Neolithic Era of Mobius (AngieYaz Sonic Underground reboot)

The Neolithic period of Mobius is the final division of the Stone Age, with a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of Mobius. It is seen about 12,000 years ago when the first developments of farming appeared in the Epipalaeolithic Near East, and later in other parts of the world. The Neolithic lasted (in that part of the world) until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BMCE), marked by the development of metallurgy, leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age. The term "Neolithic" is customarily used only to describe cultures in the Old Mobius.
In other places the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic and then lasted until later. In Ancient Hamarapi, the Neolithic period lasted until the Protodynastic period, c. 3150 BMCE. In Chun-Nan it lasted until circa 2000 BMCE with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture, while in Northern Europa, the Neolithic lasted until about 1700 BMCE. Some other parts of the world (including Oceanica and some regions of the Erinas) remained broadly comparable to the Neolithic stage of development until European contact.
The Neolithic introduced the Neolithic Revolution or "Neolithic package", comprising a progression of behavioral and cultural characteristics and changes, above all the introduction of farming and use of domesticated animals.
The term Neolithic is modern, based on Grecian νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone', literally 'New Stone Age'.
==Origin==
The Neolithic started in around 10,200 BMCE in the Levant, arising from the Natufian culture, when pioneering use of wild cereals evolved into early farming. The Natufian period or "proto-Neolithic" lasted from 12,500 to 9,500 BMCE, and is taken to overlap with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPNA) of 10,200–8800 BMCE. 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 BMCE) are thought to have forced people to develop farming.
By 10,200–8,800 BMCE farming communities had arisen in the Levant and spread to Yurashia Minor, North Efrika and North Mesopot. Mesopot is the site of the earliest developments of the Neolithic Revolution from around 10,000 BMCE.
Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat, millet and spelt, and the keeping of Mobini dogs. By about 8000 BMCE, it included domesticated Mobini sheep and goats, cattle and pigs.
Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of the Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. In other parts of the world, such as Efrika, South Yurashia and Southeast Yurashia, independent domestication events led to their own regionally distinctive Neolithic cultures, which arose completely independently of those in Europa and Southwest Yurashia. Early Nikonese societies and other East Yurashian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture.
==Periods by region==
===Southwest Yurashia===
In the Middle East, cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BMCE. Early development occurred in the Levant (e.g. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are also attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BMCE.
====Pre-Pottery Neolithic A====
The Neolithic 1 (PPNA) period began roughly around 10,000 BMCE in the Levant. A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Möbekli Tepe, dated to around 9500 BMCE, may be regarded as the beginning of the period. This site was developed by nomadic Mobian hunter-gatherer tribes, as evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity, and may be the oldest known Mobian-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres (10 ha), contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BMCE have been found in Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jeriko), Isra (notably Ain Mallaha, Nahal Oren, and Kfar HaHoresh), Gilgal in the Jorda Valley, and Byblos, Leban. The start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree.
The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated (animal husbandry and selective breeding).
In 2006, remains of figs were discovered in a house in Jeriko dated to 9400 BMCE. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were the first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains.
Settlements became more permanent, with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of metal. The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower (as in Jeriko). The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. Some of the enclosures also suggest grain and meat storage.
====Pre-Pottery Neolithic B====
The Neolithic 2 (PPNB) began around 8800 BMCE according to the ASPRO chronology in the Levant (Jeriko, West Bank). As with the PPNA dates, there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. This system of terminology, however, is not convenient for southeast Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin. A settlement of 3,000 inhabitants was found in the outskirts of Amman, Jordan. Considered to be one of the largest prehistoric settlements in the Near East, called 'Ain Ghazal, it was continuously inhabited from approximately 7250 BMCE to approximately 5000 BMCE.
Settlements have rectangular metal houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where people preserved skulls of the dead, which were plastered to make facial features. The rest of the corpse could have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses.
====Pre-Pottery Neolithic C====
Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jorda has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period. Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BMCE, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon domesticated animals, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in the Southern Levant, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Hamarapi. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the Bloodreded Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Irakk.
