stgd stories of stone age - monash...

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The films include excellent, detailed re-enactments and short interviews with key experts on some of the key archaeological sites, resulting in a se-ries that younger secondary students will find accessible.

Each of the three films focuses on a key development:

Episode 1: The change of people from hunter-gatherers to farmers in the Mid-dle EastEpisode 2: The development of urban living in the Middle East, and the move to farming in EuropeEpisode 3: The development of trade in the Middle East, and its impacts on Europe, throughout the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age.

Taken together the series provides a

detailed examination of the momen-tous changes that occurred over a period of about ten thousand years.

Curriculum Guide

The episodes in the series can be used separately in the classroom, or as a three-part combined narrative.

By watching some or all of the series students will gain a knowledge and appreciation of:

• the key concepts of change and causation;

• the factors shaping people's change from hunter-gatherers to farmers and urban-dwellers;

• the impacts of these changes on people’s lives, and on the environ-ment;

• the time and location of these changes in the Middle East and northern Europe.

The series can be used with students from lower to upper secondary levels, and will be particularly useful in the Studies of Society and Environment key learning area in all states and ter-ritories at the compulsory secondary years. (See chart 01)

Suggestions for using this series in the classroom

1 Introduce students to the concept of change and causation through the Introductory activity. This will help focus their awareness of and thinking about what they will see in the film. Discuss the ideas about causation that students develop,

CHART 01.

State/Territory Curriculum Area

NSW History 7-10 Stage 4: Societies and civilizations of the past

NT SOSE Band 4: Time, continuity and change

QLD 9-10 History Level 4: Time, continuity and change

SA Society and Environment Standard 4: Time, continuity and change

TAS Essential Learnings Thinking – Inquiry. Social Responsibility –Understanding the past and creat-ing preferred futures

VIC History Level 5

WA Society and Environment Time, continuity and change

TO THE TEACHER

Stories From the Stone Age (Roger Scholes, 2003) is a series of three documentary films about how and why humans changed from being hunter-gatherers to farmers and village-dwellers. The

process started about 13,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent area of the Middle East, and spread to Europe, ending about 3000 years ago.

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stressing the fact that there may be multiple causation in situations (e.g. attitudes, values, behaviour, environment, etc.).

2 Have students look at the Time and place (bottom p.3) page, and alert them to the need to watch the maps that will appear peri-odically during the film. They will need to transfer information about times and places onto their maps. Their completed map need not be detailed and precise, but should show broad movements over time.

3 The films each cover a broad period of time across a large area. Each presents detailed and sometimes complex information, though usually in a very accessible visual way. Students will need to have a clear comprehension of the story being told in each film. There are two strategies suggested for achieving this. One is the Under-standing the story pages, which are designed to help students recall main ideas and information. These questions are broken into segments, and teachers could stop the film periodically to make sure students are following the narrative. There is also Telling the story page, which can be used to reinforce students’ understanding of the narrative, and to help them see the big picture behind each of the films in the series. Students are also asked periodically to fill in parts of the Time and place page, and to keep a record of major archaeological discussions on the How do we know? (p.15)

4 Have students work in small groups to create the Mental Map of Change and Causation for each

film. This will be a difficult exercise for some, but it is an effective way of summarizing some of the key ideas put forward in the films.

5 Have students discuss the How Do We Know? page, raising the issue of the speculative nature of many of the conclusions presented (for example the meaning of the Star of Ghassoul in episode 3), and how new discoveries might lead to a radical re-assessment of much that is presented here as certain.

6 We have included a detailed set of Background Notes (p.15) devel-oped by the producers of the series, Beyond Productions, to help teach-ers with place names and dates mentioned in the film series. Teach-ers should be familiar with these to help students in discussions if questions about these details arise.

Introductory Activity—What happened on Easter Island?

In 1772 a Dutch explorer landed on an isolated island called Easter Island located off the coast of Chile.

He saw the magnificent statues that had been built there—but found the land in a terrible state, and the people in conflict and practising cannibalism.

Here is a list of events that help to explain why the once fertile and pros-perous island had degenerated to that extent.

1 Arrange these (see chart 02) in a logical sequence from 1 to 15 that shows this change. The first and last stages have been numbered for you. You can cut out the stages and physically re-arrange them, until you are satisfied with your final sequence.

2 Compare your sequence with those produced by classmates.

3 What would you say were the main causes of what happened on the island over time?

Time and place

See Charts 03 and 04 and maps of Europe and the Middle East overleaf.

o There was plenty of leisure time.

151772 the Dutch Admira,l Roggeveen, found a degenerating society on a bare island amid 600 splendid statues (some half completed).

o Migration from Easter Island became impossible.

o Clans competed to carve and erect the greatest number of sacred statues.

oThe staple diet of the new settlers was sweet potatoes and chicken, neither of which required much labour.

o Soil quality declined and food production decreased.

o Logs were used as rollers to shift the statues to ceremonial sites.

o There was little natural fertilisation over time.

o The Polynesians brought no large animals to the island and no mammals at all.

o Conflict developed over scarce food resources.

1 Polynesians sailed east to settle Easter Island in the fifth century AD.

o People became cannibals.

o Deforestation occurred on a large scale.

o There was a shortage of trees for shelter, fuel and canoes.

o Good diet caused a substantial growth in population, which organized into clans.

