Early cultures

History of Architecture
Module – 1
Early Cultures
Architecture as part of culture
Understanding the early cultures

Dr. Binumol Tom, Professor, Department of Architecture,
College of Engineering, Trivandrum

PREHISTORIC ERA
The Prehistoric Era is broken down into three
sub eras.
• The first is the Paleolithic (old stone age)
• The second is the Mesolithic (middle stone
age) and
• The last is the Neolithic (new stone age).
• Chalcolithic Age
• Bronze Age

• Structures of the pre historic
period, although interesting for
archaeological reasons, have
little or no architectural value.

The remains may be classified
under :

i. Monoliths, or single upright
stones, also known as menhirs,
a well-known example 63 feet
high, 14 feet in diameter, and
weighing 260 tons, being at
Carnac, Brittany. Another
example is at Locmariaker, also
in Brittany (No. 2 B).

Menhir - Locmariaquer in Brittany in north-western France.

ii. Dolmens (Daul, a
table, and maen, a stone),
consisting of one large
flat stone supported by
upright stones.
A dolmen—also known
as a portal tomb, portal
grave, dolmain
Examples are to be
found near Maidstone
and other places in
England, also in Ireland,
Northern France, the
Channel Islands, Italy
(No. 2 F) and India.

iii. Cromlechs, or circles
of stone, as at
Stonehenge (No. 2 G),
Avebury (Wilts), and
elsewhere, consisting of a
series of upright stones
arranged in a circle and
supporting horizontal
slabs.
used to describe
prehistoric megalithic
structures, where crom
means "bent" and llech
means "flagstone".

• iv. Tumuli, or burial mounds -
A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a
mound of earth and stones
raised over a grave or graves.
Tumuli are also known as
barrows, burial mounds,
Hügelgrab or kurgans, and can
be found throughout much of
the world. A tumulus
composed largely or entirely
of stones is usually referred to
as a cairn. A long barrow is a
long tumulus, usually for
numbers of burials.
• were probably prototypes of the
Pyramids of Egypt (No. 4) and
the beehive huts found in Wales,
Cornwall, Ireland (No. 2 D, E)
and elsewhere. That at New
Grange (Ireland) resembles
somewhat the Treasury of
Atreus at Mycenae (No. 15).

v. Lake Dwellings,
as discovered in the
lakes of
Switzerland, Italy
and Ireland
Lake Dwellings, or Crannoges, Lake Ardakillin,
consisted of Roscommon.

wooden huts
supported on piles,
and were so placed
for protection
against hostile
attacks of all kinds.
Ancient Swiss Lake Dwellings.

• The earliest dwellings were the humble nomadic multi-chambered
caves and rock shelters and fragile tent-like structures of our Western
and Southern European Stone Age ancestors.

• In the Paleolithic Age Paleolithic age
the people were 350,000 - 12000
nomadic.
• They lived in caves and
made art on the walls.
• Didn't build permanent
dwellings. Made
temporary homes in
caves or tents made
from branches and
animal skins.
• Had to move when the
animals did.

Paleolithic age
• Made tools.
• Used fire.
• Language to pass on
information.
• Fire provided warmth,
cooking, light, smoke to
preserve food and made
animal skins more
waterproof; torches to
drive animals off cliffs

Neanderthal
• Widespread
Paleolithic People.
(100,000 -40,000
Years Ago)
• Had rituals for a
successful hunt.
• Buried dead. Left
items in the graves
showing they
believed in an
afterlife.

Paleolithic
Architecture
The houses and dwellings of the
Palaeolithic period are generally
classified as:
•Huts (Terra Amata, Nice) are the
earliest known structures. In this Artists reconstruction of hut at Terra Amata, Spain. Controversy exists over
case they were built by nomadic dating of site of fossil post holes, and whether site is H. erectus (300,000
BC) or H. sapiens (40,000 BC)
hunters who returned to the same Successful hunter of large
sandy beaches, each spring. The grazing animals. It may have
been this skill which allowed
construction consists of walls Erectus to follow the herds out
made of a palisade of timber of the tropics. This species
stakes, arranged in an oval plan, continued on for almost a
million years, moved beyond
with a bracing ring of stoners on Africa; their remains are found
the outside. The interior had a from Spain to Indonesia to
Peking. Later H erectus lived
central hearth and the floor was in dwellings, used fire,
made of a beaten layer of ash and possibly cared for old and
crippled relative. What
organic material. There is no Homo Erectus (1.2 mya - 200,000 survival or evolutionary
evidence that suggests the shape BC). advantage could possibly
explain taking care of the halt
of the roof. and the lame?

