The Middle East (7389–7246 BCE): Neolithic Advancements and Expansion

Continued Development of Çatalhöyük

During 7389 to 7246 BCE, the settlement of Çatalhöyük in southern Anatolia continued to flourish, solidifying its role as a pivotal center for Neolithic life. Throughout this period, the settlement expanded further, maintaining its unique characteristic of densely packed domestic structures without discernible public buildings, reflecting a distinctive social organization emphasizing communal life.

Agricultural Intensification

Agricultural practices during this period advanced significantly. Communities across the Middle East deepened their reliance on farming, improving techniques in the cultivation of cereals such as wheat and barley. Enhanced agricultural productivity supported larger populations and facilitated the expansion of permanent settlements, laying critical foundations for future social complexity.

Technological Innovations

Technological developments in lithic tools also marked this era. Improved stone implements, including refined scrapers, blades, and arrowheads, became more widespread, underscoring advancements in hunting, crafting, and general daily utility. The increased sophistication of these tools is evident in archaeological sites throughout the region.

Cultural and Social Developments

In parallel with technological innovations, cultural expressions such as pottery making, figurative artwork, and ritual practices continued to evolve, becoming more diverse and widespread. These artifacts and practices highlight a rich cultural tapestry reflecting spiritual beliefs, social identities, and community cohesion.

This age represents a pivotal period of growth, technological advancement, and increasing social complexity within early Neolithic societies in the Middle East.

The Jericho site originally occupied by the Natufian culture is greatly expanded during the eighth millennium BCE under a culture known to archaeologists as the Aceramic, or Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, who build a wall seventeen feet (five point two meters) high around the settlement.

They erect on the west side a round tower, twenty-three feet (seven meters) high, with an internal flight of steps.

The world's people are comparatively few, the technologies simple, and resources plentiful, but the community's indigenous inhabitants evidently require this kind of protection.

We can surmise that the people of ten thousand years ago differed little from us in being wary of strangers, covetous of resources, and inclined to violence.

The settlement ends around 7370 BCE.

Mount Edgecumbe, located at the southern end of Kruzof Island in present Alaska, erupts circa 7220 BCE.

The Middle East (7245–7102 BCE): Village Settlements and Artistic Flourishing

Early Settlement at Chogha Bonut

Between 7245 and 7102 BCE, the village of Chogha Bonut, located on the Susiana Plain in Khuzestan Province, southwestern Iran, emerged as one of the earliest lowland villages in the region. Archaeologists suggest it was initially settled as early as 7200 BCE, marking a significant early Neolithic community and reflecting expanding human habitation in diverse geographic zones.

Continued Cultural Developments at Çatalhöyük

The settlement at Çatalhöyük continued to thrive during this period, characterized by its distinctive mud-brick structures built adjacent to one another and typically accessed from the rooftops. These buildings featured richly decorated walls adorned with paintings and reliefs depicting geometric motifs, human figures, and animals.

Much of the artwork from Çatalhöyük included scenes interpreted as cultic representations, notably focused on themes of hunting and fertility. These motifs also prominently appeared in numerous figurines found throughout the site, suggesting a vibrant and complex ritual life deeply integrated with daily existence.

Artistic and Ritual Significance

The prevalence of artistic expression and ritualistic imagery at Çatalhöyük underscores the importance of symbolic and spiritual practices in Neolithic societies. These cultural elements reveal a community deeply engaged in both the practical and symbolic dimensions of life, demonstrating the intertwined nature of survival, spirituality, and artistic creativity.

This age highlights critical advances in community formation, artistic achievement, and symbolic culture, marking essential steps toward more complex social structures in the ancient Middle East.

Chogha Bonut, located in the Khuzestan Province (Susiana Plain), is believed by archaeologists to have been settled as early as 7200 BCE, making it the oldest lowland village in southwestern Iran.

Çatalhöyük’s mud-brick structures, abutting and presumably entered from the roof, feature wall paintings and reliefs of geometric elements, humans, and animals.

Much of the art features apparently cultic representations of hunting and fertility, a theme also frequently expressed in figurines.

'Ain Ghazal, Jordan, a site that will be inhabited until 5000 BCE and grow to encompass thirty acres (one hundred and twenty thousand square meters), one of the largest known prehistoric settlements in the Near East, is inhabited from 7250 BCE.

Having begun as a typical aceramic Neolithic village of modest size,'Ain Ghazal is set on terraced ground at a valley-side, and is built with rectangular mud-brick houses that accommodate a square main room and a smaller anteroom.

Walls are plastered with mud on the outside, and with lime plaster inside that is renewed every few years.

Being an early farming community, the 'Ain Ghazal people cultivate cereals (barley and ancient species of wheat), legumes (peas, beans and lentils) and chickpeas in fields above the village, and herd domesticated goats.

However, they also still hunt wild animals—deer, gazelle, equids, pigs and smaller mammals such as fox or hare.

Sugarcane, a perennial grass of the genus Saccharum, is cultivated for its juice, which people chew raw to extract its sweetness.

Saccharum officinarum, originally from tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia, has been developed from a wild cane species, Saccharum robustom, and cultivated by natives of southern Pacific Islands.

As early as 7000 BCE, the inhabitants of the island of New Guinea have developed, perhaps partly through indirect contact with developments in Southeast Asia, one of the earliest agricultural complexes, based on root crops and sugarcane cultivation.

The area west of Makassar Strait, sometimes called Sundaland, encompasses the areas of the Asian continental shelf that was exposed during the last ice age.

It includes the Malay Peninsula on the Asian mainland, the large islands of Borneo, Java, and Sumatra, and their surrounding islands.

It consists of a web of watered plains, because the seas have been some one hundred and fifty feet, or fifty meters, lower than they are now.

The stone tools used by hunting and gathering societies across Southeast Asia during this period of lowered sea levels show a remarkable degree of similarity in design and development.

Some scholars (e.g., Oppenheimer) locate the origin of the Austronesian languages in Sundaland and its upper regions.

Genetic research reported in 2008 indicates that the islands, which are the remnants of Sundaland, were likely populated as early as fifty thousand years ago.

The sea levels rise in about 7000 BCE to form the islands of Sundaland, home to many Asian mammals including elephants, monkeys, apes, tigers, tapirs, and rhinoceros.

Over seventy sites have been identified with the Peiligang culture, a name given by archaeologists to a group of Neolithic communities in the Yi-Luo river basin in Henan Province, China, named after the site discovered in 1977 at Peiligang (in Xinzheng county).

The site at Jiahu, dating to around 7000, is one of the earliest sites associated with this culture, which practices agriculture in the form of cultivating millet and animal husbandry in the form of raising pigs.

Archaeologists think that the Peiligang culture, one of the first in China to make pottery, was egalitarian, with little political organization.