| Early Settlements Agricultural life means a settled way of life. A band of hunter-gatherers can exist on the move, theoretically at least. Peasants cannot leave their land. There is a certain period, between sowing and reaping, when the land as such does not require their presence and they have to wait out this period. But they must have found out soon enough that agriculture gave yields that had to be stored and guarded. Although, theoretically, they could move about between harvesting and sowing, in practice they had to remain in one place. The same must have happened with the bands of hunter-gatherers too. They must have had a fixed territory in which they collected the grains, the berries and the fruits, hunted the animals, but they had a center, a number of dugouts, lean-tos or caves, to which they returned each day. There are views that claim that when agriculture reached northern Europe, the Neolithic communities, those who lived from agriculture, coexisted peacefully with Mesolithic settlements, who were still hunter-gatherers. There groups were hunting the red deer in the forests of Denmark, and collecting the fruits of the forest. It is likely that the sowed fields of the farmers provided additional food to the red deer which helped to keep up their population, which helped the hunters, so they increased and even founded new settlements. This peaceful coexistence existed until the inevitable happened. Population increase demanded more land for the farmers, which left less land for the deer, and less deer for the hunters. What happened to the hunters is now unknown and we can only speculate. They might have died out, moved further north or become farmers themselves.1 However, there is no evidence of conflicts between the two types of communities, at least there. Most of the earliest settlements were in the northern part of the Middle East, in Kurdistan, at Tepe Gawra, near Mosul, or Sialk in the Iranian highlands, or in Ras Shamra, on the northern coast of Syria. These communities were small at the beginning and went back to great antiquity, probable even before the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution. At Tepe Gawra , 26 layers of houses were excavated, which went back at least 7,000 years. At Ras Shamra, there were 40 feet of prehistoric ruins below the level of 3,000 BC This itself would reach back at least to an estimated 8,000 BC. But in none of these places do the excavations reach the level of the beginning of the Neolithic Revolution. In all the levels of the excavations, perfectly formed pottery was found, with mastery in ceramic techniques,2 These agricultural settlements were generally small and peaceful. Their size might have varied from a primitive camp such as M'lefaat, about twenty-five miles from Mosul, which was probably at the lowest level of organized community, with people who lived in pit-homes, had no pottery and no grains either,3 to the village of Koeln-Lindenthal surrounded by a defensive ditch to keep out wild animals. It is estimated that digging this ditch must have required nearly three thousand man-days of labor. On the other hand, at Skara Brae in the Orkneys there were only 8 households, and in Central Europe and Southern Russia twenty-five - thirty-five households must have been a not uncommon number.4 It must be emphasized here that there is a constant time lag of about 5,000 years between the south and the north. So, if we assume that Sialk and Skara Brae were probably on the same level of evolution, then there might have been the same time lag between them. Probably somewhat less, because when Northern Europe reached the Neolithic age, there was already urban civilization in the Middle East, and something must have seeped to the north, advancing the development there. If we measure human success by well being, then the Neolithic Revolution was a dismal failure. If we measure it by evolutionary standards, then it was a great success. The Neolithic Revolution started a growth of population, slowly at the beginning, but then the positive feedback made itself known and the population increased so much that the production of food had to be increased too. It could have been done only by irrigation or better farming techniques5, or by extending the available land. Of course, it must have brought Neolithic man into conflict with other settlements, or at the expense of the livelihood of still-existing hunter-gatherers. We have archeological evidence from Danubian farming communities. There is no evidence of defense and not much weaponry either. They had only simple ditches or palisades to keep out marauding wild animals. The reason, of course, was that they still had enough land, and the demographic pressure was not strong enough yet.6 Despite the price, the Neolithic Revolution was a success from the evolutionary point of view. The number of skeletons excavated from Neolithic sites is in the high thousands, compared to the low hundreds from Mesolithic sites, even though the Mesolithic period was much longer than the Neolithic. It was not a success everywhere. The same factor that caused the time lag in the expansion to the North continued in the South as well. The desiccation of the area that brought on the agriculture continued and there were farming communities which had to be abandoned, as the environment became too hostile for them. It was true in the Tigris-Euphrates valley, but also in the valley of the Nile, where early farming settlements had to be abandoned because of the encroaching sand.7 It seems that the continuing desiccation played a major role in the continuing development, by driving more people to rely on irrigation. It was, therefore, a major element in the establishment of the hydraulic civilizations. Not every area suffered from continuing desiccation. There were other places that profited by it. The territory of lower Mesopotamia, which later became a marsh area because of the advance of the waters of the Persian Gulf, was