Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the
Pre-Pottery Neolithic
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to years ago, (10000 – 6500 BCE).Richard, Suzanne ''Near Eastern archaeology'' Eisenbrauns; il ...
, a
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
culture centered in
upper Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia is the name used for the uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the region has been ...
and the
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...
, dating to years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC.
It was
typed by British archaeologist
Kathleen Kenyon
Dame Kathleen Mary Kenyon, (5 January 1906 – 24 August 1978) was a British archaeologist of Neolithic culture in the Fertile Crescent. She led excavations of Tell es-Sultan, the site of ancient Jericho, from 1952 to 1958, and has been called ...
during her
archaeological excavations at
Jericho
Jericho ( ; ar, أريحا ; he, יְרִיחוֹ ) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank. It is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It is the administrative seat of the Jericho Gove ...
in the
West Bank
The West Bank ( ar, الضفة الغربية, translit=aḍ-Ḍiffah al-Ġarbiyyah; he, הגדה המערבית, translit=HaGadah HaMaʽaravit, also referred to by some Israelis as ) is a landlocked territory near the coast of the Mediter ...
.
Like the earlier
PPNA
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to years ago, that is, 10,000–8,800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and U ...
people, the PPNB culture developed from the
Mesolithic
The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymous ...
Natufian culture. However, it shows evidence of a northerly origin, possibly indicating an influx from the region of northeastern
Anatolia
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The re ...
.
Lifestyle
Cultural tendencies of this period differ from that of the earlier
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period in that people living during this period began to depend more heavily upon
domesticated animals
This page gives a list of domesticated animals, also including a list of animals which are or may be currently undergoing the process of domestication and animals that have an extensive relationship with humans beyond simple predation. This includ ...
to supplement their earlier mixed agrarian and
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
diet. In addition, the
flint
Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...
tool kit of the period is new and quite disparate from that of the earlier period. One of its major elements is the
naviform core. This is the first period in which architectural styles of the southern Levant became primarily
rectilinear; earlier typical dwellings were circular, elliptical and occasionally even octagonal. Pyrotechnology, the expanding capability to control fire, was highly developed in this period. During this period, one of the main features of houses is a thick layer of white clay plaster flooring, highly polished and made of lime produced from
limestone
Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...
.
It is believed that the use of clay plaster for floor and wall coverings during PPNB led to the discovery of
pottery
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and por ...
.
[Amihai Mazar (1992). ''Archaeology of the Land of the Bible: 10,000 – 586 BC'', Doubleday: New York, p. 45.] The earliest proto-pottery was
White Ware
White Ware or "Vaisselle Blanche", effectively a form of limestone plaster used to make vessels, is the first precursor to clay pottery developed in the Levant that appeared in the 9th millennium BC, during the pre-pottery (aceramic) neolithic per ...
vessels, made from lime and gray ash, built up around baskets before firing, for several centuries around 7000 BCE at sites such as Tell
Neba'a Faour (
Beqaa Valley). Sites from this period found in the Levant utilizing rectangular floor plans and plastered floor techniques were found at
Ain Ghazal,
Yiftahel
Yiftahel ( he, יפתחאל) is an archaeological site located in the Lower Galilee in northern Israel. Various salvage excavations took place here between 1992 and 2008. The best known periods of occupation are the Early Bronze Age I and Pre-Pot ...
(western
Galilee), and
Abu Hureyra
Tell Abu Hureyra ( ar, تل أبو هريرة) is a prehistoric archaeological site in the Upper Euphrates valley in Syria. The tell was inhabited between 13,000 and 9,000 years ago in two main phases: Abu Hureyra 1, dated to the Epipalaeolit ...
(Upper
Euphrates
The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Tigris–Euphrates river system, Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers'') ...
).
The period is dated to between c. 10,700 and c. 8,000
BP or 7000–6000 BC.
Plastered human skulls
Plastered human skulls are human skulls covered in layers of plaster, typically found in the ancient Levant, most notably around the modern Palestinian city of Jericho, between 8,000 and 6,000 BC (approximately 9000 years ago), in the Pre-Pott ...
were reconstructed human skulls that were made in the ancient
Levant
The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...
between 9000 and 6000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They represent some of the oldest forms of art in the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
and demonstrate that the prehistoric population took great care in burying their
ancestors
An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or ( recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from w ...
below their homes. The skulls denote some of the earliest sculptural examples of
portrait
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...
ure in the
history of art
The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic vis ...