CHART 02.

CORPSE IN AN OAK COFFIN

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40° W 20° W 20° E 40° E 60° E

40° N

60° N

ArcticCirc le

0°

Mer

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f G

reen

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h(L

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on)

SPAINPORTUGAL

FRANCE

UNITEDKINGDOM

IRELAND

ICELAND

BELGIUM

NETH.

DENMARK

GERMANY

LUX.

NORWAY

SWEDEN

FINLAND

POLAND

SWITZ.

MONACOANDORRA

GIBRALTAR (U.K.)

ESTONIA

LATVIA

LITH.

BELARUS

UKRAINE

RUSSIA

KAZ.RUSS.

CZECHREP.

SLOVAKIA

AUSTRIA

MOLDOVAHUNGARY

SLOVENIA CROATIA ROMANIA

SERB.&MONT.

BULGARIATURKEY

MACEDONIA

GREECE

SANMARINO

VATICANCITY

ITALY

LIECH.

BOSN.&HERZG.

ALBAN.

MALTA

AS IANORTHAMERICA

AS IA

AFR ICA

No

rweg

ian

Sea

NorthSea

Caspian Sea

Black Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Atlantic

Ocean

EUROPEEUROPE

0 500 mi

500 km0

© 2003 National Geographic Society

www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions

10°E 20°E 30°E 40°E 60°E

40°N

30°N

20°N

50°N

Tropic of Cancer

Red

Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Black Sea

CaspianSea

AralSea

Gulf of Aden

PersianGulf

Gulf ofOman

ArabianSea

LakeBalkhash

Nile

R . Abu Dhabi

Muscat

Sanaa

Riyadh

Kuwait

Kabul Islamabad

Manama

Tehran

T’bilisi

Yerevan DushanbeAshgabat

Baku

Astana

Tashkent

Bishkek

Baghdad

Ankara

Damascus

Amman

Cairo

BeirutLefkosia

Jerusalem

Doha

T U R K E Y

I R A N

K A Z A K H S T A N

I R A Q

AFGHANISTAN

PAKISTAN

SYRIA

GEORGIAARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN

JORDANKUWAIT

LEBANON

CYPRUSISRAEL

UNITEDARAB

EMIRATES

QATARBAHRAIN

S A U D IA R A B I A

YEMEN

OMAN

TURKMENISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

TAJIKISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

E G Y P T

A F R I C A

E U R O P E

400

4000

0

mi.

km

© 2003 National Geographic Society

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MIDDLE EAST REGIONMIDDLE EAST REGION

Years ago

15000 14000 13000 120000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000

Years ago

15000 14000 13000 120000 11000 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 3000

MIDDLE: CHARTS 03 AND 04.

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Aspect of the story

(Approx. time shown in bold)

00:00 – 01:00

This introduction tells us about the way people were living just before a great change.

1 People were hunter-gatherers. What does that mean?

2 People were nomadic. What does that mean?

3 Why were they nomadic?

01:00 – 03:00

The change took place about 15,000 years ago, in the ‘fertile crescent’ of the Middle East area.

4 Devise a way to mark this on your Time and place page.

5 This period saw the end of an ice age. What effect did this climate change have on the environment?

6 What did that mean for people in the area at that time?

7 The film stresses the significance of a new plant—grass. What is so significant about grain-producing grass?

03:00 – 05:50

Archaeologists have named the peo-ple who were in this place at this time, the Natufians.

Understanding the story—Daily BreadIn Stories From the Stone Age, Episode 1: ‘Daily Bread’ you will see how humans changed from

being nomadic hunter-gatherers, to being settled farmers.

1

The key things to decide as you

watch the film are:

• When did this happen?

• Why did it happen then and

not some other time?

• Why did it happen in this

place?

• Why did it happen there and

not some other place?

• What impacts did this

change have on people’s

lives?

• How do we know about

these things?

Look at the film, pause after

each segment, and discuss

these questions.

8 What was special and new about their activities?

9 One of the tools they had was a sickle, used for cutting grass. Go to the How do we know? page and record what this sickle was, and what it tells us about people at the time.

05:50 – 26:20

This section of the film gives us details about the life of the Natufians.

10 What was the big benefit of the availability of grains?

11 How did this change the life of the Natufians? Consider especially their nomadism, their work, their hunting, the development of com-munity, and their artistic activities.

12 Archaeologists study the fireplaces and rubbish pits of these people. Go to the How do we know? page and list what was found in the Natufian house area, and what it tells us about their way of life.

13 One of the most important ma-terials for Stone Age people was flint. Explain why it was such an important material.

14 The archaeologists have found Natufian ‘tool kits’. Go to the How do we know? page and record what was in these tool kits, and what they tell us about people at the time.

15 The move to grain-gathering brought changes to the hunter-gatherers’ lives. What were some 5

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of the benefits, and some of the costs of this change?

16 We start to see the development of religious or spiritual beliefs from burial rituals. Go to the How do we know? page and record what was found at the Natufian burial site and what it tells us about peo-ple at the time.

26:20 – 49:00

The Natufians survived in this way for about 2500 years. Then there was a new ice snap, the ‘Younger Dryas’. This led to a fundamental change in the life of the Natufians.