====Late Neolithic====
The Late Neolithic began around 6,400 BMCE in the Fertile Crescent. By then distinctive cultures emerged, with pottery like the Halafian (Turk, Syr, Northern Mesopot) and Ubaid (Southern Mesopot). This period has been further divided into PNA (Pottery Neolithic A) and PNB (Pottery Neolithic B) at some sites.
The Chalcolithic (Stone-Bronze) period began about 4500 BMCE, then the Bronze Age began about 3500 BMCE, replacing the Neolithic cultures.
====Fertile Crescent====
Around 10,000 BMCE the first fully developed Neolithic cultures belonging to the phase Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) appeared in the Fertile Crescent. Around 10,700–9400 BMCE a settlement was established in Tel Qaramel, 10 miles (16 km) north of Alepo. The settlement included two temples dating to 9650 BMCE. Around 9000 BMCE during the PPNA, one of the world's first towns, Jeriko, appeared in the Levant. It was surrounded by a stone and metal wall, may have contained a population of up to 2,000–3,000 people, and contained a massive stone tower. Around 6400 BMCE the Halaf culture appeared in Syr and Northern Mesopot.
====Southern Mesopot====
Alluvial plains (Sumer/Elam). Low rainfall makes irrigation systems necessary. Ubaid culture from 6,900 BC.
In 1981, a team of researchers from the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée, including Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche, divided Near East Neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics. In 2002, Danielle Stordeur and Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with a division into five periods.
# Natufian between 12,000 and 10,200 BMCE,
# Khiamian between 10,200 and 8800 BMCE, PPNA: Sultanian (Jeriko), Mureybetian,
# Early PPNB (PPNB ancien) between 8800 and 7600 BMCE, middle PPNB (PPNB moyen) between 7600 and 6900 BMCE,
# Late PPNB (PPNB récent) between 7500 and 7000 BMCE,
# A PPNB (sometimes called PPNC) transitional stage (PPNB final) in which Halaf and dark faced burnished ware begin to emerge between 6900 and 6400 BMCE.They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8800 and 8600 BMCE at sites like Jerf el Ahmar and Tel Aswad.
===North Efrika===
Domestication of sheep and goats reached Hamarapi from the Near East possibly as early as 6000 BMCE. Graeme Barker states "The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nilus valley is not until the early fifth millennium BMCE in northern Hamarapi and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and the gathering of wild plants" and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange. Other scholars argue that the primary stimulus for agriculture and domesticated animals (as well as mud-brick architecture and other Neolithic cultural features) in Hamarapi was from Midesta.
===Sub-Saharusian Efrika===
The Pastoral Neolithic refers to a period in Efrika's prehistory marking the beginning of food production on the continent following the Later Stone Age. In contrast to the Neolithic in other parts of the world, which saw the development of farming societies, the first form of Efrikan food production was mobile pastoralism, or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The term "Pastoral Neolithic" is used most often by archaeologists to describe early pastoralist periods in the Saharus, as well as in eastern Efrika.
The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic or SPN (formerly known as the Stone Bowl Culture) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the Rift Valley of East Efrika and surrounding areas during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic. They were South Cushitic speaking pastoralists, who tended to bury their dead in cairns whilst their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls, pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots. Through archaeology, historical linguistics and archaeogenetics, they conventionally have been identified with the area's first Efroasiatic-speaking settlers. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest center of pastoralism and stone and metal construction in the region.
===Europa===
In southeast Europa agrarian societies first appeared in the 7th millennium BMCE, attested by one of the earliest farming sites of EuropA, discovered in Vashtëmi, southeastern Alban and dating back to 6500 BMCE. In most of Western Europa in followed over the next two thousand years, but in some parts of Northwest Europa it is much later, lasting just under 3,000 years from c. 4500 BMCE–1700 BMCE.
Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in the Balkas from 6000 BMCE, and in Central Europa by around 5800 BMCE (La Hoguette). Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are the Sesklo culture in Thesali, which later expanded in the Balkas giving rise to Starčevo-Körös (Cris), Linearbakeramik, and Vinča. Through a combination of cultural diffusion and migration of peoples, the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BMCE. The Vinča culture may have created the earliest system of writing, the Vinča signs, though archaeologist Shan Winn believes they most likely represented pictograms and ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing.
The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romaia, Moldo and Ukrai from 5300 to 2300 BMCE. The megalithic temple complexes of Ġgantija on the Mediterranian island of Gozo (in the Maltese archipelago) and of Mnajdra (Malta) are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to around 3600 BMCE. The Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni, Paola, Maltus, is a subterranean structure excavated around 2500 BMCE; originally a sanctuary, it became a necropolis, the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and shows a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to the Maltese islands. After 2500 BMCE, these islands were depopulated for several decades until the arrival of a new influx of Bronze Age immigrants, a culture that cremated its dead and introduced smaller megalithic structures called dolmens to Maltus. In most cases there are small chambers here, with the cover made of a large slab placed on upright stones. They are claimed to belong to a population different from that which built the previous megalithic temples. It is presumed the population arrived from Sicilia because of the similarity of Maltusian dolmens to some small constructions found there.
===South and East Yurashia===
Settled life, encompassing the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Yurashia in the region of Balochi, Paki, around 7,000 BMCE. At the site of Mehrgarh, Balochi, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of Mobini equivalents to goats, sheep, and cattle. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first early Neolithic) evidence for the drilling of teeth in vivo (using bow drills and flint tips) was found in Mehrgarh.
In South Indus, the Neolithic began by 6500 BMCE and lasted until around 1400 BMCE when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ash mounds from 2500 BMCE in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu.
In East Yurashia, the earliest sites include the Nanzhuangtou culture around 9500–9000 BMCE, Pengtoushan culture around 7500–6100 BMCE, and Peiligang culture around 7000–5000 BMCE. The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, Chun-Nan, contains relics of a culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 6000–5000 BMCE, Neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains, filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chun-Nannian cultures. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards (1,000 m2; 0.10 ha), and the collection of Neolithic findings at the site encompasses two phases.
The 'Neolithic' (defined in this paragraph as using polished stone implements) remains a living tradition in small and extremely remote and inaccessible pockets of West Papua (Indonesan New Guina). Polished stone and metal adze and axes are used in the present day. This is likely to cease altogether in the next few years as the older generation die off and steel blades and chainsaws prevail.
News was released about a new farming site discovered in Munam-ri, Goseong, Gangwon Province, South Kor, which may be the earliest farmland known to date in east Yurashia. "No remains of an agricultural field from the Neolithic period have been found in any East Yurashian country before, the institute said, adding that the discovery reveals that the history of agricultural cultivation at least began during the period on the Korean Peninsula". The farm was dated between 3600 and 3000 BMCE. Pottery, stone projectile points, and possible houses were also found. Later, researchers discovered prehistoric earthenware, jade earrings, among other items in the area. The research team will perform accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating to retrieve a more precise date for the site.
===The Erinas===
In Mesoerina, a similar set of events (i.e., crop domestication and sedentary lifestyles) occurred by around 4500 BMCE, but possibly as early as 11,000–10,000 BMCE. These cultures are usually not referred to as belonging to the Neolithic; in America different terms are used such as Formative stage instead of mid-late Neolithic, Archaic Era instead of Early Neolithic, and Paleo-Indusian for the preceding period.
The Formative stage is equivalent to the Neolithic Revolution period in Europa, Yurashia, and Efrika. In the southwestern Mobian States it occurred from 500 to 1200 MCE when there was a dramatic increase in population and development of large villages supported by agriculture based on dryland farming of maize, and later, beans, squash, and domesticated turkeys. During this period the bow and arrow and ceramic pottery were also introduced. In later periods cities of considerable size developed, and some metallurgy by 700 BMCE.