.
Society
Danielle Stordeur
Danielle Stordeur is a French Archaeologist and Directeur de Recherche at the CNRS. She is also Director of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs permanent mission to El Kowm-Mureybet ( Syria), replacing Jacques Cauvin in 1993 until 2010, whe ...
's recent work at
Tell Aswad
Tell Aswad ( ar, تل أسود, "Hill Black"), Su-uk-su or Shuksa, is a large prehistoric, neolithic tell, about in size, located around from Damascus in Syria, on a tributary of the Barada River at the eastern end of the village of Jdeide ...
, a large agricultural village between
Mount Hermon
Mount Hermon ( ar, جبل الشيخ or جبل حرمون / ALA-LC: ''Jabal al-Shaykh'' ("Mountain of the Sheikh") or ''Jabal Haramun''; he, הַר חֶרְמוֹן, ''Har Hermon'') is a mountain cluster constituting the southern end of th ...
and
Damascus
)), is an adjective which means "spacious".
, motto =
, image_flag = Flag of Damascus.svg
, image_seal = Emblem of Damascus.svg
, seal_type = Seal
, map_caption =
, ...
could not validate
Henri de Contenson
250px, Henri de Contenson
Henri de Contenson (4 March 1926 – 8 September 2019) was a French archaeologist and was the Research Director at the CNRS, The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (National Center for Scientific Research), a ...
's earlier suggestion of a PPNA ''Aswadian'' culture. Instead, they found evidence of a fully established PPNB culture at 8700 BC at Aswad, pushing back the period's generally accepted start date by 1,200 years. Similar sites to
Tell Aswad
Tell Aswad ( ar, تل أسود, "Hill Black"), Su-uk-su or Shuksa, is a large prehistoric, neolithic tell, about in size, located around from Damascus in Syria, on a tributary of the Barada River at the eastern end of the village of Jdeide ...
in the Damascus Basin of the same age were found at
Tell Ramad
Tell Ramad ( ar, تل رماد) is a prehistoric, Neolithic tell at the foot of Mount Hermon, about southwest of Damascus in Syria. The tell was the site of a small village of , which was first settled in the late 8th millennium BC.
The tell ...
and
Tell Ghoraifé. How a PPNB culture could spring up in this location, practicing domesticated farming from 8700 BC has been the subject of speculation. Whether it created its own culture or imported traditions from the North East or
Southern Levant
The Southern Levant is a geographical region encompassing the southern half of the Levant. It corresponds approximately to modern-day Israel, Palestine, and Jordan; some definitions also include southern Lebanon, southern Syria and/or the Sinai P ...
has been considered an important question for a site that poses a problem for the scientific community.
Extent
Work at the site of
'Ain Ghazal in
Jordan
Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...
has indicated a later
Pre-Pottery Neolithic C
The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to years ago, (10000 – 6500 BCE).Richard, Suzanne ''Near Eastern archaeology'' Eisenbrauns; il ...
period, which existed between 8,200 and 7,900 BP.
Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BC, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon animal domesticates, and a fusion with
Harifian
Harifian is a specialized regional cultural development of the Epipalaeolithic of the Negev Desert. It corresponds to the latest stages of the Natufian culture.
History
Like the Natufian, Harifian is characterized by semi-subterranean houses. ...
hunter gatherers in Southern Palestine, with affiliate connections with the cultures of
Fayyum
Faiyum ( ar, الفيوم ' , borrowed from cop, ̀Ⲫⲓⲟⲙ or Ⲫⲓⲱⲙ ' from egy, pꜣ ym "the Sea, Lake") is a city in Middle Egypt. Located southwest of Cairo, in the Faiyum Oasis, it is the capital of the modern Faiyum ...
and the
Eastern Desert
The Eastern Desert (Archaically known as Arabia or the Arabian Desert) is the part of the Sahara desert that is located east of the Nile river. It spans of North-Eastern Africa and is bordered by the Nile river to the west and the Red Sea and ...
of
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the
Red Sea
The Red Sea ( ar, البحر الأحمر - بحر القلزم, translit=Modern: al-Baḥr al-ʾAḥmar, Medieval: Baḥr al-Qulzum; or ; Coptic: ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϩⲁϩ ''Phiom Enhah'' or ⲫⲓⲟⲙ ⲛ̀ϣⲁⲣⲓ ''Phiom ǹšari''; T ...
shoreline and moved east from
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country loc ...
into southern
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
.
