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126-418: "Aceramic" is used to describe a culture at any time prior to its development of pottery as well as cultures that lack pottery altogether. A preceramic period is traditionally regarded as occurring in the early stage of the Neolithic period of a culture, but recent findings in Japan and China have pushed the origin of ceramic technology there well back into the Paleolithic era. In Western Asian archaeology it

252-581: A Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BC, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon domesticated animals, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in the Southern Levant, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Egypt . Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down

378-470: A European Power was a probable event. The threat that caused Gordon, diplomat and military officer, to publish the article was resumption of work on a railway from Russia to the Persian Gulf. Gordon, a published author, had not used the term previously, but he was to use it from then on. A second strategic personality from American diplomatic and military circles, Alfred Thayer Mahan , concerned about

504-536: A culture contemporaneous with the Cishan and Xinglongwa cultures of about 6000–5000 BC, Neolithic cultures east of the Taihang Mountains , filling in an archaeological gap between the two Northern Chinese cultures. The total excavated area is more than 1,200 square yards (1,000 m ; 0.10 ha), and the collection of Neolithic findings at the site encompasses two phases. Between 3000 and 1900 BC,

630-515: A division into five periods. They also advanced the idea of a transitional stage between the PPNA and PPNB between 8800 and 8600 BC at sites like Jerf el Ahmar and Tell Aswad . Alluvial plains ( Sumer / Elam ). Low rainfall makes irrigation systems necessary. Ubaid culture originated from 6200 BC. The earliest evidence of Neolithic culture in northeast Africa was found in the archaeological sites of Bir Kiseiba and Nabta Playa in what

756-412: A dramatic increase in social inequality in most of the areas where it occurred; New Guinea being a notable exception. Possession of livestock allowed competition between households and resulted in inherited inequalities of wealth. Neolithic pastoralists who controlled large herds gradually acquired more livestock, and this made economic inequalities more pronounced. However, evidence of social inequality

882-505: A field, village or shire. There was a linguistic predisposition to use such terms. The Romans had used them in near Gaul / far Gaul, near Spain / far Spain and others. Before them the Greeks had the habit, which appears in Linear B , the oldest known script of Europe, referring to the near province and the far province of the kingdom of Pylos . Usually these terms were given with reference to

1008-474: A fourth was about to fall to revolution, and two more, the British and French, were forced to yield in revolutions started under the aegis of their own ideologies. By 1916, when millions of Europeans were becoming casualties of imperial war in the trenches of eastern and western Europe over "the eastern question", Arnold J. Toynbee , Hegelesque historian of civilization at large, was becoming metaphysical about

1134-565: A geographic feature, such as a mountain range or a river. Ptolemy 's Geography divided Asia on a similar basis. In the north is "Scythia this side of the Himalayas" and "Scythia beyond the Himalayas". To the south is "India on this side of the Ganges" and "India beyond the Ganges". Asia began on the coast of Anatolia ("land of the rising Sun"). Beyond the Ganges and Himalayas (including

1260-551: A living tradition in small and extremely remote and inaccessible pockets of West Papua . Polished stone adze and axes are used in the present day (as of 2008 ) in areas where the availability of metal implements is limited. This is likely to cease altogether in the next few years as the older generation die off and steel blades and chainsaws prevail. In 2012, news was released about a new farming site discovered in Munam-ri , Goseong , Gangwon Province , South Korea , which may be

1386-608: A non-hierarchical system of organization existed is debatable, and there is no evidence that explicitly suggests that Neolithic societies functioned under any dominating class or individual, as was the case in the chiefdoms of the European Early Bronze Age . Possible exceptions to this include Iraq during the Ubaid period and England beginning in the Early Neolithic (4100–3000 BC). Theories to explain

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1512-579: A period. The Pre-Ceramic may be followed by "Ceramic" periods or a formative stage . Neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Greek νέος néos 'new' and λίθος líthos 'stone') is an archaeological period , the final division of the Stone Age in Europe , Asia , Mesopotamia and Africa (c. 10,000 BC to c. 2,000 BC). It saw the Neolithic Revolution ,

1638-490: A phrase containing a noun, East, qualified by an adjective, far, could be at any location in the "far east" of the speaker's home territory. The Ottoman Empire, for example, was the far East as much as the East Indies. The Crimean War brought a change in vocabulary with the introduction of terms more familiar to the late 19th century. The Russian Empire had entered a more aggressive phase, becoming militarily active against