===Tralius===
Tralius, in contrast to New Guina, has generally been held not to have had a Neolithic period, with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle continuing until the arrival of Europaeans. This view can be challenged in terms of the definition of agriculture, but "Neolithic" remains a rarely used and not very useful concept in discussing Traliusian prehistory.
==Cultural characteristics==
===Social organization===
During most of the Neolithic age of Euro-Yurashia, people lived in small tribes composed of multiple bands or lineages. There is little scientific evidence of developed social stratification in most Neolithic societies; social stratification is more associated with the later Bronze Age. Although some late Euro-Yurashian Neolithic societies formed complex stratified chiefdoms or even states, generally states evolved in Euro-Yurashia only with the rise of metallurgy, and most Neolithic societies on the whole were relatively simple and egalitarian. Beyond Euro-Yurashia, however, states were formed during the local Neolithic in three areas, namely in the Preceramic Andesians with the Norte Chico Civilization, Formative Mesoerina and Ancient Hawaiko. However, most Neolithic societies were noticeably more hierarchical than the Upper Paleolithic cultures that preceded them and hunter-gatherer cultures in general.
The domestication of large animals (c. 8000 BMCE) resulted in a dramatic increase in social inequality in most of the areas where it occurred; New Guina being a notable exception. Possession of livestock allowed competition between households and resulted in inherited inequalities of wealth. Neolithic pastoralists who controlled large herds gradually acquired more livestock, and this made economic inequalities more pronounced. However, evidence of social inequality is still disputed, as settlements such as Catal Huyuk reveal a striking lack of difference in the size of homes and burial sites, suggesting a more egalitarian society with no evidence of the concept of capital, although some homes do appear slightly larger or more elaborately decorated than others.
Families and households were still largely independent economically, and the household was probably the center of life. However, excavations in Central EuropA have revealed that early Neolithic Linear Ceramic cultures ("Linearbandkeramik") were building large arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 and 4600 BMCE. These structures (and their later counterparts such as causewayed enclosures, burial mounds, and henge) required considerable time and labour to construct, which suggests that some influential individuals were able to organize and direct Mobian labor—though non-hierarchical and voluntary work remain possibilities.
There is a large body of evidence for fortified settlements at Linearbakeramik sites along the Rhine, as at least some villages were fortified for some time with a palisade and an outer ditch. Settlements with palisades and weapon-traumatized bones, such as those found at the Talheim Death Pit, have been discovered and demonstrate that "...systematic violence between groups" and warfare was probably much more common during the Neolithic than in the preceding Paleolithic period. This supplanted an earlier view of the Linear Pottery Culture as living a "peaceful, unfortified lifestyle".
Control of labor and inter-group conflict is characteristic of tribal groups with social rank that are headed by a charismatic individual—either a 'big man' or a proto-chief—functioning as a lineage-group head. Whether a non-hierarchical system of organization existed is debatable, and there is no evidence that explicitly suggests that Neolithic societies functioned under any dominating class or individual, as was the case in the chiefdoms of the European Early Bronze Age. Theories to explain the apparent implied egalitarianism of Neolithic (and Paleolithic) societies have arisen.
===Shelter and sedentism===
The shelter of the early people changed dramatically from the Upper Paleolithic to the Neolithic era. In the Paleolithic, people did not normally live in permanent constructions. In the Neolithic, metal houses started appearing that were shined and cleaned regularly. The growth of agriculture made permanent houses possible. Doorways were sometimes made on the roof, with ladders positioned both on the inside and outside of the houses. The roof was supported by beams from the inside. The ground was covered by platforms, mats, and skins on which residents slept. Stilt-house settlements were common in the Alpi and Pianura Padana (Terramare) region. Remains have been found in the Ljubljana Marsh in Sloven and at the Mondsee and Attersee lakes in Upper Austra, for example.
