The Fertile Crescent was the region of origin for the domesticated wheats, barley, certain legumes (especially peas, broad beans and lentils), sheep, goats, pigs and taurine (non-humped) cattle. Geographically it curves around like a boomerang to the north of the Syrian Desert, from southern Israel to the head of the Persian Gulf, enclosed to its north and east by the various mountain ranges of Turkey and the Zagros Mountains of western Iran. To the west it approaches the Mediterranean Sea (Figure 7.1). The climate is generally warm temperate with a strong winter rainfall peak and a hot, dry summer. The major cereals and legumes that were domesticated here were adapted to grow during the winter rainfall season, and this was a major determining factor in the ultimate distribution of what is here termed “the Fertile Crescent food production complex.”
The first developments in food production predictably occurred in riverine and lacustrine settings in this dry region, especially along the Jordan, upper Euphrates, and upper Tigris rivers. There is little evidence for any strong maritime orientation, although it must be remembered that the sea remained well below its present level until 5000 bc, so any early Neolithic sites on the Mediterranean and Black Sea coasts will now be deeply drowned (indeed, the remains of a few have been discovered on the sea bed).
Within this large area, archaeological knowledge is rather varied in quality not always aided by current political and humanitarian crises. Botanical and zoological data (see Figure 7.1) indicate that the wild ancestors of the most important domesticated crops and animals overlapped in distribution in a relatively small region of alluvial and 'hilly flanks' terrain, located in the northern Levant and southeastern Anatolia.1 The distribution does not mean that the whole Fertile Crescent agro-pastoral complex evolved entirely in this region, and many of the major species were probably cultivated or tamed initially in more than one place.2 The important point is that many component parts of a very powerful system of food production eventually came together as a whole, linked by communication and population expansion. By 7500 bc, the whole of the Fertile
Figure 7.1 The Fertile Crescent: likely zones of cereal and animal domestication, and some major Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites. Modified from Bellwood 2005a: Figure 3.1, original map by Multimedia Services, ANU.
Crescent had evolved interlaced production complexes that stretched from Israel to central Anatolia, and from the eastern Mediterranean to western Iran. These were capable of fuelling some of the most important human migrations of the past 10,000 years, through vast areas of northern Africa, central and southern Asia, and Europe.
According to current understanding, the northern Levant and southeastern Anatolia comprised the most formative region in the development of pre-domestication cultivation and animal husbandry, mainly between 9500 and 7000 bc. However, it is important to remember that the oldest evidence for exploitation of wild cereals in the Fertile Crescent actually comes from the site of Ohalo, far to the south and now submerged under the Sea of Galilee. At Ohalo, the waterlogged conditions preserved evidence for the grinding of wild emmer and barley grains to make flour, associated with the remains of six oval hut floors with plant straw bedding.3 Remarkably, this site was occupied during the last glacial maximum, and so preceded any evidence for cereal domestication by over 10,000 years. But it does drive home the observation that the whole Fertile Crescent probably witnessed a number of small independent and local innovations that later became melded into a regional and very powerful economic whole.
The fusion of cereal and animal species into a domesticated economy occurred gradually during the two successive Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) phases termed PPNA and PPNB, before the common use of earthenware pottery: During the PPNA, 9500-8500 bc, the economy seems to have been mainly one of pre-domestication cultivation but increasing settlement size. The PPNB (8500-7000 bc) saw domesticated plants and animals eventually dominate the food production economies of massive settlements, with human and animal populations in the thousands. Mean site sizes in the central and southern Levant increased through the duration of the PPN from 1 to about 10 ha. Two-storeyed houses made an appearance in the PPNB, with increasing evidence for communal grain storage. According to available survey records, new settlement foundation events in the northern Levant and upper Euphrates Valley increased during the course of the PPN from under 10 to between 40 and 70 per millennium. While there is a great deal of regional variation in such figures, it is clear that the core region of the Fertile Crescent underwent massive growth in population size and density, particularly during the PPNB. At least a ten-times multiplication of human population can be suggested through the two successive PPN phases.4
Another very important factor contributing to human population increase during this period was the consumption of milk from cows and goats, and the consequent selection within human populations for a lactase gene that allowed the carbohydrates in milk to be hydrolyzed into energy-providing glucose and galactose. Lipid residues in pottery indicate use of milk in Anatolia by at least the end of the PPNB. Jean-Denis Vigne discusses a number of indications, including age-at-death profiles for female animals, that suggest ruminant milk was exploited as early as the middle PPNB. Without the lactase gene for lactose digestion, now widespread in those parts of the western Old World (including North Africa) where milk is consumed regularly, milk had to be boiled or consumed as cheese, ghee, or yoghurt, or presumably not consumed at all.5
All of these newly domesticated sources of food, unavailable in such quantities to previous Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations, meant that human populations and settlement sizes increased in unison. They also meant that human
Society itself became considerably more complex than during the Paleolithic. From about 9000 bc onwards, the Fertile Crescent witnessed the construction and carving of some truly remarkable and monumental architectural creations, the first in world history This was the beginning of the technological road that led to the Great Pyramid, the Royal Tombs of Ur, Persepolis, the Parthenon, Angkor Wat, and indeed the Empire State Building. Nothing like it had happened during the Paleolithic, even allowing for some wonderful cave art in Aurignacian, Solutrean, and Magdalenian Europe. The so-called Neolithic Revolution in the Fertile Crescent was not just a revolution in the production of food and textiles, but also a revolution in the whole creative process that we see behind later human civilization in the western Old World. Of course, civilizations evolved independently elsewhere, particularly in China and parts of the Americas, but the driving technology of our modern world still has some of its deepest foundations located firmly in the Fertile Crescent.
