Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period

During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period the Earth was on the tail end of the Last Ice Age. Most recently the severe, but short, Younger Dryas. But climate was changing in Mesopotamia, and around the world. The people who lived in Mesopotamia appear to have preferred the foothills of the Taurus Mountain range (the northern reaches of Mesopotamia) and the Zagros Mountains (the east of Mesopotamia towards the Iranian Plateau), including populations in the northern reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys.

During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic we see a number of major revolutions in human culture, believed by many to mark our first steps out of our more primitive, older, prehistoric level of civilization. Indeed it was these revolutions that set us apart from all of our ancestor and sibling species of homo. During the Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) period humanity first learned and adopted agriculture. A revolutionary new way of life was born. We began farming first, and later learned how to domesticate — protect, raise, feed, and care for — animals, essentially as pets.

The PPN period is subdivided into the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) periods. During the PPNA period we see the first evidence of Mesopotamian people practicing farming — gathering seeds, planting them, tending to them as they grew, and harvesting. This led the transition a sedentary lifestyle, living permanently in a single location, on an ancient farm, tending to their crops. In the next couple thousand years the people begin to practice animal husbandry, raising their own flocks and herds, and tending to animals. The two division of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period span about 3200 years from 10,000 BCE. The PPNA lasted from 10,000–8700 and the PPNB lasting from 8700–6800.

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period was a time of dramatic transformation within human civilization. We learned to farm. Tending to crops of grains and gardens filled with vegetables, intentionally growing our food from the Earth herself. We began raising our own animals for meat, to sustain our people with a convenient, readily available source of nutrition to mitigate against famine, along with the vegetables, seeds, grains, and whatever wild game could be harvested. This is called the Neolithic Revolution. Mastering our environment by understanding it, organizing nature to produce for us, allowing people during this time to reliably create a surplus of food year-in and year-out, capable of sustaining larger and larger populations. This revolution laid the foundation for the next revolutions to come, a few thousand years later.

Gobekli Tepe was built and occupied during the PPN period. Perhaps the most striking example of human settlement, art, and sophistication this early in our history. In a way Gobekli Tepe is a monument to the dramatic transformation going on in the world during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period. Sites like Abu Hureyra and Mureybet document this transition in their archaeological record, since they were occupied from the Natufian well into the PPNB period. [1]

Pre-Pottery Neolithic Contents

Further Reading

Resources

1. Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Pottery_Neolithic>. Accessed 31 Oct 2023.
2. History of Mesopotamia. Wikipedia. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mesopotamia>. Accessed 31 Oct 2023.