The Middle East (7677–7534 BCE): Expanding Settlements and Artistic Expression

Early Settlement in Oman

Between 7677 and 7534 BCE, early human settlements began emerging prominently near Muscat in what is modern-day Oman. Archaeological finds from this period include the remains of stone implements, animal bones, shells, and notably, fire hearths, with the oldest hearths dating to around 7615 BCE. These discoveries signify some of the earliest evidence of human habitation in the region, spanning both the Stone Age and early Bronze Age.

Technological and Artistic Developments

The artifacts discovered in this area demonstrate significant advancements in technology and craftsmanship. Among these findings are hand-molded pottery exhibiting distinct pre-Bronze Age markings, robust flint implements, pointed tools, and scrapers. These objects highlight the technological progression and resource utilization of these early communities.

Moreover, rock art has been uncovered on mountain faces, notably in areas such as Wadi Sahtan and Wadi Bani Kharus near Rustaq. These engravings vividly depict human figures equipped with weapons engaging with wild animals, illustrating early expressions of cultural identity and possibly ritualistic or ceremonial scenes.

Haima Region Discoveries

Additional significant archaeological sites include Siwan in Haima, where various stone tools have been discovered. Among these artifacts are arrowheads, knives, chisels, and distinct circular stones that might have served as projectiles in hunting.

This era in Middle Eastern history reflects the expansion and deepening complexity of early human settlement, technological skill, and artistic expression, underscoring the region's ongoing evolution towards advanced societal structures.

The remains of stone implements, animal bones, shells and fire hearths, with the latter dating back to 7615 BCE as the oldest signs of human settlement in the area, have been discovered near Muscat from the Stone Age and the Bronze Age.

Other discoveries include hand-molded pottery bearing distinguishing pre-Bronze Age marks, heavy flint implements, pointed tools, and scrapers.

Animal drawings have been discovered on a mountain rock-face in the same district.

Similar drawings have also been found in the Wadi Sahtan and Wadi Bani Kharus areas of Rustaq, consisting of human figures carrying weapons and being confronted by wild animals.

Siwan in Haima is another Stone Age location and some of the archaeological finds have included arrowheads, knives, chisels, and circular stones that may have been used to throw at animals.

A Mesolithic settlement is established at Deepcar, near present-day Sheffield, England, by around 7600 BCE.

Danger Cave, located in the Bonneville Basin of western Utah around the Great Salt Lakes region, features artifacts of the Desert Culture from about 9500 BCE until around 500 CE.

Through carbon-14 dating, it has been determined that there is very little evidence of human life in the Danger Cave area in 11,000 BP, but there is much evidence of human life by 9000 BP.

The extremely dry conditions in the cave proved ideal for the preservation of artifacts such as pieces of course fabric, twine, basket fragments, and bone and wooden tools that Jennings’ team uncovered.

Identifiable fragments of sixty-eight plant species that still grow within ten miles of site where also found among the artifacts.

While the preservation of the cave is excellent, the stratigraphy of the cave is muddled.

Prehistoric occupations throughout the history of the caves have led to repeatedly modified ground surfaces.

Occupants would dig into the previous layers for storage pits and create suitable living spaces.

The data collected from the cave suggested that the Desert Culture had a sparse population, with small social units numbering no more than twenty-five to thirty people.

The focus on survival prevented the inhabitants from building permanent structures, developing complicated rituals, or amassing extensive personal property.

The Desert Culture will persist for thousands of years despite the hardships they face, and eventually became the basis for other early Utah cultures such as the Fremont.

The Mediterranean Sea swells and seawater surges northward, slicing through the natural dam at the Bosporus in what is now Turkey sometime around seven thousand five hundred years ago, according to a theory proposed in the late 1990s by Columbia University geologists William Ryan and Walter Pitman.

According to this theory, around 5500 BCE, a wall of seawater, funneled through the narrow Bosporus, hit the low-lying freshwater lake with two hundred times the force of Niagara Falls.

