As seen in the previous chapter, by the end of the Paleolithic humans had spread throughout the globe. During this period much of the northern hemisphere was covered with glaciers. By 12,000 years ago, warmer climates prevailed, and these glaciers receded, causing changes in human habitats globally. As sea levels rose throughout the world, many areas that had been dry land during periods of glaciation—such as the Bering Strait, parts of the North Sea, and an extensive land area that had joined the eastern islands of Indonesia to mainland Asia—flooded.
In some northern regions, warmer climates brought about particularly marked changes, allowing the replacement of barren tundra with forests. In the process, the herd animals—upon which northern Paleolithic peoples had depended for much of their food, clothing, and shelter— disappeared from many areas. Some, like the caribou and musk ox, moved to colder climates; others, like the mammoths, died out completely. In the new forests, animals were often more solitary in their habits. As a result, large cooperative hunts were less productive than before. Diets shifted to abundant plant foods as well as fish and other foods around lakeshores, bays, and rivers. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, this transitional period between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic is called the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age. In the Americas, comparable cultures are referred to as Archaic cultures.
New technologies accompanied the changed postglacial environment. Manufacture began of ground stone tools, shaped and sharpened by grinding the tool against sandstone, often using sand as an additional abrasive. These shaped, sharpened stones were set into wooden or sometimes antler handles to make effective axes and adzes, cutting tools with a sharp blade set at right angles to a handle. Though such implements take longer to make, they are less prone to breakage under heavy-duty usage than those made of chipped stone. Thus they were helpful in clearing forest areas and in the woodwork needed for the creation of dugout canoes and skin-covered boats. Evidence of seaworthy watercraft at Mesolithic sites indicates that human foraging for food took place on the open water as well as on land. Thus it was possible to make use of deep-water resources as well as those of coastal areas, rivers, and lakes.
The microlith—a small but hard, sharp blade—was the characteristic tool of the Mesolithic. Although a mi-crolithic (“small stone”) tool tradition existed in Central Africa by about 40,000 years ago,178 such tools did not become common elsewhere until the Mesolithic. Micro-liths could be mass produced because they were small, easy to make, and could be fashioned from sections of blades. This small tool could be attached to an arrow or other tool shaft by using melted resin (from pine trees) as a binder.
Microliths provided Mesolithic people with an important advantage over their Upper Paleolithic forebears: The small size of the microlith enabled them to devise a wider array of composite tools made out of stone and wood or bone. Thus they could make sickles, harpoons, arrows, knives, and daggers by fitting microliths into slots in
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Wood, bone, or antler handles. Later experimentation with these forms led to more sophisticated tools and weapons such as bows to propel arrows.
Dwellings from the Mesolithic provide some evidence of a more sedentary lifestyle during this period. By contrast, most hunting peoples, and especially those depending on herd animals, are highly mobile. To be successful, hunters must follow migratory game. People subsisting on a diet of seafood and plants in the milder northern forested environments of this time period did not need to move regularly over large geographic areas.
In the warmer parts of the world, wild plant foods were more readily available, and so their collection complemented hunting in the Upper Paleolithic more than had been the case in the colder northern regions. Hence, in areas like Southwest Asia, the Mesolithic represents less of a changed way of life than was true in Europe. Here, the important Natufian culture flourished.
The Natufians lived between 10,200 and 12,500 years ago at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea in caves, rock shelters, and small villages with stone - and mud-walled houses. They are named after Wadi en-Natuf, a ravine near Jerusalem, Israel, where the remains of this culture were first found. They buried their dead in communal cemeteries, usually in shallow pits without any other objects or decorations. A small shrine is known from one of their villages—a 10,500-year-old settlement at Jericho in the Jordan River Valley. Basin-shaped depressions in the rocks found outside homes and plastered storage pits beneath the floors of the houses indicate that the Natufians were the earliest Mesolithic people known to have stored plant foods. Certain tools found among Natufian remains bear evidence of their use to cut grain. These Mesolithic sickles consisted of small stone blades set in straight handles of wood or bone.
The new way of life of the various Mesolithic and Archaic cultures generally provided supplies of food sufficiently abundant to permit people in some parts of the world to live in larger and more sedentary groups. They became village dwellers, and some of these settlements went on to expand into the first farming villages, towns, and ultimately cities.
World History
