Near East (6,093 – 4,366 BCE) Middle Holocene — Neolithic Nile & Aegean Littoral Farming

Geographic and Environmental Context

• Anchors: the Nile Valley and Delta; Sinai–Negev–Arabah; the southern Levant (with Tyre as the sole Levantine node in this subregion); Hejaz–Asir–Tihāma on the Red Sea; Yemen’s western uplands/coast; southwestern Cyprus; western Anatolian littoral (Smyrna–Ephesus–Miletus–Halicarnassus–Xanthos; Troad).

Climate & Environment

• Hypsithermal warmth: strong Nile floods; productive Aegean plains; Arabian west-slope wadis seasonally green.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Farming and herding spread widely: wheat/barley/pulses, cattle–caprines–pigs along Nile and in western Anatolia; oasis gardening in Egyptian Desert oases; horticulture in Yemeni west highlands (incipient).

• Coastal villages along Ionia/Caria/Lycia integrated fishing with fields.

Technology & Material Culture

• Pottery diversified; mudbrick/stone architecture; sail/raft experiments in Nile; weirs and nets; early irrigation spurs in Fayum/Delta.

Corridors

• Nile barge traffic; Aegean cabotage; Red Sea crossings minimal but possible short hops.

Symbolism

• House shrines; figurines; ancestor cemeteries; early sanctuaries on Aegean capes.

Adaptation

• Floodplain leverage + oasis redundancy anchored caloric security.

A revolution had occurred in food production sometime during the final Paleolithic period and the Neolithic era.

Meat has ceased to be the chief article of diet and has been replaced by plants such as wheat and barley grown extensively as crops and not gathered at random in the wild.

The relatively egalitarian tribal structure of the Nile Valley breaks down because of the need to manage and control the new agricultural economy and the surplus it generates.

Groups of people still using stone tools but with knowledge of agriculture reach the Aegean from Anatolia or farther east and settle in parts of the mainland and in Crete.

Because of a lack of written records, estimates of Cretan chronology are based on well-established Aegean and Ancient Near Eastern pottery styles, so that Cretan timelines have been made by seeking Cretan artifacts traded with other civilizations (such as the Egyptians)—a well established occurrence.

For the earlier times, radiocarbon dating of organic remains and charcoal offers independent dates.

Based on this, it is thought that Crete was inhabited from the seventh millennium BCE onward.

The first human settlement in Crete dates to the aceramic Neolithic.

There have been some claims for Paleolithic remains, none of them very convincing.

The native fauna of Crete included pygmy hippo, pygmy elephant, dwarf deer (Praemegaceros cretensis), giant rodents and insectivores as well as badger, beech marten and a kind of terrestrial otter.

Large carnivores were lacking.

Most of these animals died out at the end of the last ice age.

Humans played a part in this extinction, which occurred on other medium to large Mediterranean islands as well, for example on Cyprus, Sicily and Majorca.

A group of the first people to land in Crete at the end of the seventh millennium BCE settles a hill west of the Kairatos stream; the settlement’s remains will be found under the Bronze Age palace at Knossos (layer X).

The first settlers introduce cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and dogs, as well as domesticated cereals and legumes.

Up to now, Knossos remains the only aceramic site.

The settlement covers approximately three hundred and fifty thousand square meters.

The sparse animal bones contain the above-mentioned domestic species as well as deer, badger, marten and mouse: the extinction of the local megafauna had not left much game behind.

The desertification of North Africa, which will ultimately lead to the creation of the Sahara desert, begins around 5600 BCE.

Objects used for a game similar to bowling are placed in the tomb of a young Egyptian boy around 5200.

The Egyptians also begin to use balances, and hunt animals by coursing—the pursuit of game with animals that track by sight rather than smell.

Africa has entered a dry phase by 5000 BCE, and the climate of the Sahara region has gradually become drier.

The population has trekked out of the Sahara region in all directions, including towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract, where they make permanent or semi-permanent settlements, thereby laying the groundwork for the rise of Egyptian civilization.

A major climatic recession occurs, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in central and eastern Africa.

Dry conditions will prevail in eastern Africa from this time forward.

Egyptians, according to ancient histories and other writings, use copper along with gold, silver, and lead as by 5000 BCE, when there are signs of copper smelting: the refining of copper from simple copper compounds such as malachite or azurite.

Irrigation is practiced in Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, and Ancient Persia (modern day Iran) as far back as the sixth millennium BCE, where barley is grown in areas where the natural rainfall is insufficient to support such a crop.

Egyptians may practice irrigation as early as 5000 along the banks of the Nile, by digging channels to extend the area covered by the flood, and by erecting dikes to trap water on the land after the river had subsided.

The Merimde Culture, so far only known from a big settlement site at the edge of the Western Delta some forty-five kilometers northwest of Cairo, flourishes in Lower Egypt from about 4800 to 4200 BCE.

The settlement consists of small huts made of wattle and reed with a round or elliptical ground plan.

The culture has strong connections to the Faiyum A Culture as well as the Levant.

People live in small huts, produce a simple undecorated pottery, and have stone tools.

Merimde pottery lacks rippled marks.

Cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs are kept.

Wheat, sorghum, and barley are planted.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the Merimde economy was dominated by agriculture although some fishing and hunting were practiced to a lesser degree.

The Merimde people bury their dead within the settlement and produce clay figurines.

The first Egyptian life-size head made of clay comes from Merimde.

There are no separate areas for cemeteries and the dead are buried within the settlement in a contracted position in oval pits without grave goods and offerings.