Old World Farmers
Independent invention accounts best for the diversity of domesticates and the distinctiveness of Neolithic lifeways around the world. What’s more, many wild species, such as wheat and sheep, probably occupied more extensive natural ranges in the early Holocene and may in fact have undergone local domestication more than a few times (Armelagos and Harper, 2005). But as Bellwood (2005) and Diamond (1999) remind us, we can’t entirely discount the spread of Neolithic lifeways or people from place to place. As we’ll see, in at least some areas—southeastern Europe, for example—colonizing farmers appear to have brought their domesticates and their culture with them as they migrated into new territories in search of suitable farmland. Neolithic practices also spread through secondary contact as people on the margins of established farming societies acquired certain tools, seeds, and ideas and passed them along to cultures still further removed. Seeds and animals must have become commodities in prehistoric exchange networks, just like the Spanish horses obtained by Native Americans did in the sixteenth century. It’s important to bear in mind that each archaeological event is unique in its own way. “One-size-fits-all” explanations are rarely adequate, even if the results are the same—in this case, the expansion of Neolithic lifeways. With that in mind, let’s consider a sampling of Neolithic societies from around the world to get some idea of the variations on this common theme.
The Near East
Epipaleolithic foraging cultures, such as Kebaran and Natufian, apparently took the first steps, though perhaps inadvertently, toward agriculture in the Near East . Many of the archaeologically documented changes among Epipaleolithic huntergatherers in the Levant offer important support for Flannery’s (1973) conception of a broad-spectrum revolution that preceded the development of domestication and agriculture. For example, the extraordinary preservation of plant remains at Ohalo II, an early Epipaleolithic campsite in northern Israel, shows that small-grained grass and wild cereal seeds were important in hunter-gatherer diets in the Levant by 23,000 ya. Faunal remains from eight other Epipaleolithic sites in the Levant, all of which date between 18,000 and 12,000 ya, also show a pattern of increased diet breadth as the abundance of big game animals declined and hunters depended more and more on smaller game, such as gazelles (Stutz et al., 2009). The site of Abu Hureyra, in the upper Euphrates valley of Syria, is of particular archaeological interest because its occupation spans the Younger Dryas (roughly 13,000–11,500 ya), a climatic shift to cooler and drier conditions that David Henry (1989) argues was an important environmental factor in the development of agriculture in the Levant. The Abu Hureyra hunter-gatherers consumed more than 250 plant species, only a few of which were staple foods, at the onset of the Younger Dryas (Moore et al., 2000, p. 397). As the climate changed, many of these species vanished from the Abu Hureyra archaeological record, to be replaced by increased frequencies of weed seeds and possible evidence of early domesticated rye, specimens of which date to roughly 11,200–10,600 ya. Moore and colleagues (2010) infer that changing environmental conditions were sufficient to account for these shifts in Abu Hureyra’s subsistence economy and that this settlement depended at least partly on the cultivation of domesticated plants (rye, in this case). While the identification of domesticated rye at Abu Hureyra remains a controversial claim (see Colledge and Conolly, 2010, pp. 135– 136), the subsistence economy clearly reflects increased diet breadth as higher-ranked foods became less available in the region around Abu Hureyra (Colledge and Conolly, 2010). Evidence of cultivation, settled communities, and food storage become more common after the end of the Younger Dryas and the return of a slightly more moderate climate.