17 What happened to the environment in the area where the Natufians lived?

18 Devise a way to show this on the Time and place page.

19 Some Natufians decided to settle in an area that had water but did not produce the wild grasses that they had lived off for thousands of years. What did they have to do to the natural environment to survive?

20 The drought caused by the Younger Dryas lasted about 1000 years. At the end the new climate was perfect for farming. Devise a way of showing this on your Time and place page.

21 Why was this area now suitable for farming?

22 How had the people changed the morphology, or natural features, of grains?

23 These people were now solely farmers, permanently settled in one place, and controlling the growth and harvesting of the grains. What were the advantages and disadvantages of this total reliance on grain? Consider such elements as work, quality of life, health, artistic creativity, and tools.

24 One of the most important chang-es was in the way people lived to-

gether—society. With larger groups living together, what changes did this bring to society?

Bringing it all together

25 Go back to the list of key questions to answer. What are your answers to them?

Telling the story

Here are some paragraphs that sum-marize what you have just seen.

Unfortunately, the paragraphs have been mixed up.

You task is to re-arrange the para-graphs into a logical order that sum-marizes the film.

• Meanwhile, across the vast ex-panse of Europe, people were still living as they always had—hunting and gathering wild food, moving from place to place. Eventually the revolution that began in the Fertile Crescent would spread across the rest of the world. But for most it would not happen for many thou-sands of years.

• In the Middle East the nomads were about to change the world forever. Here, a hunter-gatherer people called the Natufians used stone sickles to harvest huge crops of wild cereals. They took the first steps toward farming, Able to stay put for long periods, they built semi-permanent circular stone huts, and—perhaps out of a new sense of belonging—buried their dead beneath the floors. They wore distinctive shell decorations and made portable art works and woven vessels.

• But after 1500 years, this bold new culture was decimated. In a dra-matic climate crash, the world sud-denly became cold and dry again. Only a remnant of the Natufians survived by planting seeds saved from their wild harvest.

• Around fifteen thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the world became warmer and wet-ter. Landscapes were changing everywhere. Plants and animals flourished. It was a hunter-gather-ers’ paradise.

• They were not to know it, but this small act was the beginning of true farming. Genetic selection and chance mutation, combined with human intervention, would prove a potent mix—one that would ulti-mately transform weedy wild plants into varied and abundant crops.

FROM TOP: STATUE RANO RARAKU; AN OAK COFFIN BURIAL

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• Soon, they had whole fields of cereal under cultivation and had to develop new levels of social or-ganization to deal with the harvest. There was a flowering of art and ritual life—including a skull cult that involved beheading and exhuma-tion.

• The hard time lasted over a thou-sand years. Then just as suddenly the world warmed and settled—at last the weather was regular and reliable. Seizing this boon, the Natufians began planting crops in areas where rain alone would water them. The lessons they had learnt in desperation set humanity on a new course. They were the world’s first farmers.

Mental Map—Change and Causation

The film is about the way nomadic hunter-gatherers living in small groups became farmers living in large socie-ties, and the ways this changed the way people lived.

There are lots of ideas, and connec-tions between ideas, in this film.

Here are some words from the film, placed around the central idea of ‘farming’. Your task now is to draw a line between words which have a connection and write that key idea on the line.

For example you can draw a line be-tween FARMING and ENVIRONMENT, and write ‘Farming needed a certain environment’. You could then draw a line between ENVIRONMENT and CLI-MATE, and write ‘Climate influenced environment’. What you are doing is making a statement of an idea or con-nection between CLIMATE, ENVIRON-MENT and FARMING.

See what connections you can draw between other words connected with the development of earliest farming.

You can also add new words to the grid if you want to. (See chart 05)

CLIMATE

POPULATION CONTROL

PLANNING LEADERS

BELIEFS FARMING NOMADISM

TOOLS SOCIETY

SKILLS HEALTH

SECURITY

FROM TOP: AMBER COLLECTING; CHART 05

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2Understanding the story—Urban Dream

In Stories From the Stone Age, Episode 2: ‘Urban Dream’ you will see how the farmers of the Fertile Crescent start to domesticate goats and sheep, and how this influences the creation of urban settlements. This knowledge starts to spread to Europe, where it needs to be adapted to suit

very different environments and climates.

Aspect of the story


00:00 – 05:30

This introduction reminds us that not all the people of the Fertile Crescent moved directly to farming after the Younger Dryas period of climate change. Many had remained hunt-ers and still followed the herds. But they would soon also have to change dramatically.

1 The first domesticated animal was the dog. Why would dogs be valu-able to humans?

05:30 – 10:00

2 What change did the Younger Dryass have on the availability of food for hunters?

3 The goat was the first herd animal domesticated by humans. Why did humans want to domesticate it?

4 How did human domestication of the animal change it?

5 Devise a way to show this change on the Time and place page.

10:00 – 13:00

6 Herders and farmers now started to come together. ‘Each had half

the puzzle’. What does this mean?7 What have archaeologists found

that helps us to know this devel-opment was happening? Go to the How do we know? page and record what they found connected with goats, and what this tells us about what was happening at the time.