Fueled by the infinite waters of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, the seawaters rushed in for the next year or so, maybe longer.

Under this scenario, each day the lake level would have risen about six inches, flooding coastal farms, inundating whatever communities might have existed and forming what will be called the Black Sea, ultimately increasing the lake's area by a third.

Surviving marine life was driven into the newly abbreviated estuaries of the Danube, Dniester, Dnieper, Don, and Bug Rivers.

In flatter coastal areas, the shoreline may have advanced as much as a mile a day.

This hypothesis has been the subject of considerable discussion, and a news article from National Geographic News in February 2009 reported that the flooding might have been "quite mild.” While it is agreed by all that the sequence of events described did occur, there is debate over their suddenness and magnitude.

In particular, if the water level of the Black Sea were initially higher, the effect of the spillover would have been much less dramatic.

According to a study by Giosan et al., the level in the Black Sea before the marine reconnection was thirty meters below present sea level, rather than the eighty meters or lower of the catastrophe theories.

If the flood occurred at all, the sea level increase and the flooded area during the reconnection were significantly smaller than previously proposed.

It also occurred earlier than initially surmised, around 7400 BCE rather than the originally proposed 5600 BCE.

The Middle East (7533–7390 BCE): Rise of the Settlement at Çatalhöyük

Foundation of Çatalhöyük

Between 7533 and 7390 BCE, a significant development occurred with the founding of Çatalhöyük, a vast Neolithic settlement located in southern Anatolia, roughly fifty kilometers (thirty-one miles) southeast of Konya. Established around 7500 BCE, Çatalhöyük rapidly expanded into one of the largest settlements of its time, continuing to thrive for approximately eighteen centuries, transitioning eventually into the Chalcolithic period.

Characteristics and Structure

Çatalhöyük is remarkable not only for its extensive size but also for its state of preservation. It is currently recognized as the largest and most intact Neolithic site discovered. The settlement primarily consists of densely packed domestic buildings, notably lacking any structures identifiable as public or ceremonial centers, which is highly unusual for settlements of its scale and complexity.

Significance in Neolithic Studies

The structure and organization of Çatalhöyük provide invaluable insights into early human social structures, daily life, and community organization during the Neolithic era. The exclusively domestic nature of the buildings suggests a highly integrated and communal form of living, with extensive social interactions happening within homes rather than in separate public spaces.

This period illustrates a critical stage in human development, showcasing a distinctive form of societal organization that significantly advanced understanding of early human communities in the Middle East.

The large settlement of Çatalhöyük, a very large Neolithic settlement in southern Anatolia, about thirty-one miles (fifty kilometers) southeast of Konya, founded in approximately 7500 BCE, will exist for the next eighteen centuries, into the Chalcolithic.

The largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the entire settlement is composed of domestic buildings; the site has no obvious public buildings.

The exact history of human interaction with cats remains vague.

However, a shallow gravesite discovered in 1983 in Shillourokambos in southern Cyprus, dating to 7500 BCE, during the Neolithic period, contains the skeleton of a human, buried ceremonially with stone tools, a lump of iron oxide, and a handful of seashells.

In its own tiny grave forty centimeters (eighteen inches) from the human grave was an eight-month-old cat, its body oriented in the same westward direction as the human skeleton.

The cat specimen is large and closely resembles the African wildcat (Felis silvestris lybica), rather than present-day domestic cats.

This discovery, combined with genetic studies, suggest that cats, which are not native to Cyprus, were probably domesticated in the Near East, in the Fertile Crescent around the time of the development of agriculture and then they were brought to Cyprus and Egypt.

This is evidence that cats were being tamed just as humankind was establishing the first settlements in the part of the Middle East known as the Fertile Crescent.

The so-called Cattle Period begins in the Sahara around 7500 BCE; the region will provide excellent pasture for cattle roughly throughout the epoch.

Mesolithic hunter-gatherers are the first humans to reach Ireland, sometime around 7500 BCE.