Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Pre-Pottery Neolithic

Area of the fertile crescent, circa 7500 BC, with main Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not yet settled by humans.
Geographical range	Fertile Crescent
Period	Neolithic
Dates	circa 8,500 B.C.E. — circa 5,500 B.C.E.
Type site	Jericho
Preceded by	Epipalaeolithic Near East (Kebaran culture, Natufian culture)
Followed by	Halaf culture, Neolithic Greece, Faiyum A culture

Map of the world showing approximate centers of origin of agriculture and its spread in prehistory: the Fertile Crescent (11,000 BP), the Yangtze and Yellow River basins (9,000 BP) and the New Guinea Highlands (9,000–6,000 BP), Central Mexico (5,000–4,000 BP), Northern South America (5,000–4,000 BP), sub-Saharan Africa (5,000–4,000 BP, exact location unknown), eastern North America (4,000–3,000 BP).

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN, around 8500-5500 BCE) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent. It succeeds the Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic Near East (also called Mesolithic), as the domestication of plants and animals was in its formative stages, having possibly been induced by the Younger Dryas. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture came to an end around the time of the 8.2 kiloyear event, a cool spell centred on 6200 BCE that lasted several hundred years. It is succeeded by the Pottery Neolithic.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic A

Main article: Pre-Pottery Neolithic A

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic is divided into Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA 8500 BCE – 7600 BCE) and the following Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB 7600 BCE – 6000 BCE). These were originally defined by Kathleen Kenyon in the type site of Jericho (Palestine). The Pre-Pottery Neolithic precedes the ceramic Neolithic (Yarmukian). At 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan the culture continued a few more centuries as the so-called Pre-Pottery Neolithic C culture.

Around 8000 BCE during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) the world's first town Jericho appeared in the Levant.

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  Sculpture of a predatory animal, Göbekli Tepe, circa 9000 BC
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  Urfa Man, c. 9000 BC. Şanlıurfa Archaeology and Mosaic Museum.
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  Ancestor Statue, Jericho, c. 9000 BC (Replica). Israel Museum.

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Main article: Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

PPNB differed from PPNA in showing greater use of domesticated animals, a different set of tools, and new architectural styles.

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  Footed bowl in granite, Syria, end of 8th millennium BC.
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  Jar in calcite alabaster, Syria, late 8th millennium BC.
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  Green aragonite tripod vase Mid-Euphrates 6000 BCE Louvre Museum AO 28386
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  Calcite tripod vase, mid-Euphrates, probably from Tell Buqras, 6000 BC, Louvre Museum AO 31551

Pre-Pottery Neolithic C

Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period. Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BCE, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon domesticated animals, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in the Southern Levant, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the Red Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Iraq.

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  'Ain Ghazal Statues: closeup of one of the bicephalous statues, c.7000 BC.
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  Ain Ghazal statue on show in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
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  Louvre Ain Ghazal statue, frontal

Diffusion

The spread of the Neolithic in Europe was first studied quantitatively in the 1970s, when a sufficient number of 14C age determinations for early Neolithic sites had become available. Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza discovered a linear relationship between the age of an Early Neolithic site and its distance from the conventional source in the Near East (Jericho), thus demonstrating that, on average, the Neolithic spread at a constant speed of about 1 km/yr. More recent studies confirm these results and yield the speed of 0.6–1.3 km/yr at 95% confidence level.

See also

• Pre-history of the Southern Levant
• History of pottery in the Southern Levant

Further reading

• Ofer Bar-Yosef, The PPNA in the Levant – an overview. Paléorient 15/1, 1989, 57-63.
• J. Cauvin, Naissance des divinités, Naissance de l’agriculture. La révolution des symboles au Néolithique (CNRS 1994). Translation (T. Watkins) The birth of the gods and the origins of agriculture (Cambridge 2000).