8 How did the domestication of animals help to create cities?

9 What disadvantages or problems did this create?

10 How did the development of larger settlements create a need for more social leadership and organization?

13:00 – 20:50

11 Small cities started to develop, but there were changes in the style of buildings. Go to the How do we know? page and record what archaeologists have found about the development of houses and settlements, and what they tell us about people at the time.

12 Why did the development of urban life help the spread of specializa-tion of people’s skills?

13 The way houses are built can tell us about people’s attitudes and values. Why can we say that the development of the concept of pri-vacy can be seen by the changing structure of houses?

14 How can we say that places are becoming ‘homes’ as well as ‘houses’?

20:50 – 32:30

15 One of the developments associ-ated with the origin of towns was plaster. How was plaster used?

16 Why did people like using plaster?17 The use of plaster to create stat-

ues also shows us something of the people’s spiritual beliefs. Go to the How do we know? page and describe the statues that have been found, and what they tell us about people at the time.


watch the film are:





place and not some other

place?



lives?


these things?

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18 There is a large public building that the archaeologists show in the film and four large stone pillars. Go to the How do we know? page and record what archaeologists have found and what they tell us about people at the time.

32:30

19 The development of farming and herding led to a growth of popu-lation and a need to expand, to find more land. Farmers began to move in small groups into southern Europe.

20 What did the farmer/traders take with them?

21 Why had these areas not devel-oped farming for themselves?

22 What new challenges to farming did the forest environment create?

23 By 7000 years ago, the hunter-gatherers of Europe were now being confronted by the change brought by the farmers from the Middle East. Devise a way to show this on your Time and place page.

39:00 – 43:00

24 At this time farming and urban life were having an impact on the environment. Explain why this hap-pened.

43:00 – 51:20

25 How did the different environment and climate in Europe make farm-ers change their technology?

26 Why were these things break-throughs: planting with the sea-sons; the plough?

27 Hunter-gatherers and farmers lived side-by-side for a long time in Eu-rope. Why did the hunter-gatherers eventually change their style of life and become farmers?


28 Go back to the list of key ques-tions to answer. What are your answers to them?

Telling the story

As these pioneers built their new way of life in Europe they lost touch with the Middle East. Behind them in the

Fertile Crescent the old way of life was in crisis. The land that had once sustained the world’s first farmers was worn out and ruined. Over two thousand years villagers had slowly changed the land.

By 7000 years ago a key settlement, Ain Ghazal, was abandoned and others were soon to follow. Many of the survivors were forced to become nomadic herders ranging across the exposed highlands.

The remaining hunter-gatherers aban-doned a life on the edge of starvation for the more secure harvests of settled life. In fusing, the farmers and hunter-gatherers created the culture that started our western way of life.

People across the region came together to worship. Archaeologists can see how religion became a huge public display and rituals were played out in open air sanctuaries.

The challenge came from the green hills of the Middle East. There, the hunter-gatherers had lived very well.

ABOVE: FIRST FARMERS HARVESTING

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They had abundant food and they had learnt to hunt with dogs. But when the Middle East was hit with a sudden and catastrophic climate change (and over a thousand years of drought) the hunt-ers were forced to change. To save themselves they took control of their prey. They began to manage the wild herds and breed selectively—keeping the animals alive, rather than killing them.

It was the domestication of animals, like goats and sheep, that brought farming to a new level. For the first time our ancestors had a secure food supply and could plan for the future. Herding, combined with cropping, led to urban expansion. New towns spread down the valleys. Today, ar-chaeologists are tracking the architec-tural revolution that followed. Inside the neat, square structures, they have found evidence of meticulous housekeeping—even spring-clean-ing. The first builders learnt how to

make straight corners, staircases and shaped doorways and windows—4000 years before the first pyramids.

They invented the first artificial building material. Smooth, clean and waterproof, it was instantly popular—plaster. They used it on their floors and their walls. Then they took it even further and made it part of their ritual lives. Covering the skulls of their ancestors, they preserved the images of their dead.

Twelve thousand years ago early Europeans lived a hard life in nomadic bands. For hundreds of generations they had followed the wild herds depending on them for survival. But they were about to face a new chal-lenge. It would come from a different people and a different world. They would either have to change or disap-pear—forever.

In Europe the advancing farmers

continued felling the forests. But they found their old farming methods no longer worked. It took a thousand years for them to find an answer to the bitter northern winters. And once they did, their new and uniquely European lifestyle spread with amazing speed. Within three hundred years the con-tinent was literally dotted with thou-sands of villages. The face of Europe was forever changed.

Eight thousand years ago the idea of farming spread out from the Middle East towards Europe where they faced the challenge of a new landscape and a new climate.


The film is about the way nomadic hunter-gatherers living in small groups became farmers living in large socie-ties, and the ways this changed the way people lived.

ABOVE: BULLOCKS PLOUGHING

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There are lots of ideas and connec-tions between ideas in this film.

Here are some words from the film placed around the central idea of ‘farming’. Your task now is to draw a line between words which have a connection and write that key idea on the line.

For example you can draw a line be-

tween TOWNS and DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS and write ‘Towns devel-oped when animals could be domesti-cated, because there was food on the spot’. You could then draw a line be-tween DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS and POPULATION and write ‘Available food increased population’. What you are doing is making a statement of an idea or connection between TOWNS, DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS and

POPULATION CHANGE.