At Dhra’, an 11,000-year-old village site near the Dead Sea in Jordan, archaeologists recently uncovered the remains of mud granaries and other food storage features, as well as large quantities of wild barley and oat grains (Kuijt and Finlayson, 2009). The village economy at Dhra’ clearly depended on the cultivation and storage of wild plants, and many features traditionally associated with sedentary Neolithic farmers are seen at Dhra’. Food collectors and the earliest farmers established the first permanent sedentary communities in the Near East. Drawn by an ever-flowing spring in an otherwise arid region, settlers at the site of Jericho (or Tell es-Sultan), in the West Bank, and at other Natufian sites in Israel built their stone or mud-brick round houses some 11,500 ya. Though they were made of more substantial materials, in form these structures closely resembled the temporary huts of the region’s earlier hunters and gatherers. Numerous grinding stones and clay-lined storage pits found in these communities testify to the economic importance of cereal grains (Moore, 1985; Bar-Yosef, 1987). Finally, around 10,000 ya at Kebara and El Wad, both in Israel, stone-bladed sickles aided the harvest of wild wheat and barley (Henry, 1989). This technology, more efficient than plucking seeds by hand, netted greater yields during a short harvest period. The process of genetic selection that we’ve considered as the basis for plant domestication must have been well under way by this time. Foraging for the seeds of wild cereals, fruits, nuts, and the meat of wild game long remained an important, but slowly declining, strategy. By 10,000 ya, managed sheep and goat populations were present in the Levant (Munro, 2009). At Abu Hureyra, villagers were cultivating wheat, rye, and lentils by 9,800 ya, but wild plant food staples were still a part of the diet (Moore et al., 2000). By 9,000 ya, sedentary villagers across a broad arc from the Red Sea to western Iran— also known as the Fertile Crescent —engaged in wheat and barley agriculture and sheep and goat herding. As demonstrated at many sites in this region, Neolithic families lived in adjacent multiroom rectangular houses, in contrast to the compounds of individual small, round shelters commonly built by Epipaleolithic collectors as well as the early Jericho settlers.
Africa Tracing Africa’s Neolithic past is challenging, considering the continent’s vast size, its varied climates and vegetation zones, and the extent to which many of its regions are still archaeologically unknown. What’s more, because many tropical foods lack woody stems or durable seeds, plant macrofossils often are poorly represented at African archaeological sites. Recent studies based on the analysis of plant microfossils and genetic patterns are helping to construct fresh perspectives on the origins, development, and impacts of plant and animal domestication throughout the African continent.
Northern Africa
Archaeologists working in the Nile Valley have found sickles and milling stones relating to early wild grain harvesting (Wendorf and Schild, 1989). Qadan culture sites near present-day Aswan probably typified the Epipaleolithic food collectors who occupied the valley around 8,000 ya (Hoffman, 1991). Qadan people employed spears or nets for taking large Nile perch and catfish. Along the riverbanks they hunted wildfowl and gathered wild produce, processing starchy aquatic tubers on their milling stones. They also stalked the adjacent grasslands for gazelle and other game and may have begun the process of domesticating the local wild cattle (Wendorf and Schild, 1994; but see Gifford-Gonzalez and Hanotte, 2011, p. 6). Considering the wealth of naturally occurring resources along the Nile, this foraging and collecting way of life might have continued indefinitely. So why did farming develop there at all? Part of the answer rests with shifting rainfall patterns across North Africa since the Late Pleistocene. Long-term cycles brought increased precipitation, which broadened the Nile and its valley and gave the river a predictable seasonal rhythm. Rains falling on its tropical headwaters, thousands of miles to the south, caused the river to overflow its downstream channels by late summer, flooding the low-lying basins of northern Egypt for about three months of the year. Although desiccation followed, the flood-deposited silt grew lush with wild grasses through the following season. Periodically, however, extended drought episodes intervened to narrow the river’s life-giving flow. West of the Nile, the fragile arid environment of the Sahara was particularly susceptible to these fluctuations. It was always marginal for humans, and down to 11,000 ya, it was uninviting even to hunter-gatherers. Then a period of increased rainfall created shallow lakes and streams that nurtured the Saharan grasslands, attracting game animals and humans. Around 7,000 ya, people in the Sahara devised a strategy of nomadic pastoralism, allowing their herds of sheep, goats, and possibly cattle to act as ecological intermediaries by converting tough grasses to meat and by-products useful to humans (Wendorf and Schild, 1994). Soon after, around 6,000 ya, further deterioration of the region’s climate— and possibly overgrazing— forced the herders and their animals to seek greener pastures closer to the Nile and also to the south beyond the Sahara (Williams, 1984; A. Smith, 1992; Kuper and Kropelin, 2006). As drought parched the adjacent areas, the Nile Valley attracted more settlers. Wild resources were then insufficient to feed the growing sedentary population, and even the local domesticates that had been casually cultivated on the floodplain gave way to more productive cereals—the domesticated barley and wheat that had been brought under human control elsewhere by people like the Natufians. Farmers gradually made the river’s rhythm their own. Communities of reed-mat or mud-brick houses appeared across the Nile delta and along its banks. Basket-lined storage pits or granaries, milling stones, and sickles indicate a heavy reliance on grain. Pottery vessels of river clay, linen woven from flax fibers, flint tools, and occasional hammered copper items were produced locally. These ordinary Neolithic beginnings laid the foundation for the remarkable Egyptian civilization.