1764-637: A rarely used and not very useful concept in discussing Australian prehistory . During most of the Neolithic age of Eurasia , people lived in small tribes composed of multiple bands or lineages. There is little scientific evidence of developed social stratification in most Neolithic societies; social stratification is more associated with the later Bronze Age . Although some late Eurasian Neolithic societies formed complex stratified chiefdoms or even states , generally states evolved in Eurasia only with

1890-520: A significant portion of their ancestry from the Anatolian hunter-gatherers (AHG), suggesting that agriculture was adopted in site by these hunter-gatherers and not spread by demic diffusion into the region. The Neolithic 1 (PPNA) period began around 10,000 BC in the Levant . A temple area in southeastern Turkey at Göbekli Tepe , dated to around 9500 BC, may be regarded as the beginning of

2016-758: A term coined in the 1920s by the Australian archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe . One potential benefit of the development and increasing sophistication of farming technology was the possibility of producing surplus crop yields, in other words, food supplies in excess of the immediate needs of the community. Surpluses could be stored for later use, or possibly traded for other necessities or luxuries. Agricultural life afforded securities that nomadic life could not, and sedentary farming populations grew faster than nomadic. However, early farmers were also adversely affected in times of famine , such as may be caused by drought or pests . In instances where agriculture had become

2142-608: A time, Near East often included the Balkans. Robert Hichens' 1913 book The Near East is subtitled "Dalmatia, Greece and Constantinople". The change is evident in the reports of influential British travelers to the Balkans. In 1894, Sir Henry Norman, 1st Baronet , a journalist, traveled to the Far East, afterwards writing a book called The Peoples and Politics of the Far East , which came out in 1895. By "Far East" he meant Siberia , China , Japan , Korea , Siam and Malaya . As

2268-597: A variation soon developed among the scholars and the men of the cloth and their associates: the Nearer East , reverting to the classical and then more scholarly distinction of nearer and farther . They undoubtedly saw a need to separate the biblical lands from the terrain of the Ottoman Empire. The Christians saw the country as the land of the Old and New Testaments, where Christianity had developed. The scholars in

2394-446: A wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts of the world. This "Neolithic package" included the introduction of farming , domestication of animals , and change from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to one of settlement . The term 'Neolithic' was coined by Sir John Lubbock in 1865 as a refinement of the three-age system . The Neolithic began about 12,000 years ago, when farming appeared in

2520-550: Is a large body of evidence for fortified settlements at Linearbandkeramik sites along the Rhine , as at least some villages were fortified for some time with a palisade and an outer ditch. Settlements with palisades and weapon-traumatized bones, such as those found at the Talheim Death Pit , have been discovered and demonstrate that "...systematic violence between groups" and warfare was probably much more common during

2646-515: Is a term of current fashion for a region which our grandfathers were content to call simply The East. Its area is generally understood to coincide with those classic lands, historically the most interesting on the surface of the globe, which lie about the eastern basin of the Mediterranean Sea; but few probably could say offhand where should be the limits and why. Hogarth then proceeds to say where and why in some detail, but no more mention

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2772-616: Is a transcontinental region around the East Mediterranean encompassing parts of West Asia , the Balkans , and North Africa ; it also includes the historical Fertile Crescent , the Levant , Anatolia , East Thrace and Egypt . The term was invented by modern Western geographers and was originally applied to the Ottoman Empire , but today has varying definitions within different academic circles. The term Near East

2898-563: Is better explained by lineal fission and polygyny. The shelter of early people changed dramatically from the Upper Paleolithic to the Neolithic era. In the Paleolithic, people did not normally live in permanent constructions. In the Neolithic, mud brick houses started appearing that were coated with plaster. The growth of agriculture made permanent houses far more common. At Çatalhöyük 9,000 years ago, doorways were made on

3024-476: Is made of the classics. His analysis is geopolitical . His map delineates the Nearer East with regular lines as though surveyed. They include Iran, the Balkans, but not the Danube lands, Egypt, but not the rest of North Africa. Except for the Balkans, the region matches the later Middle East. It differs from the Ottoman Empire of the times in including Greece and Iran. Hogarth gives no evidence of being familiar with

3150-540: Is now southwest Egypt. Domestication of sheep and goats reached Egypt from the Near East possibly as early as 6000 BC. Graeme Barker states "The first indisputable evidence for domestic plants and animals in the Nile valley is not until the early fifth millennium BC in northern Egypt and a thousand years later further south, in both cases as part of strategies that still relied heavily on fishing, hunting, and