then a veritable paradise. Documents dating from 2,500 BC claim that the yield of a field of barley was eighty-six fold on the return of the seed. It would be an impressive return even now, and there are reasons to believe that there were fields where the return reached a hundred-fold.8 Indeed, the success of the Neolithic Revolution carried with it the biggest danger to its participants: that of population increase. It caused two developments, which are still with us. Food production had to be increased, if there was any additional land which could be utilized, or land taken from others who were too weak to protect it. Increasing production meant irrigation, terracing or other advanced technique, which were all labor-intensive.9 Both alternatives were adopted. Labor was increased, irrigation channels were dug, marginal lands were terraced, and in the middle of the Third Millennium BC Sargon I, an Akkadian ruler of Mesopotamia, initiated the first aggressive, conquering warfare. It is possible that there were wars before Sargon I too, but this was the first truly international war. Sargon's troops reached the Mediterranean. Even without increasing food production and aggressive warfare, the Neolithic economy had to diversify. There were many reasons for diversification. Apparently, some kind of diversification did already occur in the Mesolithic period. Even hunter-gatherer societies needed tools and weapons of flint, which had to be extracted, made and traded.10 In addition, salt, a vital supply, must have been traded since time immemorial. With the advent of agriculture, the diversification became even more widespread. Although some sources indicate metalworkers as one of the first professions, it seems that spinners, weavers and tanners could have been even earlier than the metalworkers. They might have been the first professions, whose workers did not produce food, but produced something which food producers were willing to buy, or to barter. The by-products of hunting were skins and fur, which could be used as clothing. When agriculture replaced hunting, then something had to replace the skins and fur as clothing. If Neolithic man used wool, then probably the women of the clan prepared the yarn and the homespun material, as they were still doing into late historical times, but then somebody had to provide the equipment and/or the raw material. Even with domestication of animals, not everybody had sheep or goats, with wool suitable for spinning, so there must have been some trade at a very early time.11 There is no specific information about trade in clothing, at least not from the early Neolithic period, but there is information and myths about metalworkers and they are very interesting indeed. The Bible says: "And Zillah, she also bare Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron".12 It is an interesting sentence. Zillah had another son, called Yubal, who was the father of all who handled the harp and the organ. Yubal did not have the suffix -Cain to his name. What could have been the reason for the hyphenated name. The answer is probably in Gen. 4.15, where: "...the Lord said unto him Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, Vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him." The name Tubal-Cain can explain the fact that smiths were organized in a craft clan, which did not belong to any tribe, but to some sort of inter-tribal trade union organization. Probably, each of them bore 'the mark of Cain' to announce that: This stranger is not an enemy to be slain on sight but the bearer of things you need and knowledge useful for you. In barbarian society, the security of any person was guaranteed by the possibility of a blood feud between the clans of the killer and the killed. It must have been a necessity to mark all those who stood outside the clans, to keep them alive.13 With the advance of the Neolithic Revolution, the problem of personal security must have become critical. It might have proved the single most important factor in the development of higher social organizations. At the beginning, there were small communities, a few families, or at most a few dozen families. Everybody knew everybody else. As every such community had its settlement, without much contact with other settlements, there was no problem of personal security. Everybody who lived in that village could live in safety from neighbors; the rule of the blood feud was sufficient for that. People from outside the village were potential enemies, unless they had some visible sign, a Mark of Cain to protect them. When the first signs of the demographic explosion were felt, some solution had to be found for ensuring personal safety. When the communities increased from the size of everybody knowing everybody else, the danger that the community would live in a state of permanent vendettas was real. The solution was first the chiefdom, and later with the organized states centered on Urban Civilizations. It seems that the first chiefdoms arose abut 7,500 years ago, to substitute a fixed order for the previous habit of seeing everybody outside the clan as a potential enemy to be attacked on sight.14 The solution was to give the chief the monopoly of using force in internal and external matters. It also meant that instead of the old decentralized authority of democratic village meetings, or assemblies of elders of the families, a form of centralized authority of the chief was substituted. Whether the chief was elected in a democratic way, or seized power by forces, it probably did not matter much. There is a dynamics of power that seems to be constant, untouched by geography or time. The practice of a community electing by democratic means an absolute ruler to protect it and keep internal and external order is a common practice even in modern times. The elders of the trading community of Kuwait invited the clan of al-Sabah from Saudia to come and give them protection against the marauding Bedouins of the