Sub-Saharan Africa
In West Africa along the southern edge of the Sahara, where little is currently known about the early Holocene human presence, the pattern appears similar to that described for the Sahara. At Ounjougou, in the Dogon Plateau region of central Mali, erosional gullies exposed a long sequence of Pleistocene and early Holocene sites (Huysecom et al., 2004). Excavations reveal that hunter-gatherers lived in this region from the earliest Holocene, around 12,000–11,000 ya. By 10,000–9,000 ya, descendants of these groups were harvesting wild cereal grasses and making and using ceramics. The major Near Eastern cereal crops did not grow well in sub-Saharan Africa or in its tropical regions. Between 5,000 and 3,000 ya, African farmers developed comparable domesticates from local cereal grasses, including varieties of millet and sorghum (Fig. 14-12; Smith, 1999). Pearl millet, an important food grain in parts of Africa and India, was domesticated in Mali around 4,500 ya and was soon found across sub-Saharan Africa. Manning and colleagues (2011) speculate that pearl millet may have spread rapidly because it could grow even where there wasn’t much water and it could be easily cultivated by mobile pastoralists. African crops such as pearl millet, finger millet, and sorghum found their way across the Arabian Sea to South Asia more than 3,000 ya (Fuller et al., 2011), where they are still raised today. Hunters and gatherers in other parts of Africa also experimented with local cultivars. For example, mobile foragers and semisedentary fishers of tropical Africa practiced yam horticulture in clearings and along riverbanks by 7,000– 6,000 ya (Ehret, 1984; Arnau et al, 2010). With digging sticks, they pried out the starchy tubers and carried them away for cooking. As an added bonus, the people discovered that if they pressed the leafy tops or cuttings of the largest roots into the soil at the edge of the camp clearing, the yams would regenerate into an informal garden. The domestication process for the yam, a tuber that propagates vegetatively (for example, by cuttings rather than by seeds), may have taken far longer, possibly millennia, than for the domestication of cereal grains such as wheat. More dramatic shifts in sub-Saharan subsistence followed the introduction and spread of several Neolithic domesticated plants and animals from South and Southeast Asia across the Indian Ocean. Among these economically important plants, all of which spread quickly throughout tropical Africa, were bananas (or plantains) and two root crops, taro and the greater yam (Fuller et al., 2011, p. 550). The banana, a food crop that is now of global importance, arrived in Africa from Southeast Asia, possibly by 2,500 ya. Based on linguistic evidence, Blench (2009) argues that plantains, taro, and the greater yams were part of the Southeast Asian “crop package,” which reached the shores of Africa and quickly spread throughout the interior. Outside the Nile Valley, cattle herding took priority over farming in much of East Africa, where conditions were generally not suitable for cultivation. Taurine cattle (Bos taurus) were first domesticated in the Near East more than 9,000 ya and by 8,000 ya could be found on the savannas that then existed in parts of the Sahara (Gifford-Gonzalez and Hanotte, 2011). Genetic evidence also suggests a possible independent domestication of African taurine cattle (Bradley and Magee, 2006). East African rock paintings show that hump-backed zebu (or indicine) cattle (Bos indicus), a South Asian domesticate, reached Africa by 2,500 ya. The resulting African taurinezebu hybrid played a major role in the success of East African cattle pastoralists (Fuller et al., 2011). Bantu-speaking peoples, native to west-central Africa, relied on these and other domesticated plants and animals to support their rapid expansion through central and southern Africa (Phillipson, 1984). Driving herds of domestic goats and cattle and acquiring the technology of ironworking as they moved southeastward through central Africa (Van Noten and Raymaekers, 1987), the Bantu easily overwhelmed most hunting and gathering groups. The conventional view is that with iron tools and weapons, they carved out gardens and maintained large semipermanent villages, and today, their numerous descendants live in eastern, southern, and southwestern Africa . There’s at least some evidence that food- producing methods spread into parts of southern Africa before the Bantu. The bones of domesticated sheep found in Late Stone Age sites in South Africa may not be the result of the spread of pastoralists, as once widely believed, but the remains of the camps of Bushmen (also called the San), whom Karim Sadr (2003) describes as “hunters-with-sheep.”