3276-1024: Is still disputed, as settlements such as Çatalhöyük reveal a lack of difference in the size of homes and burial sites, suggesting a more egalitarian society with no evidence of the concept of capital, although some homes do appear slightly larger or more elaborately decorated than others. Families and households were still largely independent economically, and the household was probably the center of life. However, excavations in Central Europe have revealed that early Neolithic Linear Ceramic cultures (" Linearbandkeramik ") were building large arrangements of circular ditches between 4800 and 4600 BC. These structures (and their later counterparts such as causewayed enclosures , burial mounds , and henge ) required considerable time and labour to construct, which suggests that some influential individuals were able to organise and direct human labour – though non-hierarchical and voluntary work remain possibilities. There

3402-710: Is taken to overlap with the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) of 10,200–8800 BC. As the Natufians had become dependent on wild cereals in their diet, and a sedentary way of life had begun among them, the climatic changes associated with the Younger Dryas (about 10,000 BC) are thought to have forced people to develop farming. The founder crops of the Fertile Crescent were wheat , lentil , pea , chickpeas , bitter vetch, and flax. Among

3528-516: Is used for a period in many chronologies of the archaeology of the Americas , typically showing some agriculture and developed textiles but no fired pottery . For example, in the Norte Chico civilization and other cultures of Peru , the cultivation of cotton seems to have been very important in economic and power relations, from around 3200 BC. Here, Cotton Pre-Ceramic may be used as

3654-578: Is used to refer to a specific early Neolithic period before the development of ceramics , the Middle Eastern Pre-Pottery Neolithic , in which case it is a synonym of preceramic or pre-pottery. The Western Asian Pre-Pottery Neolithic A began roughly around 8500 BC and can be identified with over a half a dozen sites. The period was most prominent in Western Asia in an economy based on the cultivation of crops or

3780-664: The Battle Hymn of the Republic , leapt into the war of words and joined the Red Cross . Relations of minorities within the Ottoman Empire and the disposition of former Ottoman lands became known as the " Eastern question ", as the Ottomans were on the east of Europe. It now became relevant to define the east of the eastern question. In about the middle of the nineteenth century, Near East came into use to describe that part of

3906-554: The Bronze Age began about 3500 BC, replacing the Neolithic cultures. Around 10,000 BC the first fully developed Neolithic cultures belonging to the phase Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) appeared in the Fertile Crescent. Around 10,700–9400 BC a settlement was established in Tell Qaramel , 10 miles (16 km) north of Aleppo . The settlement included two temples dating to 9650 BC. Around 9000 BC during

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4032-634: The Epipalaeolithic Near East and Mesopotamia , and later in other parts of the world. It lasted in the Near East until the transitional period of the Chalcolithic (Copper Age) from about 6,500 years ago (4500 BC), marked by the development of metallurgy , leading up to the Bronze Age and Iron Age . In other places, the Neolithic followed the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) and then lasted until later. In Ancient Egypt ,

4158-631: The Jordan Valley ; Israel (notably Ain Mallaha , Nahal Oren , and Kfar HaHoresh ); and in Byblos , Lebanon . The start of Neolithic 1 overlaps the Tahunian and Heavy Neolithic periods to some degree. The major advance of Neolithic 1 was true farming. In the proto-Neolithic Natufian cultures, wild cereals were harvested, and perhaps early seed selection and re-seeding occurred. The grain

4284-559: The Longshan culture existed in the middle and lower Yellow River valley areas of northern China. Towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC, the population decreased sharply in most of the region and many of the larger centres were abandoned, possibly due to environmental change linked to the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum . The 'Neolithic' (defined in this paragraph as using polished stone implements) remains

4410-463: The Middle East , cultures identified as Neolithic began appearing in the 10th millennium BC. Early development occurred in the Levant (e.g. Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B ) and from there spread eastwards and westwards. Neolithic cultures are also attested in southeastern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia by around 8000 BC. Anatolian Neolithic farmers derived

4536-420: The Near East because Old Persian cuneiform had been found there. This usage did not sit well with the diplomats; India was left in an equivocal state. They needed a regional term. The use of the term Middle East as a region of international affairs apparently began in British and American diplomatic circles quite independently of each other over concern for the security of the same country: Iran, then known to

4662-599: The Near East , the Ottoman Empire, and the Far East , the East Indies. The two terms were now compound nouns often shown hyphenated. In 1855, a reprint of a letter earlier sent to The Times appeared in Littell's Living Age . Its author, an "official Chinese interpreter of 10 years' active service" and a member of the Oriental Club , Thomas Taylor Meadows, was replying to the suggestion by another interpreter that

