The early Neolithic human occupation of Mesopotamia is, like the previous Epipaleolithic period, confined to the foothill zones of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains and the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates valleys.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period (10,000–8700 BCE) sees the introduction of agriculture.

The Natufian culture in Upper Mesopotamia, contemporaneous with the Zarzian in the Zagros, is attested over a much wider region and is characterized by open-air sites that are semi-permanently occupied.

In the Zagros, this period has been excavated at Zawi Chemi, Shanidar, and M'lefaat.

In the area of the Syrian Upper Euphrates, villages of Natufian hunter-gatherers that were occupied since the eleventh millennium BCE have been excavated at Abu Hureyra and Mureybet.

One such village, established about 9000 in southeastern Anatolia on the Turkish-Iranian border, consists of houses made from mud and reeds, with conical roofs and circular stone bases.

It is the first known example of a permanent settlement.

Copper was known to some of the oldest civilizations on record, and has a history of use that is at least 10,000 years old.

Some estimates of copper's discovery place this event around 9000 BCE in the Middle East.

A copper pendant found in what is now northern Iraq dates to 8700 BCE.

Jericho, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, emerges in this epoch.

Near East (7,821 – 6,094 BCE) Early Holocene — Nile Mesolithic, Red Sea Littoral, and Anatolian Coasts

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

• Thermal optimum lifted Nile productivity; Aegean coasts stabilized; monsoonal Hejaz–Yemen slopes greened seasonally.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Semi-sedentary Nile hamlets (fish, mollusks, wild cereals); reed-craft and basketry; small livestock browsing near Levant–Negev margins.

• Western Anatolia coasts: broad-spectrum foragers exploited shellfish, fish, and fallow deer; Yemen Tihāma episodes of coastal foraging.

Technology

• Ground stone for seed processing; larger mortars; early pottery at fringes (Anatolian contacts); dugouts on Nile backwaters.

Corridors

• Nile channel–backwater routes; Aegean island-hops; Red Sea shore lanes between wadis.

Symbolism

• Ritual feasts on levee mounds; house-burials; figurine precursors in coastal Anatolia.

Adaptation

• Wetland anchoring with seed/fish storage established resilient semi-sedentism.

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.

The first known use of a rectangular house plan occurs around 7000 BCE near Jericho.

'Ain Ghazal in its prime age, circa 7000 BCE, extends over ten to fifteen hectares (twenty-five to thirty-seven acres) and is inhabited by around three thousand people (four to five times that of contemporary Jericho).

The one hundred and fifty or so people who live in the settlement at Jarmo (an archaeological site named after the Kurdish village of Qallat Jarmo in the foothills of northern Iraq, about thirty-five miles—fifty-five kilometers—east of Kirkuk) cultivate two kinds of domesticated wheat and tend sheep and goats around 6750 BCE.

Known as the oldest agricultural community in the world, Jarmo is broadly contemporary with such other important Neolithic sites such as Jericho in the southern Levant and Çatal Hüyük in Anatolia.

The site is approximately three to four acres (twelve thousand to sixteen thousand meters.)

in size and lies at an altitude of eight hundred meters above sea level in a belt of oak and pistachio woodlands.

Excavated by the American archaeologist Robert Braidwood in 1948-55, the site fueled Braidwood’s hypothesis that plant domestication and early farming in the Near East originated in the hilly flanks of northern Iraq's Zagros Mountains.

The original site of Jericho, following an apparent break in occupation, is abandoned after a few centuries for a second settlement, established in 6800 BCE, perhaps by an invading people who absorbed the original inhabitants into their dominant culture, known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B.

Their houses are rectangular and have beaten earth floors.

That the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B is a different group from the Aceramic, or Pre-Pottery Neolithic A, culture is evidenced by significant changes both in the architectural tradition and in the flint tools.

The current culture, which constructs two possible shrines, places, beneath the floors of their houses, plastered skulls with shells replacing the eyes.

Artifacts dating from this period include ten skulls, plastered and painted to reconstitute the individuals' features.

These represent the first example of portraiture in art history, and it is thought that these were kept in people's homes while the bodies were buried.

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.

Hacilar's occupations of the second half of the sixth millennium include an earlier walled settlement and a later fortified complex.