Paleolithic Architecture
•Lean-to (Le Lazaret,
Nice) was erected
against one wall of
a cave. The
assembly probably
consisted of a
timber frame with
post supports and a
skin covering,
pinned to the
ground by a circle
of stones.

Paleolithic Architecture
• Te n t s - Tepee-like
tents were a common
feature of glacial
Europe
(Czechoslovakia,
Germany and France).
The structure consisted
of a timber framework
covered with animal
(mammoth?) skins.
The skirts were
invariably weighed
down with stones and
the interior paved

Ice Age 20,000 yr ago…… ended by c 8000
• During the cold winter months and during the Ice Age, more
substantial shelter was necessary because the temperatures
averaged 13 º F.
• Caves and cliff overhangs were used in mountainous areas
and many of those still in existence have provided
Archaeologists with much information about the Stone Age
cultures.
• On plains and steppes, shelters were constructed from bones,
stones, trees, and animal skins.
• As the glaciers diminished and the Stone Age climate warmed,
the large animals they hunted disappeared, and people became
more nomadic in search of wildlife to hunt. Various cultures
intermingled and exchanged knowledge.
• Shelters began to be improved as groups learned from each
other.

First came Mammoth and then came
Architecture

• Humans began building
clusters of homes 15,000
years ago, during the Ice
Age.
• The reconstruction from
the Field Museum in
Chicago shows what the
first architecture of the
Ukraine was like.
• The struts were made of
mammoth bones and tusks.
The covering was made of
mammoth hide.

How Early Humans Avoided Constant
Wandering:

• 1. Farm and herd. Gather
seeds from wild grasses and
cultivate crops. Tamed and
domesticated animals - now
there was a dependable food
source.
• Do all of this by a river.
Why along rivers? Fresh
water for people, animals
and crops, and it made trade
easier because it is easier to
travel on water. Domesticated Sheep Herded in the Alps

• Domesticated Sheep
Herded in the Alps

• 2. Now, you can build a house. Others build houses
close by, so they can be by the food source.
• 3. Social structure. Men hunt; women and children
work the farm.
• 4. Artisans. Others, who don't want to farm, make
things. Invented baked clay pottery, potter's wheel,
looms for weaving, etc.
• 5. Barter system. How the farmers get the goods
from the artisans and the artisans get food.
• What Were Their Houses Like?
Rectangular, flat roofs, only entrance was through
the top. For ease, the houses were built adjoining
each other

Who Did They Worship and How?

Goddess of
Agriculture.
Decorated building
to her. Buried dead
with food, showing
a belief in the
afterlife.

Mesolithic c. 8000 to 5000
• The Mesolithic (mesos=middle and
lithos=stone or the 'Middle Stone Age') is a
period in the development of human
technology between the Paleolithic and
Neolithic periods. It began at the end of the
Pleistocene epoch (coinciding with the last
Ice Age) around 10,000 years ago and
ended with the introduction of farming.

Neolithic Period- c 5000 - 3000
• The Neolithic (or "New" Stone Age) was a period
between the introduction of farming and the
introduction of metal tools. The dates vary per
region depending on the beginning of the
development or arrival of farming and metal
technology.

• In the Neolithic Age people lived in towns, they
had farms and kept domesticated
animals. Below are some pictures of what we
think they might have lived in.

Neolithic construction
• The dwellings of the Neolithic period were generally
small timber-framed, uni-cellular, single-family houses, or
large longhouses for extended and multiple families. Dry-
stone multi-cellular houses were also built.

• Between 4500 – 1500BC, there originated a widespread
practice of burial in Megalithic collective tombs,
particularly in Western Europe, as far as Scandinavia and
the Mediterranean.
• These are of two types, passage and gallery graves. They
differed from region to another in their purpose, plans,
and methods of construction.

Neolithic construction
• Temples from this
period (Ggantija and
Hal Tarxien, Malta)
represent some of the
earliest
• They were formally
planned with trilithion
entrance passages. The
structure consisted of
megalithic stone-faced
earthen walls.

• All over the Maltese islands, many
mysterious temples were built
thousands of years ago.

The plans of the Maltese Neolithic
temples are based on a forecourt in
front of a concave facade, a trilithon
doorway leading to a central paved
corridor from which semicircular rooms
open on both sides.

