Neolithic Age: (New Stone, Polished stone)

• Definition: Period of human history that began with the discovery of agriculture & livestock around 10.000 B.C., and finished when metallurgy was discovered.

Characteristics

• Agriculture & Raising Livestock

• New Tools & Techniques

• First Villages

• Cave painting

• New Stone (polished)

• New economy : Agriculture and Livestock

More stability, food secure Sedentarism

• New habitat: Villages

• There was division of labour

• Tools: polished stone tools such as axes

• Other innovations: pottery, cloth, boiling of

food.

Neolithic Age: Characteristics

Neolithic Age: Agriculture & Livestock

•Earth’s temperature increased.

Large herbivores moved north &

the plant species increased

(barley, millet, wild wheat…)

•There were not as many animals,

so people started to grow plants

•First crops: cereals and legumes

•They used handmills to grind

flour

•They began to domesticate

animals (sheep, goats, pigs, oxen)

•They used vegetable fibers to

make baskets

Neolithic Age: Livestock

Cave painting with husbandry scenes

Neolithic Tools: Hand Mill

Neolithic Tools: Sickles

Wood sickle with flint stones

Neolithic Tools: Polished Axe

Neolithic Habitat: First Villages

Neolithic Age: Cave Paintings

•Why? Probably religious significance associated with fertility rites

•Topic: Animals and Human Being.

•Where? On rocks in the open air or in shallow caves.

•Colours: Usually only one colour (red or black)

•Style: schematic: Simplified forms

•Examples: Levantine area. La Valltortá (Castellón)

Bisons in the Altamira cave

Neolithic Age: Rocks & Cave Paintings

Cogull

Valltorta Cueva de la Araña

Differences between Paleolithic & Neolithic Paintings

•Paintings in caves

•Only animal figures

•Several colours

•Realistic and detailed

•Static figures

•Area: Cantabrian coast

•Paintings on rocks in open air or in shallow caves

•Animals and humans figures

•Only one color (usually red or black)

•Schematic

•Motion

•Area: Mediterranean/Levantine

Neolithic Age: Pottery

Neolithic Age: Pottery

Venus of Willendorf

Homework

Book: pg 95 Ex. 5