See what connections you can draw between other words connected with the development of earliest towns and urban settlements.


TECHNOLOGY

RESOURCE USE ENVIRONMENT

POPULATIONCLIMATE/ SEASONS

BELIEFS TOWNS DISEASE

ARCHITECTURE PLASTER

MODIFICATION OF STOCK

DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS

SPECIALIZATION OF SKILLS

FROM TOP: FIRST FARMERS THRESHING; CHART 06

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Aspect of the story


00:00 – 02:20

The film introduces the key focus of the story of this episode of the devel-opment of Stone Age people: the huge change in life brought about by the development of metal 4000 years ago.

02:20 – 12:40

We now see the significance of the de-velopment of trade about 7000 years ago in the Jordan Valley.

1 Devise a way to mark this on your Time and place page.

2 Why does Ghassoul become a key trading place? Consider its loca-tion, its access to natural resourc-es, and its development of means of transportation of goods.

3 How is trade starting to reflect a move towards individualism, rather than community values?

4 How does trade also start to create means of record-keeping?

12:40 – 17:40

5 The narrator says that ‘Everything in the Middle East is about water’.

Understanding the story—Waves of ChangeIn Stories From the Stone Age, Episode 3: ‘Waves of Change’ you will see how people from the Middle East started to bring new materials and ideas with them to Europe, and how these would

change people’s lives.

3


watch the film are:





place and not some other

place?



lives?


these things?

How did the Ghassoulians change the environment to overcome the problem with water?

6 Look at the evidence for this changing of the environment. Go to the How do we know? page and record what the evidence is for this change and what it tells us about people at the time.

7 Why was this activity so signifi-cant in showing how society was changing?

8 How might the ‘Star of Ghassoul’ show us how this great task was possible?

9 If this theory is correct, what does it tell us about a change in religious beliefs and attitudes?

17:40 – 23:00

While this is happening, Stone Age farmers have become well-established in Europe.

10 How do the stone burial chambers show that people still had a com-munity attitude, rather than the individualistic or leader-follower attitude developing in the Middle East?

23:00 – 29:40

The film describes the discovery of

ABOVE: METAL SMELTING

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copper smelting at this time as a revo-lutionary change.

11 Why is this discovery so important in changing people’s lives?

29:40 – 34:10

In Europe we soon see the arrival of the Beaker People.

12 How does the Beaker burial show individualism, as opposed to the communal attitude of the stone monument burials?

13 The Beaker People are traders. How do their trade goods stress this change of values from sharing as a community to having private individual possessions?

34:10 – 36: 45

14 There are several key develop-ments that show this change. How does the introduction of bronze

emphazise this?15 How does the development of

smelting of bronze objects show the rise of a warrior group?

36:45 – 38:00

16 How does the introduction of rid-ing horses show it?

38:00 – 39:00

17 How does the introduction of the wheel help this attitude to devel-op?

18 Devise a way to mark the arrival of the wheel on your Time and place page.

39:00 – 41:00

19 How does the development of fine wool and dyes show this process?

41:00 – 43:30

20 How does the bronze age burial show this development?

43:30 – 50:20

21 What is the significance for indi-viduals and society of the develop-ment of iron tools and weapons?


22 Go back to the list of key questions to answer. What are your answers to them?

23 The narrator says that the society we are today can be traced back to the earliest farmers. Write one or two sentences that summarizes how the film says this happened.

Telling the story

Four thousand years ago, on a windswept sea cliff in Europe, a girl is gathering eggs from a rookery. Sud-denly, bronze clad strangers appear

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on a ridge behind her. She’s never seen a horse or a wagon with wheels before. Fearfully she watches one of the archers kneels to make an offering. He fires an arrow tipped with bronze. Later, she drops the bronze tipped ar-rowhead into the lap of the village flint knapper.

In the arid land beyond the city walls archaeologists have found evidence of early irrigation—and groves of olives. This was long-term investment farm-ing—a major step towards civilization.

In the give and take, the elite offered social organization and protection. Both safety and danger came from the armed warrior chief. It is through their graves that we have a sudden window on what life was like four thousand years ago.

In the Middle East the story of the first farmers ends with armies and the rise of the first cities; while in Europe there is evidence of boundary fences, stock-aded villages and the first recorded images of violence are depicted on rocks.

And they had discovered something else even more precious than olives—copper. The smelters cast axe-heads and ornate ritual objects. It was a prime trade item and the prime traders were the Ghassoulians. The idea of trading and how to live by it—rather than farming—moved from the Middle East to Europe.

In the now established European farming cultures, the last great stone age builders were leaving their phe-nomenal legacy: the megaliths. From ancient tombs and the handiwork of

TECHNOLOGY

RESOURCES ENVIRONMENT

LOCATION COMMUNITY

BELIEFS TRADE SOCIETY

WEAPONS IDEAS

TOOLS INDIVIDUALISM

SKILLS

Evidence Interpretation

crafts people, archaeologists are able to trace an intriguing shift from a col-lective sense of identity to the ‘rise of the individual’ as a new and mysteri-ous culture appeared across Europe.

