Early Near Eastern Cultures - Pre-Pottery Neolithic A

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Culture (Neolithic) (Levant & Near East)
c.9500 - 8800 BC

The term 'Fertile Crescent' refers to a geographical area in the Near East which arcs between the Jordan Valley of the Levant and the Euphrates and Tigris estuary. It also reaches up into southern and central Anatolia (modern Turkey), which is part of the northern Syrian zone in which true farming first seems to have occurred. It was in this Fertile Crescent that the distant effects of the most recent ice age faded perhaps the quickest, which allowed Neolithic Farmer processes to be undertaken in small but significant steps.

Moves towards full-farming went through ever-improving steps being taken towards the creation of civilisation, most notably during the Natufian period. The subsequent Khiamian accelerated the process as an early phase of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (which is usually abbreviated to PPNA).

Under the PPNA, archaeology shows that plants and animals continued to be wild-farmed rather than domesticated. The difference for the PPNA was that some truly remarkable early stone constructions were now being erected, such as that of Göbekli Tepe, which hinted at new degrees of social complexity. Houses remained circular with stone foundations in the usual hunter-gatherer style, with a single shared space inside. Community buildings were similar, but larger, and all buildings had lime-plastered floors.

Monumental building was different though. Göbekli Tepe's 'Phase I' occurred during this period (see feature link). This construction was erect by 9000 BC at the latest, and possibly as early as 10,000 BC. Evidence of any domestic use is entirely lacking, with no settlements being located nearby. Human skeletons have been unearthed in telling positions though, something which indicates a potential funerary complex.

Skulls were routinely removed from the dead (as had also been the case during the Natufian). Apparently they were venerated as ancestors by placing them in houses, and they even had their once-living facial features recreated in clay, painted and, during the subsequent Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, given cowrie shells for eyes. Part of this may have been be tied to the concept of ownership (of land) through descent.

With large and heavily-populated settlements, descent may have been a vital part of retaining control over farming land. Unfortunately the post-glacial ice melt was still causing worldwide sea levels to rise (which they would continue to do until around 5000 BC). The result was that many PPN sites on the Mediterranean coast became flooded over time, with a resultant loss of farming land (and hereditary possession).

The earliest city-building began during this period. The site of Jericho saw its first stone buildings and defensive works starting to appear in what had originated as a Natufian hunter-gatherer settlement. The descendants of those hunters now began the formation of an organised community which soon built up a massive stone wall around its settlement. Çatalhöyük also developed as a city (from perhaps 10,000 BC, and lasting until about 2000 BC), and today it is a Unesco 'World Heritage' site.

Dating for the PPNA is somewhat variable, with start and end dates both being framed in various ways by various experts. The dates used here fit best into the established chronology, but they can be extended by some experts to cover at least half a millennium of earlier time (which would subsume the Khiamian into the PPNA as a phase rather than a sub-culture in its own right).

Present evidence would suggest that cereals were cultivated and exploited across a large part of the Fertile Crescent, including in the eastern part of this zone. The full transition to domestication, however, was largely restricted to the northern and southern Levant. A spread of partially domesticated crops into ancient Anatolia and Cyprus, and potentially into what is now Iraq, occurred only during the later part of the PPNA.

Bread or beer may have been the trigger for the sudden expansion of settlements and monumental sites, although the 'bread and beer' theory remains contested. The discovery of beer may even have been the trigger for the domestication of barley, again a disputed claim. The earliest substantiated claim for bread-making dates to 6600 BC (with that claim being dated to 2024 - and see 'World's oldest bread' in the sources).

The widespread PPNA influenced the Trialetian in the South Caucasus, primarily through the M'lefaatian culture, and has been linked by some experts to the Shan Koba Mesolithic of Crimea. It certainly affected the Kobuleti culture of Georgia. The proto-Neolithic site of Hallan Çemi in south-eastern Anatolia was also a PPNA location, and the culture played a part in the Early Aceramic Neolithic on Cyprus.

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