4788-613: The Ottoman Porte (government of the Ottoman Empire) at Constantinople . Compared to Anatolia, Levant also means "land of the rising sun", but where Anatolia always only meant the projection of land currently occupied by the Republic of Turkey, Levant meant anywhere in the domain ruled by the Ottoman Porte. The East India Company (Originally charted as the "Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into

4914-655: The Red Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Iraq . The Late Neolithic began around 6,400 BC in the Fertile Crescent . By then distinctive cultures emerged, with pottery like the Halafian (Turkey, Syria, Northern Mesopotamia) and Ubaid (Southern Mesopotamia). This period has been further divided into PNA (Pottery Neolithic A) and PNB (Pottery Neolithic B) at some sites. The Chalcolithic (Stone-Bronze) period began about 4500 BC, then

5040-539: The Rift Valley of East Africa and surrounding areas during a time period known as the Pastoral Neolithic . They were South Cushitic speaking pastoralists, who tended to bury their dead in cairns whilst their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls, pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots. Through archaeology, historical linguistics and archaeogenetics, they conventionally have been identified with

5166-609: The Tien Shan ) were Serica and Serae (sections of China ) and some other identifiable far eastern locations known to the voyagers and geographers but not to the general European public. By the time of John Seller's Atlas Maritima of 1670, "India Beyond the Ganges" had become "the East Indies " including China, Korea, southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific in a map that was every bit as distorted as Ptolemy's, despite

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5292-652: The "collective wisdom" of Europe, and introducing a concept to arise many times in the decades to follow under chilling circumstances: "... no final solution of the difficulty has yet been found." Miller's final pronouncements on the topic could not be ignored by either the British or the Ottoman governments: It remains then to consider whether the Great Powers can solve the Eastern Question ;... Foreigners find it extremely difficult to understand

5418-675: The Balkans from 6000 BC, and in Central Europe by around 5800 BC ( La Hoguette ). Among the earliest cultural complexes of this area are the Sesklo culture in Thessaly, which later expanded in the Balkans giving rise to Starčevo-Körös (Cris), Linearbandkeramik , and Vinča . Through a combination of cultural diffusion and migration of peoples , the Neolithic traditions spread west and northwards to reach northwestern Europe by around 4500 BC. The Vinča culture may have created

5544-418: The Balkans. Apart from the fact that he attended Oxford and played Rugby , not many biographical details have been promulgated. He was, in effect (whatever his formal associations if any), a point man of British Near Eastern intelligence. In Miller's view, the Ottoman officials were unfit to rule: The plain fact is that it is as hard for an Ottoman official to be honest as it is for a camel to enter through

5670-524: The British Empire was wasting its resources on a false threat from Russia against China. Toward the end of the letter he said: To support the "sick man" in the Near East is an arduous and costly affair; let England, France and America too, beware how they create a "sick giant" in the Far East, for they may rest assured that, if Turkey is [a] European necessity, China is a world necessity. Much of

5796-531: The Bronze Age, eventually giving rise to permanently settled farming towns , and later cities and states whose larger populations could be sustained by the increased productivity from cultivated lands. The profound differences in human interactions and subsistence methods associated with the onset of early agricultural practices in the Neolithic have been called the Neolithic Revolution ,

5922-483: The East-Indies") was chartered in 1600 for trade to the East Indies. It has pleased western historians to write of a decline of the Ottoman Empire as though a stable and uncontested polity of that name once existed. The borders did expand and contract but they were always dynamic and always in "question" right from the beginning. The Ottoman Empire was created from the lands of the former eastern Roman Empire on

6048-496: The Maltese archipelago) and of Mnajdra (Malta) are notable for their gigantic Neolithic structures, the oldest of which date back to around 3600 BC. The Hypogeum of Ħal-Saflieni , Paola , Malta, is a subterranean structure excavated around 2500 BC; originally a sanctuary, it became a necropolis , the only prehistoric underground temple in the world, and shows a degree of artistry in stone sculpture unique in prehistory to

6174-443: The Maltese islands. After 2500 BC, these islands were depopulated for several decades until the arrival of a new influx of Bronze Age immigrants, a culture that cremated its dead and introduced smaller megalithic structures called dolmens to Malta. In most cases there are small chambers here, with the cover made of a large slab placed on upright stones. They are claimed to belong to a population different from that which built

6300-488: The Mediterranean ;..." The regions in their inventory were Assyria, Chaldea, Mesopotamia, Persia, Armenia, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Ancient Israel, Ethiopia, Caucasus, Libya, Anatolia and Abyssinia. Explicitly excluded is India. No mention is made of the Balkans. The British archaeologist D. G. Hogarth published The Nearer East in 1902, in which he stated his view of the Near East : The Nearer East