Made using huge stone blocks in a
period when no metal tools existed, the
temples surprisingly survived until
today when their gigantic structures can
be still visited in Ggantija, Hagar Qim,
Mnajdra, Tarxien and the underground
Hypogeum at Hal Saflieni.

Built in the honor of the Mother-
Goddess of fertility, the temples seem
to be the result of a superhuman effort.

• Paradoxically, Neolithic Architecture
served (as most architecture would
thorough history) to define emotional
and spiritual needs, the realm of
symbolism, ritual and religion.
• The most extraordinary thing is how
it rose above the utilitarian level and
how readily human imagination and
effort were channelled into
monumental architecture, when day-
to-day survival was so arduous and
uncertain.
• Neolithic man imagined the world in
terms of his own body, the processes
of birth, growth, fruition, death and
rebirth.
• The world was governed by
supernatural causes, inaccessible and
inappeasable through ordinary means,
and his attempts to master them were
based on the
same fantasy and magical ritual,
where monumental architecture
reigned supreme.

• The turning point is the
Neolithic Period (New Stone
Age, starting 9000 BC). The
Paleolithic (Early Stone Age)
man had been a migratory
hunter, living in small groups.
But as he learned to farm,
domesticate animals (as well
as hunt them), and weave
cloth, village communities
that marked the beginning of
civilisation, flourished.
• Bycirca 6000 BC, sufficient
population pressures,
territorial ambitions and
technological progress
achieved the dubious advance Neolithic Burial place
in full-scale interurban
warfare.

Apollo II Cave-Africa,
• Africa's oldest rock paintings
were found in southern
Namibia in 1969 and carbon
dated to 27, 000 years of age
and that it is estimated that
there are over 10 million
individual painted and
engraved images in Africa
Location of Apollo 11 Cave - Namibia

It is said that the rock
paintings in the cave were
discovered in 1969 at a time
when the Apollo 11 shuttle
mission was launched, hence
the name.

Apollo 11 excavation site

• The seven slabs of rock with
traces of animal figures that
were found in the Apollo 11
Cave in the Huns Mountains
of southwestern Namibia
have been dated with unusual
precision for ancient rock art.
• Originally brought to the site
from elsewhere, the stones
were painted in charcoal,
ocher, and white.
The stones, engraved with
geometric line designs and Painted slabs in the cave
representations of animals,
have been dated to circa 8200
B.C. and are among the
earliest recorded African
stone engravings.

Wadi Kubbaniya-Egypt,
• Recognized only from tools
found scattered over an
ancient surface, sometimes
with hearths nearby.
• A cluster of Late Paleolithic
camps was located in two
different topographic zones:
on the tops of dunes and the
floor of the wadi (streambed)
where it enters the valley.
• Although no signs of houses
were found, diverse and
sophisticated stone
implements for hunting,
fishing, and collecting and
processing plants were
discovered around hearths.

Wadi Kubbaniya-Egypt,
• Most tools were bladelets
made from a local stone
called chert that is widely
used in tool fabrication.
• The bones of wild cattle,
hartebeest, many types of
fish and birds, as well as
the occasional
hippopotamus have been
identified in the
occupation layers.
• Charred remains of plants
that the inhabitants
consumed, especially
tubers, have also been
found.

• Although no signs of houses were
found, diverse and sophisticated
stone implements for hunting,
fishing, and collecting and processing
plants were discovered around
hearths.
• The habitation sites in Wadi
Kubbaniya are the highlights of the
Late Palaeolithic period.
• Kubbaniya was an ideal place for
habitation, as the Nile flowed 15 m
higher than today and a sanddune Small stones with great significance:
blocked the mouth of the wadi, Grinding stone was procured at Gharb
Aswan since the Late Palaeolithic period
implying that a seasonal lake formed
behind. This gave resourses necessary
to survive in the hyperarid climate.

• Excavated by the ―Combined
Prehistoric Expedition‖ 30-40
years ago, the most numerous
sites are a little less than 20.000
years old.
• They are famous as bearing
evidence of the earliest form of
―agriculture‖, in the form of
systematic collection and storing
of wild plants.
• For the processing of such plants
(especially tubers), large amounts
of grinding stones were needed –
made from locally available
silicified sandstone.

Pachmari Hills-India
• the Satpura Range - Madhya Pradesh
• The sandstone sequence is of the
upper Gondwanaland formation.
• The shelters are found all over the
hills and the surrounding forests, in
the foothills and riverbanks.
• Many of the sandstone rock shelters
across this area have been decorated
along the ceilings and walls with
paintings depicting a wide range of
subjects.
• Many shelters are covered with
paintings made over centuries by
early inhabitants depicting a wide
range of subjects expressed by them
in a variety of styles and left as great
heritage for us to understand them
and appreciate their unique
contribution.
• The tradition of rock painting
extends as far back as the Mesolithic
(ca. 9000–3000 B.C.) into the early
medieval historic period.

