Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the
Pre-Pottery Neolithic, 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 pa ...
culture centered in
upper Mesopotamia 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 ...
, dating to years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC.
It was
typed by British archaeologist
Kathleen Kenyon during her
archaeological excavations at
Jericho in the
West Bank.
Like the earlier
PPNA people, the PPNB culture developed from the
Mesolithic 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 to supplement their earlier mixed agrarian and
hunter-gatherer 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 ...
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 w ...
.
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 ...
.
[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 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
Neba'a Faour, Tell Neba'a Faour, Mashna'et el Faour, Neba Faour or Nebaa Faour is a large, low-lying archaeological tell mound in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon inhabited in the late 7th and early 6th millennium BC. It was initially discovered by Lorra ...
(
Beqaa Valley). Sites from this period found in the Levant utilizing rectangular floor plans and plastered floor techniques were found at
Ain Ghazal
Ain (, ; frp, En) is a department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in Eastern France. Named after the Ain river, it is bordered by the Saône and Rhône rivers. Ain is located on the country's eastern edge, on the Swiss border, where it ...
,
Yiftahel (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 Epipalaeolithi ...
(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 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 ...
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 ...
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 aesthetics, ae ...
.
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, when ...
'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 Jdeidet ...
, a large agricultural village between
Mount Hermon and
Damascus could not validate
Henri de Contenson'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 Jdeidet ...
in the Damascus Basin of the same age were found at
Tell Ramad 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 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 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 and the
Eastern Desert of
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning the North Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via a land bridg ...
. 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''; ...
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
In climatology, the so-called "8.2-kiloyear event" was a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present ( BP), that is, 6,251 BC. It defines the start of the Northgrippian age in the Holocen ...
, a term that
climatologists
Climatology (from Greek , ''klima'', "place, zone"; and , ''-logia'') or climate science is the scientific study of Earth's climate, typically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of at least 30 years. This modern field of stud ...
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
The Amik Valley ( tr, Amik Ovası; ar, ٱلْأَعْمَاق, al-ʾAʿmāq) is located in the Hatay Province, close to the city of Antakya (Antioch on the Orontes River) in the southern part of Turkey. Along with Dabiq in northwestern Syria, i ...
, where it influenced the later development of the
Ghassulian culture.
File:20100923 amman37.JPG, ʿAin Ghazal statues: 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, 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 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 un ...
, 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. These form the early stages of the development of the
Art of Mesopotamia.
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 un ...
, Syria, end of 8th millennium BC.
File:Green aragonite tripod vase Mid-Euphrates 6000 BCE Louvre Museum AO 28386.jpg, Green aragonite 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 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 (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 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 pa ...
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
Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (; 25 January 1922 – 31 August 2018) was an Italian geneticist. He was a population geneticist who taught at the University of Parma, the University of Pavia and then at Stanford University.
Works
Schooling and p ...
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.
[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 – 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 ...
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