglyphic writing: dated records of conquest.

TO 500 BC

SOUTHEAST ASIA BEFORE CIVILIZATION

With its long coastlines, mountain ranges and great river valleys fed by heavy seasonal rains, both the mainland and islands of southeast Asia provided a wealth of resources for early humankind. The diversity of flora and the abundance of metal ores allowed the growth of agricultural communities from at least the 4th millennium BC.

There seems little doubt that Homo erectus, the ancestor of all modern humans, was established in southeast Asia west of the biogeographical boundary “Wallace Line” more than one million years ago. But only Java, with its favourable geological conditions, has provided the skeletal evidence; elsewhere only discoveries of stone tools along river terraces and in some limestone fissure deposits reveal his passing.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Abundant archaeological evidence for modern human hunter-gatherers comes only in the Late Pleistocene, and mainly from sites in the limestone mountains: among the best known are Tham Khuong and Nguom in northern Vietnam, Lang Rongrien in Thailand, Leang Burung in Celebes, and Tabon Cave in the island of Palawan in the Philippines. From about 40,000 years ago a varied range of flake stone tools have been found in these caves, left by people who exploited a wide range of plants, small and large animals and molluscs. This way of life persisted until about the 6th millennium BC, with changes in the toolkit from flake tools to pebble choppers—the Hoabinhian tradition, called after the region in north Vietnam where it was first described.

From at least 6000 BC village settlements with evidence for rice-growing and pottery-making have been found in southern China, but perhaps because there has been relatively little research on early village sites in southeast Asia no settlements of rice farmers older than 3000 BC have been found in northern Vietnam and inland areas of Thailand, although Phung Nguyen in the Red River valley of Vietnam and Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha in northern Thailand have all been well investigated. But the best evidence for late Neolithic occupation of southeast Asia comes from Khok Phanom Di, a 7m (23ft)-deep village mound occupying about 5ha (12 acres) near the coast southeast of modern-day Bangkok. Here over 150 burials and rich occupation layers dated to between 2000 and 1400 BC provide evidence of intensive exploitation of the sea and adjacent mangrove forests, and the beginnings of social differentiation.

METAL TECHNOLOGIES

From early in the 2nd millennium BC bronze tools were added to the existing stone, bone and antler toolkits in central and northeast Thailand and northern Vietnam, where we can refer to a true Bronze Age from about 1500 to 500 BC. The best known Bronze Age locations in Thailand are Ban Chiang and Ban Na Di in the northeast and Nil Kham Haeng near Lopburi in the Chao Phraya valley. In Vietnam more sites of this phase are known including Dong Dau, Viet Khe, Cau Chan, Trang Khen, Lang Vac and Dong Son on the Ma river where a rich burial ground has been excavated since the 1920s and given its name to the late Bronze Age culture of the region, best known for its great bronze drums. These are widely distributed from Yunnan in southwest China to Thailand, Malaya and many parts of Indonesia where they seem to have been traded in antiquity as objects of great prestige and magical power.