NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION

1. Origins of Agriculture
- Neolithic Era:
+ Means “New stone age”
+ Refinement in tool-making techniques: polished stone tools
+ Refers to early stage of agricultural society, from about 12-6k years ago.
+ Neolithic people sought to ensure more regular food supplies by
* Domesticating animals: breeding for human consumption, raising for milk,
meat
* Cultivating plants: plant  harvest  food supplies
- The early spread of Agriculture
+ Slash-and-burn cultivation techniques
* Involved frequent movement on the part of farmers
* Achievements: By 6000 B.C.E, agriculture had spread from SW Asian
homeland to the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean and the Balkan region of Eastern
Europe
By 4000 B.C.E, spread farther to Western Europe North of the
Mediterranean
* Procedure: Slash the bark on a stand of trees in a forest  burn the dead
trees to the ground  fertile weed-free batch  Abundant harvest  (after a few
years) weed invasion, infertile soil  Move to another forest region  ((Again))
+ Summary:
* Agriculture involved hard physical labor: clearing land, preparing fields.
Planting seeds, pulling weeds, and harvesting crops
* Agriculture made production of abundant food supplies possible
* Agriculture spread widely, influenced the lives and experience of human
beings
- Independent inventions of Agriculture:
Place Cultivation of crops Domestication of animals
East Hemisphere
SW Asia Wheat & barley Sheep, goats, pigs, cattle
Sudanic Africa Sorghum Cattle, sheep, goats
East Asia Rice, millet, soybean Pigs, chickens, water
 buffaloes
Taro, yams, coconuts, bananas & citrus
SE Asia
fruits
West Hemisphere
Maize, squashes, peppers, beans,
Mesoamerica
tomatoes
Central Andean region of
Potatoes, sweet potatoes, maize, beans Llamas, alpacas, guinea pigs
South America
Amazon River Valley Manioc, peanuts, sweet potatoes
Sub-Saharan West Africa Yams, okra, blacked-eye peas
2. Early Agriculture society
- Emergency of villages and towns:
+ New forms of social organization: settled near fields in permanent villages
+ One of the earliest known Neolithic villages: Jericho
* Before 8000 B.C.E
* Site of a freshwater oasis north of the Dead Sea in present-day Israel
* 200 residents *Farmed mostly wheat and barley *Kept no domesticated
animals
* Hunted local game animals
* Engaged in trade of salt and obsidian
- Potential of specialized labor in Neolithic times
+ The rapid development of specialized labor is carried out at one of the best-
known Neolithic settlements, Catal Huyuk
* Located in South-central Anatolia
* Occupied continuously from 7250 to 5400 B.C.E
* Grew into a busting town, accommodating about 5000 inhabitants
* Residents manufactured pots, baskets, textiles, leather, stone and metal tools,
wood carvings, carpets, beads and jewelry among other products
* A center of production and trade in obsidian tools
- Specialization of Labor
+ Pottery: By about 7000 B.C.E, Neolithic villagers
* Transformed malleable clay into fire-hardened, waterproof pottery capable
of storing dry or liquid products
 * Etched designs into clay that fire would harden into permanent decorations,
colored products with glazes
 POTTERY became a medium of artist expression and a source of practical utensils
+ Metalworking: The earliest metal human worked with systematically was cooper
* Naturally relatively pure and malleable
* Cooper (hammering the cold metal, smelting and casting) jewelry and
simple tools (knives, axes, hoes, weapons)
* Ores (heat) Cooper (high temperature) melted and poured into molds
+ Textile production
* Fragments of textiles survived from as early as 6000 B.C.E
* Selective breeding that providing long, lustrous, easily worked fibers
Fibers (spinning) Threads (weaving) Cloth
- Distinctions: Accumulating considerable wealth through
+ Concentration of people into permanent settlements
+ Increasing specialization of labor
+ Trade surplus food or manufactured products for gems,jewelry and other
valuable items
+ Ownership of land

3. Neolithic Culture
- The cultural dimension of the human experience
+ Neolithic farmers closely observed the natural world around them and noted the
conditions that favored successful harvests
+ They acquired an impressive working knowledge of the earth and its rhythms
+ They accumulated a store of knowledge concerning relationships between the
heavens and the earth like associating the seasons with the different positions of the
sun, moon & stars
+ They made the first steps toward the elaboration of a calendar, which would
enable them to predict with tolerable accuracy the kind of weather they could expect
at various times of the year
- Neolithic religion
 + Neolithic religious thought clearly reflected the natural world of early
agricultural society
+ The Neolithic gods included the life-bearing, Venus-type figures of paleolithic
times, deities associated with the cycle of life, death and regeneration
+ Neolithic worshipers associated these gods with animals:
* Goddesses – frogs or butterflies – represented life cycle
* Young male gods – bulls and goats – represented the energy, virility in the
creation of life

4. The origins of urban life

- Reasons for the beginning of urban life: Agriculture dramatically transformed the
earth within 4000 years
+ More people (dense population) e.g: Jericho and Catal Huyuk
+ Domesticated some animals
+ Specialized labor
+ Complex social relations
- Regions that cities appeared during that time
+ Around Tigris and Euphrates rivers (4000-3500 B.C.E)
+ Egypt, northern India, northern China, central Mexico and the central Andean
region of South America
- Discriminating cities and villages:
+ Cities were larger and more complex
+ Cities fostered more intense specialization => large classes of professionals
emerged
+ Cities decisively influenced the political, economic, and cultural life of large
regions
+ Cities established marketplaces
+ Cities also extended their claims to authority over their hinterlands => Became
centers of political, military and economic influence
+ Appearances of temples, schools and cultural specialists => Cities can influence
other areas