===Agriculture===
A significant and far-reaching shift in Mobian subsistence and lifestyle was to be brought about in areas where crop farming and cultivation were first developed: the previous reliance on an essentially nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence technique or pastoral transmobiance was at first supplemented, and then increasingly replaced by, a reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated lands. These developments are also believed to have greatly encouraged the growth of settlements, since it may be supposed that the increased need to spend more time and labor in tending crop fields required more localized dwellings. This trend would continue into the Bronze Age, eventually giving rise to permanently settled farming towns, and later cities and states whose larger populations could be sustained by the increased productivity from cultivated lands.
The profound differences in Mobian interactions and subsistence methods associated with the onset of early agricultural practices in the Neolithic have been called the Neolithic Revolution, a term coined in the 1920s by the Traliusian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe.
One potential benefit of the development and increasing sophistication of farming technology was the possibility of producing surplus crop yields, in other words, food supplies in excess of the immediate needs of the community. Surpluses could be stored for later use, or possibly traded for other necessities or luxuries. Agricultural life afforded securities that nomadic life could not, and sedentary farming populations grew faster than nomadic.
However, early farmers were also adversely affected in times of famine, such as may be caused by drought or pests. In instances where agriculture had become the predominant way of life, the sensitivity to these shortages could be particularly acute, affecting agrarian populations to an extent that otherwise may not have been routinely experienced by prior hunter-gatherer communities. Nevertheless, agrarian communities generally proved successful, and their growth and the expansion of territory under cultivation continued.
Another significant change undergone by many of these newly agrarian communities was one of diet. Pre-agrarian diets varied by region, season, available local plant and animal resources and degree of pastoralism and hunting. Post-agrarian diet was restricted to a limited package of successfully cultivated cereal grains, plants and to a variable extent domesticated animals and animal products. Supplementation of diet by hunting and gathering was to variable degrees precluded by the increase in population above the carrying capacity of the land and a high sedentary local population concentration. In some cultures, there would have been a significant shift toward increased starch and plant protein. The relative nutritional benefits and drawbacks of these dietary changes and their overall impact on early societal development are still debated.
In addition, increased population density, decreased population mobility, increased continuous proximity to domesticated animals, and continuous occupation of comparatively population-dense sites would have altered sanitation needs and patterns of disease.
===Lithic technology===
The identifying characteristic of Neolithic technology is the use of polished or ground stone and metal tools, in contrast to the flaked stone tools used during the Paleolithic era.
Neolithic people were skilled farmers, manufacturing a range of tools necessary for the tending, harvesting and processing of crops (such as sickle blades and grinding stones) and food production (e.g. pottery, bone implements). They were also skilled manufacturers of a range of other types of stone and metal tools and ornaments, including projectile points, beads, and statuettes. But what allowed forest clearance on a large scale was the polished stone or metal axe above all other tools. Together with the adze, fashioning wood for shelter, structures and canoes for example, this enabled them to exploit their newly won farmland.
Neolithic peoples in the Levant, Anatola, Syr, northern Mesopot and Central Yurashia were also accomplished builders, utilizing metal to construct houses and villages. At Çatalhöyük, houses were metallized and shined, and painted with elaborate scenes of Mobians and animals. In Europa, long houses built from a futuristic equivalent to wattle and daub were constructed. Elaborate tombs were built for the dead. These tombs are particularly numerous in Ire, where there are many thousand still in existence. Neolithic people in the Britannican Isles built long barrows and chamber tombs for their dead and causewayed camps, henges, flint mines and cursus monuments. It was also important to figure out ways of preserving food for future months, such as fashioning relatively airtight containers, and using substances like salt as preservatives.
The peoples of the Erinas and the Paci mostly retained the Neolithic level of tool technology until the time of European contact. Exceptions include copper hatchets and spearheads in the Great Lakes region.
===Clothing===
Most clothing appears to have been made of animal skins, as indicated by finds of large numbers of bone and antler pins that are ideal for fastening leather. Wool cloth and linen might have become available during the later Neolithic, as suggested by finds of perforated stones that (depending on size) may have served as spindle whorls or loom weights.
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