6426-651: The Middle East. The neolithization of Northwestern Africa was initiated by Iberian , Levantine (and perhaps Sicilian ) migrants around 5500-5300 BC. During the Early Neolithic period, farming was introduced by Europeans and was subsequently adopted by the locals. During the Middle Neolithic period, an influx of ancestry from the Levant appeared in Northwestern Africa, coinciding with

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6552-468: The Near East. Geography alone was not a sufficient explanation of the terms, he believed. If the Ottoman Empire had been a sick man, then: There has been something pathological about the history of this Near Eastern World. It has had an undue share of political misfortunes, and had lain for centuries in a kind of spiritual paralysis between East and West—belonging to neither, partaking paradoxically of both, and wholly unable to rally itself decidedly to one or

6678-542: The Near Eastern frontiers up to the desert belt of the Sahara, Nefud and Kevir. From the death of the Near East, new nations were able to rise from the ashes, notably the Republic of Turkey. Paradoxically it now aligned itself with the west rather than with the east. Mustafa Kemal , its founder, a former Ottoman high-ranking officer, was insistent on this social revolution, which, among other changes, liberated women from

6804-490: The Neolithic appeared everywhere in the same order: the earliest farming societies in the Near East did not use pottery. In other parts of the world, such as Africa , South Asia and Southeast Asia , independent domestication events led to their own regionally distinctive Neolithic cultures, which arose completely independently of those in Europe and Southwest Asia . Early Japanese societies and other East Asian cultures used pottery before developing agriculture. In

6930-481: The Neolithic lasted until the Protodynastic period , c. 3150 BC. In China , it lasted until circa 2000 BC with the rise of the pre-Shang Erlitou culture , as it did in Scandinavia . Following the ASPRO chronology , the Neolithic started in around 10,200 BC in the Levant , arising from the Natufian culture , when pioneering use of wild cereals evolved into early farming . The Natufian period or "proto-Neolithic" lasted from 12,500 to 9,500 BC, and

7056-400: The Neolithic than in the preceding Paleolithic period. This supplanted an earlier view of the Linear Pottery Culture as living a "peaceful, unfortified lifestyle". Control of labour and inter-group conflict is characteristic of tribal groups with social rank that are headed by a charismatic individual – either a ' big man ' or a proto- chief – functioning as a lineage-group head. Whether

7182-449: The Ottoman Empire and also against China, with territorial aggrandizement explicitly in mind. Rethinking its policy the British government decided that the two polities under attack were necessary for the balance of power. It therefore undertook to oppose the Russians in both places, one result being the Crimean War. During that war the administration of the British Empire began promulgating a new vocabulary, giving specific regional meaning to

7308-425: The Ottoman Empire. Some regions beyond the Ottoman Porte were included. One was North Africa west of Egypt. It was occupied by piratical kingdoms of the Barbary Coast , de facto -independent since the eighteenth century, formerly part of the empire at its apogee. Iran was included because it could not easily be reached except through the Ottoman Empire or neighboring Russia. In the 1890s the term tended to focus on

7434-422: The Ottomans retained a band of territory including Albania , Macedonia and the Adrianople Vilayet , which were lost in the two Balkan Wars of 1912–13. The Ottoman Empire, believed to be about to collapse, was portrayed in the press as the " sick man of Europe ". The Balkan states, with the partial exception of Bosnia and Albania , were primarily Christian, as was the majority of Lebanon . Starting in 1894,

7560-422: The Ottomans struck at the Armenians and Assyrians on the explicit grounds that they were non-Muslim peoples and as such were a potential threat to the Muslim empire within which they lived. The Hamidian Massacres , Adana Massacres and Massacres of Badr Khan targeting Assyrians and Armenians aroused the indignation of the entire Christian world. In the United States, the then aging Julia Ward Howe , author of

7686-626: The PPNA, one of the world's first towns, Jericho , appeared in the Levant. It was surrounded by a stone wall, may have contained a population of up to 2,000–3,000 people, and contained a massive stone tower. Around 6400 BC the Halaf culture appeared in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia. In 1981, a team of researchers from the Maison de l'Orient et de la Méditerranée , including Jacques Cauvin and Oliver Aurenche, divided Near East Neolithic chronology into ten periods (0 to 9) based on social, economic and cultural characteristics. In 2002, Danielle Stordeur and Frédéric Abbès advanced this system with

