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.

Evidence of the earliest rice cultivation in the Yellow River basin comes from carbonized rice grains from the Yuezhuang site in Jinan, Shandong.

The carbonized rice is dated using AMS radiocarbon dating to 7050±80.

Archaeologists also excavated millet from the Yuezhuang site.

The people of Lepenski Vir, an important Mesolithic archaeological site located on the banks of the Danube in eastern Serbia, within the Iron Gates gorge, near Donji Milanovac, probably represent the descendants of the early European population of the Brno-Predmost hunter-gatherer culture from the end of the last ice age.

Archaeological evidence of human habitation of the surrounding caves dates back to around 20,000 BCE.

The first settlement on the low plateau dates to 7000 BCE, a time when the climate becomes significantly warmer.

Seven successive settlements will be built on the site, providing a rare opportunity to observe the gradual transition from the hunter-gatherer way of life of early humans to the agricultural economy of the Neolithic.

The remains of one hundred and thirty-six residential and sacral buildings dating from 6500 BCE to 5500 BCE demonstrate the increasingly complex social structure that influences the development of planning and self-discipline necessary for agricultural production.

The Middle East (7101–6958 BCE): Early Metallurgy and Agricultural Communities

Settlement at Hacilar

Between 7101 and 6958 BCE, the archaeological site of Hacilar in southwestern Anatolia emerged prominently. Radiocarbon dating, uncalibrated, indicates that the earliest stages of Hacilar’s development date to approximately 7040 BCE. Structures at the site were constructed from mud brick, wood, and stone, showcasing the sophistication of architectural practices in these early farming communities.

Early Metallurgy and Agricultural Practices

Around 7000 BCE, small rural farming communities across the ancient Near East began practicing simple forms of metallurgy. Evidence from Çayönü, a Neolithic ceremonial site in southern Turkey inhabited approximately from 7200 to 6600 BCE, includes crude examples of cold-hammered copper dating as early as 7000 BCE, representing some of the earliest known metallurgy.

Domestication and Environmental Context at Çayönü

The settlement at Çayönü holds particular significance due to its possible role in the initial domestication of pigs (Sus scrofa). The site's diverse wild fauna included wild boar, wild sheep, wild goats, and cervids. Its environment featured marshes and swamps near the Bogazcay River, open woodland, patches of steppe, and almond-pistachio forest-steppe to the south.

Notably, research by the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research in Cologne has identified Mount Karaca (Karaca Dag), located near Çayönü, as home to the genetically common ancestor of sixty-eight contemporary cereal varieties. This ancestor still grows wild on the mountain slopes, underscoring the site's crucial role in early agricultural developments.

This period illustrates significant technological advancements, particularly in metallurgy, alongside essential agricultural innovations that collectively supported the growing complexity and stability of Neolithic societies in the Middle East.