Innovation upon innovation spread from the Middle East to Europe. The horse was now being ridden. The wheel drawn carts and wagons made the transport of heavy loads over long distances possible. For the first time, trade began to move from Europe back to the Middle East.

The Ghassoulians had placed them-selves directly on a major trade route that linked two great emerging pow-ers—the Sumerians on the Euphrates and the Egyptians on the Nile. The Ghassoulians were the providers of the mass-produced staples, like olives and salt. Their trading culture was successful and sophisticated. But the puzzle has been to discover how they managed to thrive in one of the driest places on earth.

The arrival of metal revolutionized the European economy. This period saw the emergence of an elite class and the introduction of tributes and taxes, and the ability of bronze to hold a sharp edge inspired the making of deadly war axes and slashing swords.

Our search takes us back to the Mid-dle East some six thousand years ago, to a thriving town at the edge of the Dead Sea—Teleilat Ghassoul. Here, we find an extraordinarily sophisticat-ed culture, two thousand years before the first pyramids.

The last hunter-gatherers disappear forever. The rule of stone was over.

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Then around three thousand years ago the smiths discover a new cheap effective tool, iron. It sweeps Europe. It loosed the sword and the soldier on the world.

These people, named the Beakers af-ter their enormous pottery cups, were the traders of Stone Age Europe. They knew the secret of making bronze. And with their precious metal objects they brought a new set of ideas that turned the place upside down. It included the new fermented drinks, alcohol.

This ‘Stone Age’ period of history was, indeed, a turning point for our species. By its conclusion the seeds of our world had already been sown.

Whether these people guessed it or not, this moment signalled the end of an era. How did this final revolution unfold?

The daily farming life of the community was bound by a network of exchange and obligation.


This documentary series is about the evolution from nomadic hunter-gather-ers living in small groups to farmers living in large societies, and how this changed the way that people lived.

There are lots of ideas and connec-tions between ideas in this series.

Here are some words from the film placed around the central idea of ‘farming’. Your task now is to draw a line between words which have a connection, and write that key idea on the line.

For example you can draw a line between TRADE, LOCATION, RE-SOURCES and SKILLS. You could

make a connection like: ‘TRADE was helped by LOCATION and the availa-bility of RESOURCES and the SKILLS to use those resources to create wanted products’.

See what connections you can draw between other words connected with the development of earliest towns and urban settlements.


How do we know?

Identify some evidence that archae-ologists have found, and explain what they have interpreted this evidence to show. (See chart 08)

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Background Notes

Prepared by Beyond Productions

THE NATUFIANS—Wild Harvesters become First Farmers

The Natufian culture appeared in the Jordan Valley area of the Middle East 12-13,000 years ago towards the end of the last Ice Age. They represent a crucial point in human history—the transition to our modern way of liv-ing, paving the way for settled life in villages and an existence based on farming.

The Natufians were a culmination of the ancestral ways of hunting and gathering. But they also foreshadowed elements of the first farming villages. Our story concentrates on Wadi Ham-meh in Jordan, while also drawing on evidence from other archaeological Natufian sites, including Shukbah, El-Wad and Ain Mallaha in Israel. Their culture lasted from around 12,500 to 10,500 years ago—a significant period of time on Earth for one distinct people.

They were discovered and named by Dorothy Garrod in 1932 who was a pioneer of Middle Eastern prehistory. Her excavations were the first profes-sionally-run prehistoric excavations in the Middle East.

Garrod found tools and portable artworks of a high quality that was unexpected from such deep reaches of Middle Eastern prehistory. She also found burials which were quite different to those that had preceded them and named these people, the

Natufians.

When she found bone sickles with flint blades, polished through cutting cere-als, she concluded that the Natufians were the world’s first agriculturalists.

Later archaeologists clarified that they only harvested wild plants and hunted wild animals. Gazelle was their main source of hunted protein. But they also ate a broad variety of animals, birds, reptiles, fish and shellfish.

They also established the first rudi-mentary villages and developed the tools and methods indispensable for the later appearance of farming.

One of the big debates over the Natufian period surrounds how sed-entary they were; whether they lived in one village all year, year after year, like modern farmers or if they moved around, returning to their base camps only part of the year. At this stage the jury is still out and there is no unequiv-ocal answer to this question.

What is clear, is their preoccupation with place, with the structures built in homesites. Many of these excavated huts have yielded burials beneath the floors. In what appears to be a mark-ing of place, and of hut sites, shallow graves were dug with bodies laid out carefully. It marked the beginning of a tradition that would be taken further by later farmers and advanced urban peoples in the area.

It appears Natufians dropped most of their rubbish in their houses right where they lived; among their work-places they stored sets of tools, even fragments of human bones—their

family members. They don’t seem to us like a people who have comfortably moved to full sedentary living.

So what caused this beginning of the greatest settlement and subsistence transformation in human history—the shift into farming?

Two recent research surveys in Green-land have given a startlingly accurate and new understanding of the climate at this time. Researchers now believe a bitterly cold and arid cold snap, called the Younger Dryas, occurred

and that caused the rapid return of the northern Eurasian ice before they finally retracted.

This had a dramatic effect on the rest of the world. The Younger Dryas hit in the middle of the Natufian period and most Natufian sites seem to be aban-doned. It lasted for nearly 1500 years and flipped back almost as suddenly to near today’s climate conditions.