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7812-445: The Slavic Balkan states began to question the very existence of the Ottoman Empire. The result was the Crimean War , 1853–1856, in which the British Empire and the French Empire supported the Ottoman Empire in its struggle against the incursions of the Russian Empire. Eventually, the Ottoman Empire lost control of the Balkan region. Until about 1855, the terms Near East and Far East did not refer to any particular region. The Far East,

7938-437: The Turks against Russia. If the British Empire was now going to side with the Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire had no choice but to cultivate a relationship with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was supported by the German Empire. In a few years these alignments became the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance (already formed in 1882), which were in part a cause of World War I . By its end in 1918 three empires were gone,

8064-402: The United States. The innovation of the term Near East to mean the holdings of the Ottoman Empire as early as the Crimean War had left a geographical gap. The East Indies, or "Far East", derived ultimately from Ptolemy 's "India Beyond the Ganges." The Ottoman Empire ended at the eastern border of Iraq. "India This Side of the Ganges" and Iran had been omitted. The archaeologists counted Iran as

8190-460: The aforementioned regions were in actuality "politically one region – in spite of the divisions into which it is academically divided." In The Conflict of Colour , Simpson argued that what united these regions was their skin color and the fact that they were all under European colonial rule . The work included a "color chart" of the world, dividing it into a spectrum of ' black ', 'brown', ' yellow ' and ' white ' races. Simpson also modified

8316-414: The apparent implied egalitarianism of Neolithic (and Paleolithic) societies have arisen, notably the Marxist concept of primitive communism . Genetic evidence indicates that a drop in Y-chromosomal diversity occurred during the Neolithic. Initially believed to be a result of high incidence of violence and high rates of male mortality, more recent analysis suggests that the reduced Y-chromosomal diversity

8442-558: The area". The research team will perform accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) dating to retrieve a more precise date for the site. In Mesoamerica , a similar set of events (i.e., crop domestication and sedentary lifestyles) occurred by around 4500 BC in South America, but possibly as early as 11,000–10,000 BC. These cultures are usually not referred to as belonging to the Neolithic; in North America, different terms are used such as Formative stage instead of mid-late Neolithic, Archaic Era instead of Early Neolithic, and Paleo-Indian for

8568-499: The area's first Afroasiatic -speaking settlers. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest center of pastoralism and stone construction in the region. In southeast Europe agrarian societies first appeared in the 7th millennium BC , attested by one of the earliest farming sites of Europe, discovered in Vashtëmi , southeastern Albania and dating back to 6500 BC. In most of Western Europe in followed over

8694-436: The arrival of pastoralism in the region. The earliest evidence for pottery, domestic cereals and animal husbandry is found in Morocco, specifically at Kaf el-Ghar . The Pastoral Neolithic was a period in Africa's prehistory marking the beginning of food production on the continent following the Later Stone Age . In contrast to the Neolithic in other parts of the world, which saw the development of farming societies,

8820-419: The book was a big success, he was off to the Balkan states with his wife in 1896 to develop detail for a sequel, The People and Politics of the Near East , which Scribners planned to publish in 1897. Mrs. Norman, a writer herself, wrote glowing letters of the home and person of Mme. Zakki, "the wife of a Turkish cabinet minister," who, she said, was a cultivated woman living in a country home full of books. As for

8946-423: The bow and arrow and ceramic pottery were also introduced. In later periods cities of considerable size developed, and some metallurgy by 700 BC. Australia, in contrast to New Guinea , has generally been held not to have had a Neolithic period, with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle continuing until the arrival of Europeans. This view can be challenged in terms of the definition of agriculture, but "Neolithic" remains

9072-648: The colonial administration belonged to this club, which had been formed by the Duke of Wellington . Meadows' terminology must represent usage by that administration. If not the first use of the terms, the letter to the Times was certainly one of the earliest presentations of this vocabulary to the general public. They became immediately popular, supplanting "Levant" and "East Indies", which gradually receded to minor usages and then began to change meaning. Near East remained popular in diplomatic, trade and journalistic circles, but

9198-615: The conflicts in the Balkan states and Armenia. The demise of "the sick man of Europe" left considerable confusion as to what was to be meant by Near East . It is now generally used only in historical contexts, to describe the countries of West Asia from the Mediterranean to (or including) Iran . There is, in short, no universally-understood fixed inventory of nations, languages or historical assets defined to be in it. The geographical terms Near East and Far East refer to areas of

9324-467: The contemporaneous initial concept of the Middle East. In the last years of the 19th century, the term Near East acquired considerable disrepute in eyes of the English-speaking public as did the Ottoman Empire itself. The cause of the onus was the religiously motivated Hamidian Massacres of Christian Armenians , but it seemed to spill over into the protracted conflicts of the Balkans. For

