WHAT does 'neolithic' mean?

Neo = New Lithic = Stone (from the Greek lithikós) Neolithic = New Stone Age

WHAT characterised the neolithic period?

More sophisticated stone tools Food production - agriculture and animal domestication Sedentary living Pottery

WHEN was the neolithic period?*

BC * Bearing in mind it happened in different times in different places.

WHY is an appreciation of the neolithic period important to our study of the civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Mediterranean, beginning about 3000 BC?

The Fertile Crescent (including Mesopotamia) was the first part of the world to enter the Neolithic stage and food production took off there in the most dramatic fashion. This goes a long way to explain why this is where we find the first 'civilizations' there.

The Fertile Crescent

Jared Diamond 2005, Guns, Germs & Steel Chapter 5: Apples or Indians? 1. Two contrasting explanations of why agriculture arose in some places and not in others. 1.1 Agriculture never arose independently in some fertile & highly suitable areas Eg. California, Europe temperate Australia, subequatorial Africa 1.2 Problem with the local people or problems with the locally available wild plants?

Apples or Indians? 2. Wild plants 2.1 Worldwide - 200, 000 wild flowering plants 2.2 Vast majority are unsuitable for domestication 2.21 They are woody 2.22 No fruit, their leaves and roots are inedible 2.3 Only a few thousand are eaten by humans and only a few hundred have been domesticated 2.31 Of those plants that have been domesticated, most are only minor supplements to our diet. A dozen plants make up 80% of the world’s annual tonnage of all crops

Apples or Indians? 3. Plants domesticated in one area but not another 3.1 Eg, why did the native people of southern Africa not cultivate sorghum for themselves? 3.2 Eg, Western Europe and North Africa failed to domesticate flax 3.3 Einkorn wheat not cultivated in the Balkans 3.4 Apple and grape domesticated in Eurasia but not in Eurasia

Apples or Indians? 4. Many domesticable plants and animals necessary to make a food-producing existence worthwhile 4.1 We need to assess the potential of an entire local flora for domestication. 4.2 Fertile Crescent – the earliest centre of food production. New Guinea and the eastern United States domesticated local crops but they were few in variety ‘Food package’ in PNG and US did not support extensive development of human technology and political organisation. 4.3 Did flora and environment of the Fertile Crescent have advantages over PNG and the US?

Apples or Indians? 5. Fertile Crescent 5.1 Earliest site for a whole string of developments; cities, writing, empires, civilization 5.2 These developments enabled by the early development of food production 5.21 food production > dense population > stored food surpluses > feeding of nonfarming specialists 5.3 Extensive knowledge about rise of agriculture 5.31 Relationship between crops and wild plant ancestors proven by genetic and chromosomal studies 5.31 Geographic range of wild plants known 5.32 Changes due to domestication known precisely – observable in the archaeological record 5.33 Place and time of domestication known

Apples or Indians? 6. Advantage of Fertile Crescent Flora #1 – annual plants 6.1 Mediterranean climate (long, hot, dry summers) selects for annuals. 6.2 Annuals tend to put their energy into producing big seeds (ready to sprout quickly when the rain comes) Many of the big seeds are edible by humans (cereals and pulses) of the world’s 12 major crops today 6.22 Annual seeds well adapted to being held in long storage by humans