Immediately after good environmen-tal conditions returned, at the end of the Younger Dryas, those Natufian communities who had survived led to a dramatic new development—the sudden appearance of bigger villages, built by communities who were ex-perimenting with cultivation on a much larger scale.

From around 10,000 years ago, in various regions of the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East, a strong momen-tum towards permanent settlement and agriculture occurred—from the Euphrates River Valley in northern Syria and southern Turkey, to the

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Jordan Valley in the south as far south as the Dead Sea. It’s now we see a transitional period from early agricul-ture when wild cereals were cultivated.

These people lived in the first villages, such as the dramatic settlement of Jerf al-Ahmar on the Euphrates with its spectacular communal buildings. Other excavated sites include the well-known Jericho, Netiv Hagdud in Israel, Tel Mureybet in Syria.

This once-only event in human history has been called the Neolithic or (late) Stone Age Revolution and implies the strong influence that climate had on the beginning of farming.

At the time, the houses were often small round, and very poky and cramped. But they all had a central hearth—and can be called proper houses.

Many had built-in storage bins (this is crucial evidence of storage). Grinding equipment was less elaborate, as it was apparently needed more often, so there was no time for decorative additions.

Now we see a development in the burial practice. Skulls began to be removed, often found elsewhere in the house site, sometimes re-interred in collections, perhaps signifying an ancestral log or lineage to the place or territory.

Jerf al-Ahmar in Syria is a stunning new site, recently excavated by a French team headed by Danielle Stordeur. Stordeur found an elaborate sequence of the gradual development of rectilinear from circular houses. Dated from 10,000 - 9400 years ago

we see the shift from round houses to rectangular houses. But later the extraordinary community buildings or meeting houses also occur.

Here archaeologists found carved stone benches and images signify-ing the taming of wild nature: snakes, wild cattle horns and stone-sculpted vultures swirl as if in some dark tale with beheaded humans, witnesses to ancient rites held by our ancestors who were creating a new world under their control.

Animal Domestication

Between 8000 and 9000 years ago, farming spread extensively across the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East—from the south of Jordan all the way to the lower Zagros in modern Iran.

Many large, crowded villages of well-built rectangular houses emerged. These villages were based on econo-mies dependant upon cereal agricul-ture and animal herding.

There is evidence for widespread

contacts between villages, with the beginnings of trade, and even rudi-mentary accountancy. New religious beliefs become widely established, represented through an emphasis on human figures in their artwork.

Clearer pictures of ancestral lineage and linkage to place appear, empha-sizing the decorated heads of ances-tors, and imposing shrines.

For the first time, well-made rectilinear mudbrick houses appear, not un-

like traditional village architecture we might recognize in parts of the Middle East today. The floors were beauti-fully plastered, made up carefully with layers of reeds, with fitted basins, and kept clean of rubbish, and often over-laid with well-woven mats.

By this period, a sophisticated style of architecture, village life and crafts had developed. The quality of arts and crafts are shown in an extraordinary cache of artefacts found in 1983, stuffed in the small cave of Nahal He-mar, preserved in the arid conditions below sea level by the Dead Sea. Here archaeologists found basketry frag-ments and cordage boxes, some lined with bitumen from the Dead Sea.

So it was that a new way of life found-ed on agriculture emerged—compris-ing fully domesticated plants, wheat, barley, legumes. Some way during this period comes the domestication of goats, then sheep and slightly later cattle and pigs.

Animal domestication seems to come southward from the hilly distribution of goats, then sheep; perhaps from the foothills of Turkey and Iraq. But the jury is still out on this.

Similarly the new rectilinear style of architecture seems to arise first in northern Levant, such as at Jerf, as the ideas are believed to have spread south.

But it appears there was a down side to the rapid spread of farming. People were living in cramped, crowded vil-lages, communicable diseases prob-ably spread rapidly amongst the large settled populations. There would also have been the problem of refuse dis-posal which may have compounded some these issues. Sometimes signs of such problems are present in the human skeletons excavated, such as signs of tuberculosis and poor nutri-tion.

Settled village life involved staying in one spot for hundreds or even thou-sands of years. While this new way of life provided security, it also came at a cost. Previously hunter-gatherers were

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constantly on the move and their resi-dential territories were able to recover over time. Once farming took hold the recovery period was no longer pos-sible. Settled life produced substantial changes to the landscape.

One of the earliest and most notable examples of this problem is at Ain Ghazal in Jordan. Here the scenario of environmental degradation can be seen spanning over 2000 years.

Settlement began around 9200 years ago and grew rapidly to a one to two hectare settlement—Ain Ghazal. Expansion continued unabated and within a few hundred years later it had reached twelve to thirteen hectares.

Archeologist Gary Rollefson and his team found that the earliest period has large, single-roomed structures up to five by five metres in area, with plas-tered floors and large posts, and fifty to sixty centimetre posts as roof sup-ports. But these posts had decreased to fifteen to twenty centimetres by 8,500 years ago.

Room sizes shrink to about two by two metres. The use of timber for building is scaled down and replaced by interior stone wall segments, culminating in convoluted ‘corridor buildings’.