• By popular belief the name
―Pachmarhi‖ is a derivation
of ―Pach-marhi‖ or a
complex of five caves of the
Pandava brothers, who are
supposed to have spent a
considerable portion of their
lifetime of exile incognito in Stag hunting

this area.

Hunting Wild Buffalo

Monte Verde -South America
• After long, often bitter debate, archeologists have finally come to a
consensus that humans reached southern Chile 12,500 years ago.
• The date is more than 1,000 years before the previous benchmark for
human habitation in the Americas, 11,200-year-old stone spear points first
discovered in the 1930s near Clovis, N.America.
• The Chilean site, known as Monte Verde, is on the sandy banks of a creek
in wooded hills near the Pacific Ocean.
• the bone and stone tools and other materials found there definitely mark
the presence of a hunting-and-gathering people.
• Even moving back the date by as little as 1,300 years, archeologists said,
would have profound implications on theories about when people first
reached America, presumably from northeastern Asia by way of the Bering
Strait, and how they migrated south more than 10,000 miles to occupy the
length and breadth of two continents.
• It could mean that early people, ancestors of the Indians, first arrived in
their new world at least 20,000 years before Columbus.

Monte Verde -South America
• "a convincing case" that the remains of huts, fireplaces and tools showed
human occupation by a pre-Clovis culture.
• Monte Verde, on the banks of Chinchihaupi Creek, is in the hills near the
town of Puerto Montt, 500 miles south of Santiago.
• found the remains of the ancient camp, even wood and other perishables
that archeologists rarely find, remarkably well preserved by the water-
saturated peat bog that covered the site, isolating the material from oxygen
and thus decay.
• They lived in shelters covered in animal hides.
• They gathered berries in the spring, chestnuts in the fall and also ate
potatoes, mushrooms and marsh grasses.
• They hunted small game and also ancestors of the llama and sometimes
went down to the Pacific, 30 miles away, for shellfish.
• They were hunters and gatherers living far from the presumed home of
their remote ancestors, in northeastern Asia.

• The evidence to
support this picture is
extensive. Excavations
turned up wooden
planks from some of
the 12 huts that once
stood in the camp, and
logs with attached
pieces of hide that
probably insulated
these shelters. Pieces of
wooden poles and
stakes were still tied
with cords made of
local grasses, a telling
sign that ingenious
humans had been there.
"That's something
nature doesn't do,"
Barker said. "Tie
overhand knots."

Clovis Culture-North America
• Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the
earliest well-established human culture in the North
American continent.
• Clovis were the first big game hunters of the
Paleoindian tradition, although they were probably not
the first people in the American continents
• Clovis archaeological sites are dated between 11,000-
10,800 RCYBP (which converts to circa 12,500-12,900
calendar years before the present) and they are found
pretty much throughout North America. The point and
culture are named after the town in New Mexico near
where it was first identified

Clovis Culture-North America
• Clovis Life Styles
• big game hunters of megafauna, now extinct forms of
large bodied animals like mammoth, bison, horse and
camel, hunted using a highly mobile hunting strategy.
• Environmental conditions at the time were dry, and it
might be speculated that the Americans took up big game
hunting (from the mixed hunter-gatherer-fisher strategy
of pre-clovis) as an adaptation to drought. But, for
whatever reason the people started hunting elephants and
horses and bison, the big-game hunting strategy only
lasted as long as there were big game to hunt.

Clovis Culture-The End
• The end of the big game hunting strategy used by Clovis appears to have
occurred very abruptly, sometime about 9,800 to 10,800 RCYBP. The reasons
for the end of big game hunting is, of course, the end of big game: most of
the megafauna disappeared about the same time.
• Scholars are divided about why the big fauna disappeared, although currently
they are leaning towards a natural disaster combined with climate change that
killed off all the large animals. It's possible that the extinction was helped along
by over-kills. Overkills are known from buffalo jumps at the Murray Springs
and Head-Smashed-In sites, among others. A buffalo jump is when a herd of
buffaloes are purposefully stampeded off a cliff; the hunters then butcher a few
of the animals and leave the rest, usually with quite a bit of waste. But, there
aren't that many buffalo jumps and no elephant jumps, so, that kind of
evidence is not strongly compelling.
• One recent discussion of the natural disaster theory concerns the identification
of a black mat marking the end of Clovis sites. This theory hypothesizes that
an asteroid landed on the glacier that was covering Canada at the time and
exploded causing fires to erupt all over the dry North American continent. An
organic "black mat" is in evidence at many Clovis sites, which is interpreted by
some scholars as ominous evidence of the disaster. Above the black mat are no
more "clovis" sites.