9450-527: The countries where "the eastern question" applied; that is, to all of the Balkans . The countries and regions mentioned are Greece , Bulgaria , Serbia , Bosnia-Herzegovina (which was Muslim and needed, in his view, to be suppressed), Macedonia , Montenegro , Albania , Romania . The rest of the Ottoman domain is demoted to just "the East". If Norman was apparently attempting to change British policy, it

9576-504: The dead, which were plastered with mud to make facial features. The rest of the corpse could have been left outside the settlement to decay until only the bones were left, then the bones were buried inside the settlement underneath the floor or between houses. Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period. Juris Zarins has proposed that

9702-608: The earliest farmland known to date in east Asia. "No remains of an agricultural field from the Neolithic period have been found in any East Asian country before, the institute said, adding that the discovery reveals that the history of agricultural cultivation at least began during the period on the Korean Peninsula ". The farm was dated between 3600 and 3000 BC. Pottery, stone projectile points, and possible houses were also found. "In 2002, researchers discovered prehistoric earthenware , jade earrings, among other items in

9828-573: The earliest system of writing, the Vinča signs , though archaeologist Shan Winn believes they most likely represented pictograms and ideograms rather than a truly developed form of writing. The Cucuteni-Trypillian culture built enormous settlements in Romania, Moldova and Ukraine from 5300 to 2300 BC. The megalithic temple complexes of Ġgantija on the Mediterranean island of Gozo (in

9954-476: The east closest to Europe. The term Far East appeared contemporaneously meaning Japan , China , Korea , Indonesia and Vietnam . Near East applied to what had been mainly known as the Levant , which was in the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Porte , or government. Europeans could not set foot on most of the shores of the southern and central Mediterranean from the Gulf of Sidra to Albania without permits from

10080-478: The east, collaborated with English merchants to form the first trading companies to the far-flung regions, using their own jargon. Their goals were to obtain trading concessions by treaty. The queen chartered the Company of Merchants of the Levant, shortened to Levant Company , and soon known also as The Turkey Company, in 1581. In 1582, the ship The Great Susan transported the first ambassador, William Harebone, to

10206-497: The enclosures also suggest grain and meat storage. The Neolithic 2 (PPNB) began around 8800 BC according to the ASPRO chronology in the Levant ( Jericho , West Bank). As with the PPNA dates, there are two versions from the same laboratories noted above. This system of terminology, however, is not convenient for southeast Anatolia and settlements of the middle Anatolia basin. A settlement of 3,000 inhabitants called 'Ain Ghazal

10332-399: The eye of a needle. It is not so much the fault of the men as the fault of the system, which is thoroughly bad from top to bottom... Turkish administration is synonymous with corruption, inefficiency, and sloth. These were fighting words to be coming from a country that once insisted Europe needed Turkey and was willing to spill blood over it. For his authority Miller invokes the people, citing

10458-653: The eyes of Western commentators. Bertram Lenox Simpson , a journalist who served for a period as an officer for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service , combined both terms in his 1910 work The Conflict of Colour: The Threatened Upheaval Throughout the World as "the Near and Middle East." According to Simpson, the combined region consisted of " India , Afghanistan , Persia , Arabistan , Asia Minor , and last, but not least, Egypt ", explaining that

10584-524: The facility to concentrate in force, if occasion arise, about Aden, India, and the Gulf. Apparently the sailor did not connect with the soldier, as Mahan believed he was innovating the term Middle East . It was, however, already there to be seen. Until the interwar period following the First World War , the terms Near East and Middle East co-existed, but they were not always seen as distinct in

10710-412: The field of studies that eventually became biblical archaeology attempted to define it on the basis of archaeology. For example, The London Review of 1861 (Telford and Barber, unsigned) in reviewing several works by Rawlinson , Layard and others, defined themselves as making: "... an imperfect conspectus of the arrow-headed writings of the nearer east; writings which cover nearly the whole period of

10836-575: The first cultivated crop and mark the invention of the technology of farming. This occurred centuries before the first cultivation of grains. Settlements became more permanent, with circular houses, much like those of the Natufians, with single rooms. However, these houses were for the first time made of mudbrick . The settlement had a surrounding stone wall and perhaps a stone tower (as in Jericho). The wall served as protection from nearby groups, as protection from floods, or to keep animals penned. Some of