Asia
Several centers of domestication in southern and eastern Asia gave rise to separate Neolithic traditions based on the propagation of productive local plant and animal species. The exploitation of these resources spread widely and heralded further economic and social changes associated with the rise of early civilizations in these regions.
South Asia
Excavations at Mehrgarh, in central Pakistan, have illuminated Neolithic beginnings on the Indian subcontinent (Jarrige and Meadow, 1980; Fuller, 2006). Located at the edge of a high plain west of the broad Indus Valley, the site’s lower levels, dating between 8,000 and 6,000 ya, reveal the trend toward dietary specialization that accompanied the domestication of local plant and animal species. Early on, the people harvested both wild and domesticated varieties of barley and wheat, among other native plants. Mehrgarh’s archaeological deposits also include bones of many local herbivores: water buffalo, gazelle, swamp deer, goats, sheep, pigs, cattle, and even elephants. By 6,000 ya, the cultivated cereals prevailed, along with just three animal species—domestic sheep, goats, and cattle. Researchers believe that this early Neolithic phase at Mehrgarh represents a transition from seminomadic herding to a more sedentary existence that became the basis for later urban development in the Indus Valley. Other planned settlements boasting multiroom mud-brick dwellings and granaries soon appeared in the region, supported by a productive agriculture and bustling trade in copper, turquoise, shells, and cotton. Rice is the staple crop of much of South and East Asia. The earliest evidence of rice cultivation in India is reported from the Lahuradewa site and adjacent lake deposits in the Ganges Valley, where cultivated rice phytoliths and husks have been found in contexts dated to around 8,360 ya (Saxena et al., 2006). Domesticated rice spread from the Ganges into South India after 3,000 ya, possibly after the emergence of irrigation systems such as paddy-field cultivation (Fuller and Qin, 2009). The relationship between early South Asian domesticated rice and that which was domesticated by Chinese farmers in the lower Yangtze Valley (see next section) is both unclear and an active area of research. Archaeologists know much less about the origins of agriculture in South India. Recent archaeobotanical analyses of samples taken from southern Neolithic, or Ash Mound Tradition, sites in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh suggest that the earliest agriculture in these regions dates between 5,000 and 4,000 ya and was based on several native domesticated species, principally two lentils (horsegram and mung bean) and two species of millet (browntop millet and bristly foxtail grass), along with nonnative crops including wheat and barley (Fuller et al., 2004). The high frequencies of native domesticates in these samples lend support to Vavilov’s (1992) identification of India as a possible independent center of domestication.
China
By 10,000 ya, hunter-gatherers and East Asia’s earliest farmers were already cultivating a crop in the Yellow River basin that became a staple food in the Neolithic villages and towns of northern China. It may surprise you to know that this crop was millet, not rice. The earliest firm evidence of millet cultivation comes from the early Neolithic site of Cishan, in Hebei Province , which has yielded caches of common (or broomcorn) millet in storage pits that date between 10,300 and 8,700 ya (Lu et al., 2009). Cishan was part of a regional development of millet farming that began with hunter- gatherer cultivation in several places across northern China. The deep stratigraphic sequence at the Dadiwan site in Gansu Province (Fig. 14-14) shows that the origins of millet farming can be traced to the broad-spectrum resource strategy of Late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in northern China (Barton et al., 2009; Bettinger et al., 2010). During the Yangshao period (about 7,000–5,000 ya), millet was a staple of both humans and their domesticated animals, which included pigs, chickens, and dogs, but for a long time foraging continued to provide wild plants, fish, and animals. River terrace deposits of deep loess soil ensured large yields and undoubtedly contributed to the growth of populous settlements. Domesticated rice is found in Yellow River sites by the late Yangshao period, but in minor quantities relative to millet; rice became fairly widespread in this region after 5,000 ya (Fuller et al., 2010) At the Yangshao site of Banpo, in Henan Province (see Fig. 14-14), more than 100 pit houses were placed around a plaza and its communal house, and a protective ditch surrounded the village. Cemeteries and pottery kilns typically were located near the residential parts of Yangshao villages. The jade carving, painted ceramics of tripod form, silkworm cultivation, and elite burials found in Yangshao sites anticipated some of the hallmarks of the later Neolithic, or Longshan, period beginning 4,700 ya. Rice may have been cultivated by hunter-gatherers in the lower Yangtze region of southern China by 12,000– 10,000 ya (Fuller et al., 2010). Although much is still unknown about the process by which rice was eventually brought into domestication, it was an economically important crop in the lower Yangtze by 8,000 ya (Fuller et al., 2009; Zhao, 2010). The population density of the middle and lower Yangtze basin increased rapidly between 7,000 and 5,500 ya, and substantial permanent villages were present throughout the region (Zhang and Hung, 2008). Some of these villages are considerably larger than their neighbors and show evidence of increased social complexity in their layout and structures. Farmers introduced rice into Southeast Asia over the next several thousand years, bringing settled village life and domesticated cattle, pigs, and dogs to locations such as Ban Chiang and Non Nok Tha, both in Thailand (see Fig. 14-14). High yields and the varied conditions under which rice could be grown made it the basis for sustained population growth in many parts of this region (Higham and Lu, 1998; Kharakwal et al., 2004).