Jomon culture-Japan 11,000 to 500 BC
The Jomon Culture is said to
be one of the most CHRONOLOGIES OF THE JOMON PERIOD
POTTERY
AFFLUENT FORAGER GENERALIZED JOMON
PHASES
Southwestern
cultures to ever exist. CHRONOLOGY
Kanto, Middle
Jomon
The "Jomon Culture" is Incipient 11,000-7500 Goryogadai I-
Jomon B.C. II
generally distinguished from Earliest 7500-4000
Katsuzaka I-II
its Palaeolithic predecessor by Jomon B.C.
4000-3000
Early Jomon Katsuzaka III
the first appearance of Middle
B.C.
3000-2000
Kasori E Ia-Ib
pottery in the sites. Jomon B.C.
2000-1000
But in fact the Late Jomon
B.C.
Kasori E II

Latest Jomon 1000-500 B.C. Kasori E III-IV
TRANSITION from the * All dates are based on uncalibrated radiocarbon age measurements.

Palaeolithic culture to the
Jomon culture is very gradual
and the "boundary" very
fuzzy.

• The Jomon is a pottery-using culture, a characteristic often associated with
early farming cultures.
• But throughout the approximately 10,000 years of its development, from
around 11,000 B.C. to around 500 B.C., its SUBSISTENCE STRATEGY
focused on hunting, fishing and gathering, including, in favorable regions,
intensive shellfishing.
• The degree of Jomon dependence on plants, land animals and fish varied
greatly with time and space.
• Hunting was primarily with the bow and arrow; fishing included the use of
hooks and lines, nets and traps, and spears; and plant use included digging
sticks for root plants, and grinders and querns for the many kinds of nuts that
were utilized.
• The Jomon people everywhere in Japan exploited an extremely wide range of
land animals, fish, plants, molluscs and birds.
• A highly generalized listing of the primary foods of the Jomon would give
deer and boar, sea bream and sea perch, chestnuts, walnuts and acorns, and
clams and oysters. Regionally, tuna and sea mammals were significant.
• But the Jomon people used almost all available food plants and animals to
some degree, taking a sustainable number of those things they preferred and
using the rest to fill out their diet. Their diet was particularly rich in eastern
Japan.

Jomon culture-Japan
• Jomon VILLAGES are often said to be
laid out with the conical thatched
dwellings in a circular or horseshoe-
shaped pattern, with an open plaza
in the center.
• These settlements are thought to
have had 5-10 or more dwellings in
use at any one time.
• Such villages did exist in some
regions and at some times, but they
are not representative of the typical
Jomon settlement site.
• The typical site contained only a few
dwellings with no apparent pattern
to their distribution.
• Some settlements had only one
dwelling. The recently famous
Sannai Maruyama site in Aomori is Circular huts - Jomon-era pit
unique and not one that can be dwellings at Kabayama
generalized to the whole of the
Jomon culture.

Jomon culture-Japan

• After a hole in the
ground is dug out,
wooden pillars are
placed in the pit as
supports and a thatched
roof is bundled on top.
Kabayama and the
Sannai Maruyama sites
are excellent examples
of preserved Jomon
communities. Reconstructed house Jomon pit house at Sannai Maruyama Site

Jomon culture-Japan

Fire pit inside a Jomon-era pit dwelling at Kabayama

Model of structure of Jomon pit houses

• The typical Jomon
house was pit house
that had a main pillar,
whose hole was dug
the widest and deepest
into the ground, that
was surrounded by
other wooden upright
supporting posts.
• Earlier houses tended
to be conical or have
floors that were
circular.

Earlier Pit houses
(reconstructed)

This one has a smoking ditch
beside the entrance.
(Reconstructed pit house, Kushiro
Marsh, Hokkaido)

(Reconstructed pit house, Tokyo Maibun Archaeological Center, Kawasaki City,
Kanagawa)
The roofs, supported by five or six posts and a central pillar, were thatched with
kaya (miscanthus) grass that helped drain off rainwater into the surrounding
ditches.

