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Early Settlements in the Southwest
Asia
TPO20-2
：
Early
Settlements in the Southwest Asia
The universal global
warming at the end of the Ice Age had dramatic
effects on
temperate regions of Asia,
Europe, and North America. Ice sheets retreated
and sea
levels rose. The climatic
changes in southwestern Asia were more subtle, in
that they
involved
shifts
in
mountain
snow
lines,
rainfall
patterns,
and
vegetation
cover.
However, these same cycles of change
had momentous impacts on the sparse human
populations
of the region.
At the end of the
Ice Age, no more than
a few thousand
foragers
lived
along
the
eastern
Mediterranean
coast,
in
the
Jordan
and
Euphrates
valleys. Within
2,000 years, the human population of the region
numbered in the tens
of thousands, all
as a result of village life and farming. Thanks to
new environmental
and
archaeological
discoveries,
we
now
know
something
about
this
remarkable
change in local life.
Pollen samples from
freshwater lakes in Syria and elsewhere tell us
forest cover
expanded rapidly at the
end of the Ice Age, for the southwestern Asian
climate was
still cooler and
considerably wetter than today. Many areas were
richer in animal and
plant species than
they are now, making them highly favorable for
human occupation.
About
9000
B.C.,
most
human
settlements
lay
in
the
area
along
the
Mediterranean
coast and in
the Zagros Mountains of Iran and their foothills.
Some local areas, like
the Jordan River
valley, the middle Euphrates valley, and some
Zagros valleys, were
more
densely
populated
than
elsewhere.
Here
more
sedentary
and
more
complex
societies flourished. These people
exploited the landscape intensively, foraging on
hill
slopes
for
wild
cereal
grasses
and
nuts,
while
hunting
gazelle
and
other
game
on
grassy
lowlands and in river valleys. Their settlements
contain exotic objects such as
seashells, stone bowls, and artifacts
made of obsidian (volcanic glass), all traded from
afar.
This
considerable
volume
of
intercommunity
exchange
brought
a
degree
of
social complexity in its wake.
Thanks
to
extremely
fine-grained
excavation
and
extensive
use
of
flotation
methods (through which seeds are
recovered from soil samples), we know a great deal
about
the
foraging practices
of the
inhabitants
of Abu Hureyra in
Syria's Euphrates
valley.
Abu
Hureyra
was
founded
about
9500B.C,
a
small
village
settlement
of
cramped pit dwellings
(houses dug partially in the soil) with reed roofs
supported by
wooden
uprights.
For
the
next
1,500
years,
its
inhabitants
enjoyed
a
somewhat
warmer
and
damper
climate
than
today,
living
in
a
well-wooded
steppe
area
where
wild
cereal
grasses
were
abundant.
They
subsisted
off
spring
migrations
of
Persian
gazelles from the south. With such a
favorable location, about 300 to 400 people lived
in a sizable, permanent settlement.
They were no longer a series of small bands but
lived in a large community with more
elaborate social organization, probably grouped
into clans of people of common descent.
The flotation
samples from the excavations allowed botanists to
study shifts in
plant-collecting
habits
as
if
they
were
looking
through
a
telescope
at
a
changing
landscape.
Hundreds
of
tiny
plant
remains
show
how
the
inhabitants
exploited
nut
harvests
in
nearby
pistachio
and
oak
forests.
However,
as
the
climate
dried
up,
the
forests
retreated
from
the
vicinity
of
the
settlement.
The
inhabitants
turned
to
wild
cereal grasses instead, collecting them
by the thousands, while the percentage of nuts
in
the
diet
fell.
By
8200B.C.,
drought
conditions
were
so
severe
that
the
people
abandoned their long-established
settlement, perhaps dispersing into smaller camps.
Five centuries
later, about 7700B.C., a new village rose on the
mound. At first
the
inhabitants
still
hunted
gazelle
intensively.
Then,
about
7000
B.C.,
within
the
space
of a few generations, they switched abruptly to
herding domesticated goats and
sheep
and
to
growing
einkorn,
pulses,
and
other
cereal
grasses.
Abu
Hureyra
grew
rapidly until it covered nearly 30
acres. It was a close-knit community of
rectangular,
one-story
mud-
brick
houses,
joined
by
narrow
lanes
and
courtyards,
finally
abandoned
about
5000
B.C..
Many
complex
factors
led
to
the
adoption
of
the
new
economies, not only at Abu Hureyra, but
at many other locations such as 'Ain Ghazal,
also in Syria, where goat toe bones
showing the telltale marks of abrasion caused by
foot tethering (binding) testify to
early herding of domestic stock.
TPO20-
2
译文：西南亚的早期定居点