The culture disappeared during the
8.2 kiloyear event, a term that
climatologists have adopted for a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present, or c. 6200 BC, and which lasted for the next two to four centuries. In the following
Munhatta and
Yarmukian post-pottery Neolithic cultures that succeeded it, rapid cultural development continues, although PPNB culture continued in the
Amuq valley, where it influenced the later development of the
Ghassulian
Ghassulian refers to a culture and an archaeological stage dating to the Middle and Late Chalcolithic Period in the Southern Levant (c. 4400 – c. 3500 BC). Its type-site, Teleilat Ghassul ( Teleilat el-Ghassul, Tulaylat al-Ghassul), is loc ...
culture.
File:20100923 amman37.JPG, ʿAin Ghazal statues
The ʿAin Ghazal Statues are a number of large-scale lime plaster and reed statues discovered at the archeological site of ʿAin Ghazal in Jordan, dating back to approximately 9000 years ago (made between 7200 BC and 6500 BCE), from the Pre-Potte ...
: closeup of one of the bicephalous statues, c. 6500 BC.
File:Ain Ghazal statue.jpg, Ain Ghazal statue on show in the Musée du Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, Paris.
File:Ain Ghazal statue frontal.jpg, Louvre Ain Ghazal statue, frontal
Artifacts
Around 8000 BCE, before the invention of pottery, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as
alabaster
Alabaster is a mineral or rock that is soft, often used for carving, and is processed for plaster powder. Archaeologists and the stone processing industry use the word differently from geologists. The former use it in a wider sense that includes ...
or
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
, and employing sand to shape and polish. Artisans used the veins in the material to maximum visual effect. Such objects have been found in abundance on the upper
Euphrates river, in what is today eastern Syria, especially at the site of
Bouqras
Bouqras is a large, oval shaped, prehistoric, Neolithic Tell, about in size, located around from Deir ez-Zor in Syria.
Excavation
The tell was discovered in 1960 by Dutch geomorphologist, Willem van Liere. It was excavated between 1960 an ...
. These form the early stages of the development of the
Art of Mesopotamia
The art of Mesopotamia has survived in the record from early hunter-gatherer societies (8th millennium BC) on to the Bronze Age cultures of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires. These empires were later replaced in the Iron Ag ...
.
File:Jar MET VS1985 356 16.jpg, Jar in calcite alabaster, Syria, late 8th millennium BC.
File:Footed bowl MET vs1985 356 20.jpg, Footed bowl in granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
, Syria, end of 8th millennium BC.
File:Green aragonite tripod vase Mid-Euphrates 6000 BCE Louvre Museum AO 28386.jpg, Green aragonite
Aragonite is a carbonate mineral, one of the three most common naturally occurring crystal forms of calcium carbonate, (the other forms being the minerals calcite and vaterite). It is formed by biological and physical processes, including prec ...
tripod vase Mid-Euphrates 6000 BC Louvre Museum AO 28386
File:Calcite tripod vase, mid-Euphrates probably from Tell Buqras, 6000 BCE, Louvre Museum AO 31551.jpg, Calcite
Calcite is a Carbonate minerals, carbonate mineral and the most stable Polymorphism (materials science), polymorph of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). It is a very common mineral, particularly as a component of limestone. Calcite defines hardness 3 on ...
tripod vase, mid-Euphrates, probably from Tell Buqras, 6000 BCE, Louvre Museum AO 31551
File:Alabaster pot with handles, Buqras region 6500 BCE Louvre Museum AO 28519.jpg, Alabaster pot with handles, Buqras region, 6500 BC Louvre Museum AO 28519
File:Alabaster pot Mid-Euphrates region 6500 BCE Louvre Museum.jpg, Alabaster pot Mid-Euphrates region, 6500 BC, Louvre Museum
File:Alabaster pot, Mid-Euphrates region 6500 BCE Louvre Museum.jpg, Alabaster pot, Mid-Euphrates region, 6500 BC, Louvre Museum
File:Bead MET vs1985 356 36.jpg, Bead with human form. 8th millennium BC.