Later pit houses became square with
rounded off corners (Reconstructed
pit house, Kushiro Marsh, Hokkaido)
The earthen floors tamped hard, were
sometimes sunk half a metre into the
ground, or sometimes covered in
flagstone.

Indoor fireplaces were common as were
storage pits and smoking ditches.

Apart from
the common pit
dwelling houses,
some settlements
had
raised buildings
that were
probably storage
houses or
warehouses.
Hundreds of
these raised
storage houses
and more than
800 pit houses
were found at the
site of the Sannai
Maruyama
village.

• The oldest piece of wood used in Jomon construction is
reported to have been found in the Yokoo site in Oita
prefecture is dated to 10,000 years ago.
• The 3.8 meter-long piece of wood (had six circular joint
holes in it about 3 centimeters in diameter and) is thought
to be a roof beam from a house built on stilts.
• Several other pieces of Jomon construction timber from
the Oyabe site in Toyama prefecture dated to 4,500
years ago, revealed that the Jomon people were already
using an advanced construction technique called watariago-
shiguchi in Japanese.
• The technique that joined building timbers together with
a mortise and tennon joint into the form of a wooden
cross, was used in the 7th century structure of the
Horyuji Temple which is oldest surviving wooden
building in the world.

• Woodworking was an important craft or skill for the
Jomon people, used for making dugout canoes,
wooden vessels and especially for building.
• The Jomon people made wooden frames for the
walls of storage pits and for the posts of their
buildings.
• They had learnt to use and work with many kinds
of trees including chestnut, Japanese cedar tree
(Cryptomeria japonica), mukunoki (Aphananthe aspera),
inugaya (Cephalotaxus harringtonia), Japanese nutmeg
(Torreya nucifera or kaya), camphor (Cinamonium
camphora or kusunoki).

• Two famous types Stone circles
of Late Jomon
stone circles are
seen:
• The first type is the
―sundial‖ stone
circle. It consists of
one large upright
stone in the center
of a small stone
cluster that had long
stones placed in a
radiating pattern.

Stone circles near Lake Saroma, Hokkaido

The sites were burial
marker sites or
cemeteries since burial
pits or graves have been
excavated under some of
the stone circles or near
them.
Success rites for hunting

These artifacts make
scientists think magical
rites or ceremonies were
conducted at stone
circles to improve the
Jomon community’s
chances of success in
hunting, fishing or
harvests.

Many such stone circles
are located in places
where no pit dwellings
have been found. That
fact suggests to experts
that the Jomon people
gathered at the stone
circles only for ritual
gatherings at an
appointed time.
Top: Achiya stone circle site, Niigata Prefecture; Below: Ritual

Eynan and Ain Mallaha- Africa (10,000–8200 B.C. )

• After the last Ice Age, as the climate
became warmer and rainfall more
abundant, the nomadic population of
the eastern Mediterranean began to
establish the first permanent
settlements.
• The site of Eynan/Ain Mallaha,
situated between the hills of Galilee
and Lake Hula in the Levant, was
inhabited from 10,000 to 8200 B.C.,
during the Natufian period.
• Eynan (in Hebrew)/Ain Mallaha (in
Arabic) is one of hundreds of
Natufian settlements known from the
eastern Mediterranean, where remains
of a rich and dynamic artistic tradition
have been discovered.

• Jericho, well known for its defensive walls described
in biblical accounts, is an important Natufian site
that was discovered at about the same time as
Eynan/Ain Mallaha.
• The Natufians were the first people of the eastern
Mediterranean area to establish permanent villages.
• Prior to the Natufians, bands of people had moved
seasonally, to follow animals for hunting and to
gather available plants.
• The Natufians, while still hunters and foragers,
settled in villages year-round, relying on the natural
resources of their immediate area. These resources
included gazelle, wild cereals, and marine life.

• The latter, abundant in the region, was used for food as well as
for making tools, art, and body ornamentation. Shells
collected from the Mediterranean and the Red Sea were
commonly used for jewelry and headdresses, typical status
markers.
The Natufians produced artistically decorated utilitarian
objects such as pottery and ostrich-egg vessels. These objects
have been found in scores of Natufian sites. Their decoration
of geometric motifs almost surely served as a form of visual
communication, perhaps to demonstrate ownership of the
objects by an individual or to indicate affiliation with a
particular group or geographic area.

• Natufians –
first farmers

Early cultures

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

Tendances

Tendances (20)

En vedette

En vedette (20)

Similaire à Early cultures

Similaire à Early cultures (20)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Early cultures