area. This happened in the middle of the eighteenth century. In time, the al-Sabah family became the hereditary rulers of Kuwait. It was shown in the chapter on Myths of Cosmology that an early priesthood could have developed, certainly in Mesopotamia, but in other areas too, which filled roles similar to modern psychiatric treatment. Then there are signs of people who made their living out of trade. After all, it is not reasonable to assume that people from Sialk went all the way to the Persian Gulf to collect shells. And not only shells. The trade in salt must have been a very early necessity. There might have been spinners and weavers, or traders who made and traded spinning whorls and weaving equipment. Finally, there were smiths who were guarded by some commonly recognized sign. There are no testimonies of other professions, but they must have needed some kind of protection. Either they had some outward sign, or they traveled in the company of many traders for protection. Probably, it was the second option. In historical times, caravans of traders had powerful protection, sometimes even veritable armies protecting them when traveling. When these early settlements had some form of organized religion, trade and professions, it was only a question of time before they would turn into fully-fledged urban civilizations. There are some authorities who claim that the emergence of the first cities, with a highly developed civilization, was unexpected.15 This view does not take into consideration that an urban center does not have to develop on existing agricultural settlements. It certainly must have been the case with Jericho, which was a single oasis and any further development must have been on an existing agricultural settlement. In Mesopotamia, where there were many agricultural settlements, an urban center could be at a distance from them. It probably started with a fortress and a center for common worship, and continued with a market and an administrative center. It is a very common practice in modern times, for example, when the western part of the United States was populated in the second half of the nineteenth century. It might have happened in Sumer too. The earliest known town, e.g. a settlement where there are clear signs that there was a central authority and occupations other than agriculture, was Jericho. The earliest layer, which was excavated, is from about 7,000 BC Even then, the town had all the attributes of the later cities in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the valley of the Indus. Jericho was built beside a very important oasis, i.e.. next to a perennial water supply, with good farming land, ensuring grain and orchards. It was also situated on a trade route that enabled it to participate in commercial enterprises. In the excavations, Turkish obsidian from the Lake Van area, shells from the Red Sea and turquoise from Sinai were found, both in the town and in the burial sites.16 Other towns followed Jericho soon enough. It was really a development out of necessity and it all hinged on demographic pressure. We might engage in intellectual games, as who was influencing whom, when and why, but we should be looking unto basic factors like population pressure, available food and basic economics. More people meant more need for food, which meant more production and organization and of course more coercion. One such example of coercive need was water. If there was need to have more water for irrigation, there had to be some authority to organize the digging of more irrigation channels. That authority had to have the power to compel people to be part of the digging team, or pay whatever their share was of the cost. It is not certain that people in the early cities were much different from people today; they might not have been happy to give part of their produce as tax. The authority must have had some means to force them. Distributing the cost of digging irrigation channels was one task which only some sort of central authority could perform, deciding on the distribution of water from the same irrigation channels was another one. Basically, it was a question of demographic pressure and the means of feeding the new multitudes.17 Was it done equitably? Probably not. There are many modern commentators who point out that the Urban Revolution has benefited only a few people, those who ruled, and not those who paid for it. But then our prehistoric ancestors were in good company, and not much seems to have changed in this respect since then. "For the most part, the history of civilization in the Near East, the Far East and Central America, is also the history of kingship, slavery, conquest, overpopulation and environmental ruin. And these traits continue in civilizations' most recent phases...". 18 Excavations show that the bulk of the population experienced little change in material culture from the early to the late Neolithic period. Indeed, peasants may have been worked harder and had less control over their lives than ever before.19 One scholar even calls it "the great protection racket", which indeed it was,20 but no name-calling can change the basic facts. If we wish, we can drawn a straight line from the beginning of the environmental change which created the Neolithic Revolution to the first cities and Urban Civilization. Things developed in a certain way because of environmental changes, over which the population had no control, and at the end of the change there was a very unequal and unjust way of life, because of innate biological factors, over which they had no control either. There could be no other way. but given the circumstances, what were the alternatives ? The moment when milk from domesticated animals replaced breast-feeding, the Malthusian trap was born. The rest was necessity and finding solutions. It is possible that there were outside influences in some places but they do not seem to have had much effect. Religion, kingship, administrative and coercive