Huge numbers of trees were felled in order to meet the demand for posts. In the later period of occupation the practice was discontinued. Meanwhile the forests were being heavily ex-ploited to fuel kilns that produced lime plaster. Houses were plastered and re-plastered. Studies show that each house-plastering required an average of thirteen tons of wood for fuel. Under such heavy demands, it appears that the area became logged out.

This decrease coincides with a notice-able increase in the numbers of goats and sheep. Unprecedented grazing pressure by goats short-circuited the normal regeneration process.

Before the plaster gave out, Ain Ghazal produced the most startling evidence of the ancestor cult—almost life-size sculptures.

One other important development happened in this period—items of trade begin to appear. Turkish obsidian arrived throughout the Fertile Cres-cent. This is one of the first clear signs of networking between settlements and is seen as the precursor to the Copper (Chalcolithic) trading routes that crossed the Middle East.

The Spread of Farming into Europe

For a long time there’s been contro-versy over the degree of influence the Middle East had on European farming practice. The question has generally been asked: was there an indigenous European development? Most experts agree that many of the early principles and domesticated plants and animals of the ‘farming package’ arrived in Europe from the Middle East.

The nature of the ‘farming package’ transmission is still in question—whether it was due to the spread of actual people, invasions or migrations, or just the exchange of the basic ele-ments—grains and animals.

Archaeologists now know farming came to Cyprus around 9000 years ago. Farmers actually stocked the is-land on arrival, not only with domestic goats and cultivated emmer (wheat), but also brought wild fallow deer from the mainland .

Being a similar Mediterranean habitat, farming could spread around the base of Mediterranean by sea. The ideas also spread overland through Turkey to Greece.

Glaciations of Europe resulted in rich, fertile ‘loess’ soil deposits on the northern continental lowlands, spread-ing from the Czech Republic through Germany and Russia to France. This was the setting for a dramatic expan-sion of farming into Europe.

Here the LBK culture ( in archaeologi-cal circles known more correctly as Linearbandkeramik or Linear pottery culture) appears quite suddenly and the period is named after the charac-teristic pottery found in these settle-

ments. They were remarkably stere-otyped culturally and it seems there was no real limit to their expansion, which occurred rapidly over most of the plains area between 6500 - 6200 years ago.

Pollen profiles show that in some areas, LBK expansion resulted in mas-sive clearance of forests.

Conditions are even colder here than in the Balkans so farming techniques had to be altered. Sheep and goats almost disappear and cattle become the dominant farm animal.

THE EXPANSION OF METALLURGY

Between 6500 and 5500 years ago more complex societies had also been developing in the Middle East. This period is known as the Copper Stone Age or the Chalcolithic. This period led to the rise of the state in Egypt.

Though they were much less complex and much smaller in size than the Egyptian or Sumerian societies, they had a significant part to play in the rise of later Bronze and Iron Age civiliza-tions.

One such society is called the Ghas-soulian (rassoolian) culture. Though these people were illiterate, the remains from their sites show increase in the scale of town life, the development of irrigation and orchards, a token-control-led trade economy, a greater elaboration in ritual, including in the architecture and the objects used ritually.

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This dramatic broadening of the ag-ricultural base was probably stimu-lated by a demand from Egypt for the Ghassoulians’ consumer goods. There was also a huge natural abundance of copper from mines in south Jordan and this advanced the knowledge of metalurgy—the most sophisticated in the entire Middle East at this period.

The Ghassoulian culture is named after the site of Teleilat Ghassoul in the southern Jordan Valley, and stretches down to the Negev desert. It’s a fea-tureless flat site, right near the Dead Sea and large—about thirty hectares. The site has been dug by many people throughout the twentieth century. But the first to really understand the site’s significance was J.B Hennessy in the 1960s and 1970s.

Most dramatic of all was the find of wall-paintings at Ghassoul, apparently portraying elaborate ritual ceremonies. In a star painting found in 1931, there is not as much notice taken of partial masked figure. Later, Hennessy found another extraordinary fresco, of cos-tumed figures wearing horned masks,

one carrying a hooked sceptre over the shoulder.

Further discoveries have fleshed out a more rounded picture of Ghassoulian ritual. The Ein Gedi sanctuary over-looks the Dead Sea from a 500m high bluff. It’s a dramatic setting with a long history of use. The Ghassoulians built a substantial temple complex, with open air courtyards and gates set at each point of the compass. There are large well-built rooms with evidence of ritual practice that appears to be cen-tred on the veneration of water—a pre-occupation easy to understand in the arid conditions of the Jordan valley.

Just a little further south a cave yielded a spectacular haul of ritual objects. The Mishmar cache consisted of a heap of clearly ritual items; what was also extraordinary was the early date for lost-wax casting—as early as any known example—some 6200 years ago.

During this period there was further concentration on the uses provided by animals while they were kept alive

rather than dead; for instance, milk, wool, transport, traction and plough-ing; and for plants there was orchard-ing, requiring long term capital invest-ments before a yield is gained. It’s a surprisingly contemporary concept, and all of this required the invention of irrigation, traces of which are argued to be in evidence at Teleilat Ghassoul.

This study guide was produced by ATOM. For more information about ATOM study guides, The Speakers’ Bureau or Screen Hub (the daily online film and television newsletter) visit our web site: www.metromagazine.com.au or email: [email protected]

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