Europe
Farmers in southeastern Europe already were tilling the Balkan Peninsula by about 9,000 ya at such sites as Argissa and Franchthi Cave, in Greece (Fig. 14-15; Perles, 2001). In the eastern Mediterranean, Neolithic farmers arrived on the island of Cyprus with domesticated plants and animals from the Near East as early as 10,000–9,000 ya (Zeder, 2008, p. 11599). Far to the west, similar farmers reached the east coast of Spain by 7,700 ya. Researchers continue to debate whether the spread of farming into Europe was caused by the movement of people, ideas, or some combination of the two (Bellwood, 2005; Barker, 2006; Colledge and Conolly, 2007; Rowley- Conwy, 2011). Considerable recent archaeological, genetic, radiocarbon, and other evidence supports the interpretation that the earliest farming cultures in Europe were primarily the result of sporadic migrations by Neolithic farmers, whose pathways stretched ultimately back to the Fertile Crescent. Rowley- Conwy (2011) and Zeder (2008) argue that in many of the places successfully colonized by these farmers, subsequent interaction with indigenous huntergatherers facilitated the spread of farming, as well as domesticated plants and animals, throughout parts of Europe. This interpretation accounts for the seemingly sudden appearance of fully domesticated sheep, goats, wheat, and barley at many sites in Europe and the countries bordering the Mediterranean. Had the Neolithic farming complex diffused throughout Europe primarily through trade and exchange rather than by migrations, farming would have developed gradually in these regions and the archaeological record would yield evidence of “transitional” local economies between hunting and gathering and farming. No such sites have yet been found. Neolithic lifeways transformed other parts of Europe somewhat later than southeastern Europe, and the source of these changes has also generated debate. Beginning around 7,000 ya, farming village sites littered with linear-decorated pottery, or Bandkeramik (Fig. 14-16), appeared across central and (still later) northern regions of the continent (Bogucki, 1988). Bandkeramik culture farmers sought deep, well-drained alluvial and loess soils located along the Danube, the Rhine, and their tributaries. There they cultivated cereals and legumes, raised cattle and pigs, and collected wild hazelnuts (Whittle, 1985; Howell, 1987). Their settlements consisted of sturdy timber-framed structures averaging 100 feet long, with some up to 150 feet. These longhouses sheltered extended families and possibly served as barns for storing harvested crops or for harboring animals. Wooden fences barred livestock from planted fields during the growing season and then, following the harvest, confined them in the field so that their manure could restore soil nutrients. The fertility of loess soils could be maintained for relatively long periods with simple manuring and crop rotation, and fixed-plot farming on rich alluvium could sustain permanent settlements for up to 500 years (Whittle, 1985; Howell, 1987). In Britain, Ireland, and southern Scandinavia, the development of Neolithic farming communities was rapid and possibly traumatic (Rowley- Conwy, 2004). In the continuing debate about whether European farming was the product of indigenous development, the cultural influence of farming neighbors, or migration from other regions, a growing body of evidence makes a compelling argument for migration as the main factor. For example, a recent analysis of radiocarbon dates from all regions of Britain concludes that around 6,100– 5,400 ya, farmers from northern France settled first in southwestern England and shortly thereafter in central Scotland (Collard et al., 2010). The results of this study are corroborated by the comparative analysis of pottery, faunal remains, and mortuary practices and by stable isotope data that show a strong Mesolithic/ Neolithic diet shift (Richards et al., 2003; Collard et al., 2010). Population density also increased significantly across Britain in the centuries following the arrival of the island’s first farmers.