methods are similar from place to place because they have to solve similar problems with similar tools. We look at the elements of Urban Civilization, like writing, and wonder how they were invented. On second thought, writing seems to be such an integral part of Urban Civilization that it is no wonder that writing became widespread in a comparatively short time. A peasant living alone does not need writing. When he wants to know what he has until the next harvest, he can look into his storage bins. A king in a city does need writing, because he wants to know from his subordinates what he has and what he needs. It is very probable that when Joseph had to report to Pharaoh what he collected in the seven fat years and what he needed in the seven lean years, he did it in writing. As Joseph might have had hundreds of clerks, they had to report in writing too. Writing was a necessity in any advanced Urban Civilization, and wherever people reached that stage they had some form of writing. Some developed hieroglyphs for ceremonial use and demotic for everyday needs, others the cuneiform writing, yet others ideographs, or even knotted strings in South America. All were used to transmit information. So, whenever and wherever humans needed to transmit information, they found the way to do so. Sometimes one asks, why elements of culture, like writing, were not transmitted from one civilization to another. Mesopotamian civilization seems to have preceded Egyptian civilization. There is evidence showing that people who look Mesopotamian entered Egypt from the direction of the Red Sea and were instrumental in establishing Egyptian civilization. Scholars claim that cylinder seals and form of columns, which were common in Mesopotamia, reached Egypt through that early visit. Why not writing? The same question applies also to Crete and Egypt. It is well known that there were commercial connections between the two countries from very early times. Why not borrow the form of writing? Why Linear A and B? The same with the Hebrews. According to tradition, they left Egypt in the Second Millenium BC Why did they not copy the Egyptian writing? Probably the only large-scale transfer of writing method from one place to another was the transfer of the Semitic alphabet from Phoenicia to Greece, from which the Latin alphabet evolved. Cuneiform writing was adopted more easily as it was either in the form of ideograms, or as syllabic letters. In both cases it could have been easily adapted to different languages. There is one standard answer to the question, that writing was originally sacred and belonged to the priesthood alone. It is probably correct, but this answer also masks the truth behind it. If there was a need, the answer was found easily enough. Whether it was treated after it as a sacred object, is a secondary point. That the priesthood to enhance their power exploited a sacred object is an obvious development. However, it must not be forgotten that the main use of writing, even in the hands of the priesthood, was not sacred books, but inventory reports and tax rolls. Paleolithic men who scratched abstract symbols on pieces of bone had the idea of writing, so had people from the Mesolithic period who painted colored signs on stones. So the technique of writing, or marking objects, as a means of transmitting information, was there. What was missing was the need. This appeared only with the development of complex economic and social organizations, which could not exist without some simple and efficient means of storing and transmitting information. Hence the writing. The Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Indus Valley people, the Phoenicians, the Incas and all the others invented writing when there was a need and they had to cope with that need.21 All that has been related in the last few pages happened in the Middle East, between Egypt and the valley of the Indus. What was the situation in Europe at the same time? It was shown that there was a time lag of about 5,000 years between the start of agriculture in the Middle East and that of Europe. The small settlement, Skara Brae on the Orkneys, which was excavated by Gordon Childe , was probably the northernmost Neolithic settlement found so far, and also one of the most recent. If there was a gap of 5,000 years between the start of agriculture in the south and in the north, we would expect a similar gap between the starts of the Urban Civilizations. There is a gap indeed, but it is much less than the previous one. The first town in the Middle East found so far was Jericho, which went back to about 7,000 BC The first town in Europe was probably Knossos on Crete. Its origin is estimated at about 2,000 BC. However, if we assume that Jericho was an exception, a single oasis on a small river next to the Dead Sea, and the real Urban Civilization did not start before the Fourth Millenium BC, then the gap narrows to 2,500 - 3,000 years. Urban civilization started in the Middle East at about 4,000 BC, and reached full literate status about 500 years after that. This gives a time lag of about 2,500 - 3000 years between the first towns in the Middle East and the first towns on the European mainland, Mycenae, Tyrins, and others. The reason for the shortened time lag could have been the influence of the Middle Eastern civilizations on the Aegean settlements. They were near enough to be in commercial contact, but far enough for Middle Eastern predatory armies not to reach them. That pleasure had to wait until the Persians mounted the first invasion of Greece. The Aegean communities were in direct and constant contact with Egypt and with the Syrian states. They were traders and pirates from time to time. They enjoyed the advantage of nearness to more advanced neighbors but because of the distance they were saved from the less attractive features of Urban Civilization. Indeed, this was the period that decided the separate development of the Middle East and Europe. Notes: |