Genetics
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B fossils that were analysed for ancient DNA were found to carry the Y-DNA (paternal) haplogroups
E1b1b
E-M215, also known as E1b1b and formerly E3b, is a major human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. It is a division of the macro-haplogroup E-M96, which is defined by the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation M215. In other words, it is one of ...
(2/7; ~29%),
CT (2/7; ~29%),
E(xE2,E1a,E1b1a1a1c2c3b1,E1b1b1b1a1,E1b1b1b2b) (1/7; ~14%),
T(xT1a1,T1a2a) (1/7; ~14%), and
H2 (1/7; ~14%). The CT clade was also observed in a Pre-Pottery Neolithic C specimen (1/1; 100%). Maternally, the rare basal haplogroup
N* has been found among skeletal remains belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B,
as have the mtDNA clades
L3 and
K.
DNA analysis has also confirmed ancestral ties between the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture bearers and the makers of the Epipaleolithic
Iberomaurusian
The Iberomaurusian is a backed bladelet lithic industry found near the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is also known from a single major site in Libya, the Haua Fteah, where the industry is locally known as the Eastern Oranian.The " ...
culture of North Africa, the Mesolithic
Natufian culture of the Levant, the
Savanna Pastoral Neolithic
The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (SPN; formerly known as the Stone Bowl Culture) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the Rift Valley of East Africa and surrounding areas during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic. The ...
culture of East Africa,
the Early Neolithic
Cardium culture of Morocco,
and the
Ancient Egyptian culture of the Nile Valley,
with fossils associated with these early cultures all sharing a common genomic component.
Diffusion
Carbon-14 dating
The spread of the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
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 Ammerman is a surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Celia Ammerman (born 1983), American fashion model
*Joseph S. Ammerman (1924–1993), American politician
*Nancy Ammerman
Nancy Tatom Ammerman (born 1950) is an American professor ...
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
Jericho ( ; ar, أريحا ; he, יְרִיחוֹ ) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank. It is located in the Jordan Valley, with the Jordan River to the east and Jerusalem to the west. It is the administrative seat of the Jericho Gove ...
), 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.
[Original text from Material was copied from this source, which is available under ]
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Analysis of mitochondrial DNA
Since the original human expansions out of Africa 200,000 years ago, different prehistoric and historic migration events have taken place in Europe.
Considering that the movement of the people implies a consequent movement of their genes, it is possible to estimate the impact of these migrations through the genetic analysis of human populations.
Agricultural and husbandry practices originated 10,000 years ago in a region of the Near East known as the Fertile Crescent.
According to the archaeological record this phenomenon, known as "Neolithic", rapidly expanded from these territories into Europe.
However, whether this diffusion was accompanied or not by human migrations is greatly debated.
Mitochondrial DNA
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...
– a type of maternally inherited DNA located in the cell cytoplasm- was recovered from the remains of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farmers in the Near East and then compared to available data from other Neolithic populations in Europe and also to modern populations from South Eastern Europe and the Near East.
The obtained results show that substantial human migrations were involved in the Neolithic spread and suggest that the first Neolithic farmers entered Europe following a maritime route through
Cyprus
Cyprus ; tr, Kıbrıs (), officially the Republic of Cyprus,, , lit: Republic of Cyprus is an island country located south of the Anatolian Peninsula in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Its continental position is disputed; while it is geo ...
and the
Aegean Islands.
[ Material was copied from this source, which is available under ]
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
File:Modern distribution of the haplotypes of PPNB farmers.jpg, Modern distribution of the haplotypes of PPNB farmers
File:Genetic distance between PPNB farmers and modern populations.jpg, Genetic distance between PPNB farmers and modern populations
Relative chronology
See also
*
Holocene climatic optimum
*
Levantine archaeology#Ceramics analysis
*
Prehistory of the Levant
The prehistory of the Levant includes the various cultural changes that occurred, as revealed by archaeological evidence, prior to recorded traditions in the area of the Levant. Archaeological evidence suggests that ''Homo sapiens'' and other ho ...
*
Upper Mesopotamia#Prehistory
References
External links
{{Prehistoric technology, state=expanded
Neolithic cultures of Asia
Archaeological cultures of the Near East
9th-millennium BC establishments
7th-millennium BC disestablishments
Pre-Pottery Neolithic