Overview
Although cereals were being harvested with flint-bladed sickles and ground by limestone in the Nile valley more than 15,000 years ago, plants and animals were not domesticated for food until about 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent of southwestern Asia and soon after that in Mesoamerica, Peru, and China. While the ice was melting and the climate was warming up, the reindeer and horses retreated to the north, and the mammoths disappeared. Forests spread, and those animals were replaced by red deer, wild pigs, and cattle. Dogs had already been domesticated for a few thousand years. Sedentary communities settled down in southwest Asia about a thousand years before wheat and barley were domesticated, supported by herds of wild sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, which were all domesticated by 6000 BC.
Women were probably responsible for learning how to cultivate plants, as they seemed to have
done most of the plant gathering. Women also probably invented potting,spinning,andweaving.
Men used to hunting probably took care of the herds and, after the plow was nvented,castrated
bulls to use oxen to pull plows and carts, though a Sumerian poem refers to a woman in the fields
with the plow. Dug-out canoes were used for fishing and as transportation for trading such items as obsidian, shells, salt, food, and clothing. As more farmland was needed, the invention of the ax enabled people to cut down trees and use wood for building houses. At first houses were round like the communal caves and huts, but soon rectangles were used so that additional rooms could be added. In such villages the family replaced the band as the basic social group.
The oldest city discovered so far is Jericho, which had two thousand people between 8350 and 7350 BC. A large stone wall surrounded the settlement. In the Zagros mountains people living at Ali Kosh hunted gazelles, wild asses, and pigs, fished in the Mehmeh River, and caught wild fowl about 7500 BC. Soon they were growing two-rowed barley and emmer wheat. Between 6250 and 5400 BC Catal Huyuk in the Taurus mountains of Anatolia had a population of about 5,000. Numerous bull skulls and horns found in the houses indicate that people probably engaged in rituals as families. Corpses were put out somewhere to be picked clean by vultures before their bones were buried under the floor in their houses. The simplicity of most grave objects indicates that this probably was a fairly egalitarian society. Before the use of metal there seems to have been little warfare and much greater equality between men and women. Pottery vessels, which have been found in Japan as old as 12,000 BC, became widespread in the Near East by 6500 BC.
The earliest civilization with writing developed in the lands around and between the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers which flow southeast into the Persian Gulf. Large-scale irrigation began along
the Euphrates River as early as 6000 BC, while those living around the Nile and the Indus were
only using dikes and ditches to protect their homes and crops from floodwaters. About 5400 BC the first city established in Mesopotamia was Eridu, which a Sumerian creation story credits with being the first city to emerge from the primeval sea. The oldest known temple was constructed there, and what is called the Ubaid culture developed from 5300 to 3600 BC. Soon the stone age was transcended, as people learned how to melt and shape copper, gold, and silver.
Although cereals were being harvested with flint-bladed sickles and ground by limestone in the Nile valley more than 15,000 years ago, plants and animals were not domesticated for food until about 10,000 years ago in the fertile crescent of southwestern Asia and soon after that in Mesoamerica, Peru, and China. While the ice was melting and the climate was warming up, the reindeer and horses retreated to the north, and the mammoths disappeared. Forests spread, and those animals were replaced by red deer, wild pigs, and cattle. Dogs had already been domesticated for a few thousand years. Sedentary communities settled down in southwest Asia about a thousand years before wheat and barley were domesticated, supported by herds of wild sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs, which were all domesticated by 6000 BC.
Women were probably responsible for learning how to cultivate plants, as they seemed to have
done most of the plant gathering. Women also probably invented potting,spinning,andweaving.
Men used to hunting probably took care of the herds and, after the plow was nvented,castrated
bulls to use oxen to pull plows and carts, though a Sumerian poem refers to a woman in the fields
with the plow. Dug-out canoes were used for fishing and as transportation for trading such items as obsidian, shells, salt, food, and clothing. As more farmland was needed, the invention of the ax enabled people to cut down trees and use wood for building houses. At first houses were round like the communal caves and huts, but soon rectangles were used so that additional rooms could be added. In such villages the family replaced the band as the basic social group.
The oldest city discovered so far is Jericho, which had two thousand people between 8350 and 7350 BC. A large stone wall surrounded the settlement. In the Zagros mountains people living at Ali Kosh hunted gazelles, wild asses, and pigs, fished in the Mehmeh River, and caught wild fowl about 7500 BC. Soon they were growing two-rowed barley and emmer wheat. Between 6250 and 5400 BC Catal Huyuk in the Taurus mountains of Anatolia had a population of about 5,000. Numerous bull skulls and horns found in the houses indicate that people probably engaged in rituals as families. Corpses were put out somewhere to be picked clean by vultures before their bones were buried under the floor in their houses. The simplicity of most grave objects indicates that this probably was a fairly egalitarian society. Before the use of metal there seems to have been little warfare and much greater equality between men and women. Pottery vessels, which have been found in Japan as old as 12,000 BC, became widespread in the Near East by 6500 BC.
The earliest civilization with writing developed in the lands around and between the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers which flow southeast into the Persian Gulf. Large-scale irrigation began along
the Euphrates River as early as 6000 BC, while those living around the Nile and the Indus were
only using dikes and ditches to protect their homes and crops from floodwaters. About 5400 BC the first city established in Mesopotamia was Eridu, which a Sumerian creation story credits with being the first city to emerge from the primeval sea. The oldest known temple was constructed there, and what is called the Ubaid culture developed from 5300 to 3600 BC. Soon the stone age was transcended, as people learned how to melt and shape copper, gold, and silver.