To make my point, I will mention two monumental PPNA sites in the Fertile Crescent that I have had the good fortune to visit, both with construction commencing at about 9000 bc. Both rank as the oldest monuments of their kind in the world. One is the Neolithic tell (archaeological mound) of Jericho in the Jordan valley with its massive stone defensive wall at least 4 m high, rock-cut external ditch, and 8 m high circular solid masonry tower with an internal staircase. While opinions differ on function (defense against enemies seems most likely to me, but flood defense and 'ritual' usage are also possible), the Jericho PPNA monument is a very impressive piece of construction, a first in world prehistory.
The second site is Gobekli Tepe, located on what is today a rather barren ridge top above the Balikh drainage basin (a tributary of the Upper Euphrates) near Sanliurfa in southeastern Turkey. Gobekli is rather incredible because of its massive T-shaped limestone and possibly anthropomorphic pillars, up to 5 m high, decorated with bas-relief carvings of somewhat menacing animals (lots of curved beaks and claws) and possible images of roofed houses. These pillars were set around the insides of circular or oval stone-walled enclosures that were sometimes partly sunk into the ground, generally with two larger free-standing T-shaped pillars in the middle. The pillars weigh up to 10 tonnes, and were erected at Gobekli during two major building phases. Similar T-shaped pillars are known to occur at five other archaeological sites in the vicinity and apparently might exist in the hundreds across a large region of the northern Levant.
Opinions differ about Gobekli Tepe. The regional economy was supported by continuing hunting as well as by the feeding of legumes to husbanded pigs and sheep, together with some kind of pre-domestication cereal and legume cultivation, as at the contemporary Syrian Euphrates site of Jerf el Ahmar. But were the structures on the site itself for communal or residential use? Why the interest in carving male human and animal genitalia, and potentially dangerous beasts?6 I find such questions difficult to answer, but the interesting point is that this site did not emphasize the 'mother goddess' element of female fertility, which clearly became much more of a driving force in the superstitions of the established PPNB and Pottery Neolithic farmers who much later occupied western and central Anatolia, the Levant, southeastern Europe and Pakistan, after 7000 bc. The very first food producers in Anatolia, it seems, were not very interested in mother goddesses.
By the end of the PPNB, and during the following PPNC and Pottery Neolithic (7000 bc onwards), the production system that powered the Fertile Crescent Neolithic was beginning to show some signs of strain. The southern Levant, in particular, has low rainfall, and the warning signs first appeared here in the form of a widespread episode of site abandonment at the end of the PPNA (circa 8500 bc), for instance at Jericho. More widespread site abandonment or shrinkage occurred after 7000 bc, extending into the northern Levant and Anatolia, even though some of the largest PPN villages of the region reached maximal extents around this date.7 The overall situation implies considerable pressure on environmental resources. Switches away from arable farming towards pastoralism occurred widely at this time, and many authors take the view that an apparent climatic downturn around 6200 bc contributed greatly to the situation (e. g., Sherratt 2007; Bar-Yosef 2011, 2012).
If we examine the larger picture, it becomes clear that final Pre-Pottery and Pottery Neolithic cultures began to spread outwards from the Fertile Crescent around 7000 bc, westwards into Europe, and eastwards into Pakistan and central Asia. Movement into North Africa perhaps did not occur until 2000 years later, so the whole process was therefore not particularly rapid. Peripheral regions such as northern Europe and northern India were only reached after the passage of about 4000 years. These spreads carried Fertile Crescent crops, animals and cultural resources, doubtless including languages. In an agronomic sense, the whole complex eventually reached its prehistoric limits in the summer-rainfall (monsoon) climates of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia beyond the Indus. These monsoon climates were not suited to wheat or barley production since both evolved as winter crops and would have required irrigation if grown during the dry monsoon zone winters. The West and the East, Occident and Orient, have thus had their separate agronomic foundations since at least 10,000 years back in time.
Two major questions arise before we move further to examine the expansions beyond the Fertile Crescent. Firstly did one monolithic economy and cultural complex spread over such a vast area, or were there many constantly differentiating variants? The answer here supports the latter situation, given that the spreads themselves eventually reached their limits after many millennia of interaction with other populations. Neolithic material culture hardly remained identical all the way from the Euphrates to England or India. As we will see, many periods of stasis occurred during the expansions, sometimes for a millennium or more. Many regions reveal a considerable survival of Mesolithic populations within the Neolithic matrix. So, while a distinct and archaeologically identifiable food production system drove this expansion, it also became refracted by time, space and context into many regional variants.
Secondly, we might ask if the expansion of the Fertile Crescent economy was accompanied by an expansion of genetically and culturally related Neolithic populations, or was it due in each region simply to adoption by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers? The answer is clearly population expansion with admixture, not just in terms of the patterning in the linguistic and genetic data, but also because the archaeological cultures of the initial migration phases are generally much more unified over regions much larger than those occupied by their immediate successors. Food production did not merely spread through a static web of indigenous Mesolithic populations.
Figure 7.2 The expansion of Neolithic cultures from the Fertile Crescent into Europe. Archaeological cultures are in capitals with dates. (1) LBK origin region in western Hungary; (2) early LBK expansion; (3) later LBK expansion; CW Cardial Ware. Modified from Bellwood 2005a: Figure 4.1, original map by Multimedia Services, ANU.
World History
