Neolithic: the age of disruption

Part 5: Technological progress and the history of mankind

The Natufians produced microliths on an almost industrial scale, had art, and lived a semi-sedimentary lifestyle. The transition to agriculture was imminent. But even when one draws neat exponential lines, the reality is often more erratic:

The Natufians didn’t turn directly into agriculture. The climate change in the Younger Dryas to a colder climate got in the way:

The Natufians abandoned their settlements and returned to a more nomadic (hunter-gatherer) lifestyle. But the genie was already out of the bottle. When we look a bit more to the north (on the border of present-day Turkey and Syria) we can find the oldest temple in the world: Göbekli Tepe.

This temple dates back 11,500 years, some 5500 years before Stonehenge. Although the site shows no signs of domesticated animals or agriculture, the site itself is a marvel. It contains T-shaped columns weighing between 10 and 20 tons. On the stones are various depictions of wild animals. The construction of such large stone structures suggests a high level of organizational and technical skill not previously attributed to pre-agricultural societies. Only one similar site, 35 km away at Karahan Tepe, has been found.

Göbekli Tepe was gradually abandoned around 8000 BC. The reasons for its abandonment are not entirely clear, but it’s relatively certain that it was intentionally buried by the people. The hypothesis is that a gradual change in society and religious practices was the cause.

In fact, at the same time that Göbelikli Temple was used, agriculture developed in the same area. This means cultivation, domestication of animals and the change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary one. It’s theorized that agriculture developed because of the colder climate of the Younger Dryas. Wikipedia:

As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas (about 10,000 BC) are thought to have forced people to develop farming.

With the emerging agriculture, the Neolithic age started. In the Neolithic people continued to use stone blades, arrows, axes and hammers. This is a bit of the nature of technology, that it’s cumulative in the sense that new inventions doesn’t always make previous redundant. Inventions are in new areas or refined a previous tools.

One of the effects of agriculture (at least when all went well) was an agricultural surplus. This allowed the division of labor, trade, and larger settlements. The technological inventions that contributed to this were the invention of the plow, the wheel, and new construction techniques.

The first cities

One of the first large settlements was Çatalhöyük around 7000 BCE (founded estimated at 9124 years ago).

Initial estimates put the average population of the city between 5,000 and 7,000. However, more recent work using revised information on the distribution of residential buildings, archaeological and ethnographic data estimates that between 600 and 800 people lived in Çatalhöyük in an average year between 6700 and 6500 BC. A unique feature of the houses in the city was that it didn’t have an entrance and people used stairs to get in and out.

Several of the larger settlements were abandoned, and people in the Levant tended to live in smaller settlements of a few hundred people.This remained the case for the rest of the Neolithic period (c. 10,000–4,500 BCE).

In summary, this period had several disruptive technologies:

1. Agriculture (c. 10,000 BCE): Farming and Domestication of Animals
2. Pottery (c. 7,000 BCE) Pottery provided storage for surplus food and water, cooking methods, and artistic expression.
3. The Wheel (c. 3,500 BCE). Initially used for pottery (potter’s wheel) and later adapted for carts and chariots.
4. Textile Weaving (c. 6,000 BCE). Weaving allowed for the creation of clothing, which improved living conditions and facilitated cultural expression through varied textiles.
5. Permanent Housing (c. 9,000 BCE) The development of permanent dwellings marked the shift to settled communities.

The Neolithic period culminated 6000 years ago in the first city in the world: Uruk (present-day Iraq). Uruk played a leading role in the urbanization of the Levant (and eventually the world). By the final phase of the Uruk period around 3100 BC, the city may have had 40,000 inhabitants (90,000 in the whole area). This led to writing, which gave us not only city administration, but at the end poetry like the first epic Gilgamesh.

With the birth of civilization and cities like Uruk, the world was on a steep path of technological growth. The many inventions that would follow are much better known to us.

Last note

In this series, I want to highlight the long and steady process from the Late Stone Age, when exponential growth began to bend, to the Neolithic, when it accelerated. Like trade, art, and religion, technology is, more than any other aspect of human history, essential to understanding who we are and where we are going.