10962-557: The first form of African food production was mobile pastoralism , or ways of life centered on the herding and management of livestock. The term "Pastoral Neolithic" is used most often by archaeologists to describe early pastoralist periods in the Sahara , as well as in eastern Africa . The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic or SPN (formerly known as the Stone Bowl Culture ) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in

11088-523: The foreign, and especially the Eastern policy of Great Britain, and we cannot wonder at their difficulty, for it seems a mass of contradictions to Englishmen themselves ... At one moment we are bringing about the independence of Greece by sending the Turkish fleet to the bottom of the bay of Navarino. Twenty-seven years later we are spending immense sums and wasting thousands of lives in order to protect

11214-455: The gathering of wild plants" and suggests that these subsistence changes were not due to farmers migrating from the Near East but was an indigenous development, with cereals either indigenous or obtained through exchange. Other scholars argue that the primary stimulus for agriculture and domesticated animals (as well as mud-brick architecture and other Neolithic cultural features) in Egypt was from

11340-460: The globe in or contiguous to the former British Empire and the neighboring colonies of the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Germans. They fit together as a pair based on the opposites of far and near, suggesting that they were innovated together. They appear together in the journals of the mid-19th century. Both terms were used before then with local British and American meanings: the near or far east of

11466-408: The increase in population above the carrying capacity of the land and a high sedentary local population concentration. In some cultures, there would have been a significant shift toward increased starch and plant protein. The relative nutritional benefits and drawbacks of these dietary changes and their overall impact on early societal development are still debated. Near East The Near East

11592-595: The lands of ancient Greece, but could not gain Constantinople. The Ottoman Porte was continuously under attack from some quarter in its empire, primarily the Balkans. Also, on a number of occasions in the early 19th century, American and British warships had to attack the Barbary pirates to stop their piracy and recover thousands of enslaved Europeans and Americans. In 1853 the Russian Empire on behalf of

11718-534: The lapse of approximately 1,500 years. That "east" in turn was only an English translation of Latin Oriens and Orientalis , "the land of the rising Sun", used since Roman times for "east". The world map of Jodocus Hondius of 1590 labels all of Asia from the Caspian to the Pacific as India Orientalis , shortly to appear in translation as the East Indies. Elizabeth I of England , primarily interested in trade with

11844-488: The name of freedom with the expectation of being rescued by the intervention of Christian Europe , he states "but her hope was vain." England had "turned her back." Norman concluded his exhortation with "In the Balkans, one learns to hate the Turk." Norman made sure that Gladstone read the article. Prince Nicolas of Montenegro wrote a letter thanking him for his article. Throughout this article, Norman uses "Near East" to mean

11970-510: The natives of the Balkans, they were "a semi-civilized people". The planned book was never published, however Norman published the gist of the book, mixed with vituperation against the Ottoman Empire, in an article in June 1896, in Scribner's Magazine. The empire had descended from an enlightened civilization ruling over barbarians for their own good to something considerably less. The difference

12096-592: The naval vulnerability of the trade routes in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean , commented in 1902: The middle East, if I may adopt a term which I have not seen, will some day need its Malta, as well as its Gibraltar; it does not follow that either will be in the Gulf. Naval force has the quality of mobility which carries with it the privilege of temporary absences; but it needs to find on every scene of operation established bases of refit, of supply, and, in case of disaster, of security. The British Navy should have

12222-551: The next 1,500 years. Populations began to rise after 3500 BC, with further dips and rises occurring between 3000 and 2500 BC but varying in date between regions. Around this time is the Neolithic decline , when populations collapsed across most of Europe, possibly caused by climatic conditions, plague, or mass migration. Settled life, encompassing the transition from foraging to farming and pastoralism, began in South Asia in

12348-440: The next two thousand years, but in some parts of Northwest Europe it is much later, lasting just under 3,000 years from c. 4500 BC–1700 BC. Recent advances in archaeogenetics have confirmed that the spread of agriculture from the Middle East to Europe was strongly correlated with the migration of early farmers from Anatolia about 9,000 years ago, and was not just a cultural exchange. Anthropomorphic figurines have been found in

12474-632: The nineteenth century the Ottoman Empire included all of the Balkans , north to the southern edge of the Great Hungarian Plain . But by 1914, the empire had lost all of its territories except Constantinople and Eastern Thrace to the rise of nationalist Balkan states , which saw the independence of the Kingdom of Greece , Kingdom of Serbia , the Danubian Principalities , and the Kingdom of Bulgaria . Up until 1912,

12600-698: The occasion of the latter's violent demise. The last Roman emperor died fighting hand-to-hand in the streets of his capital, Constantinople, overwhelmed by the Ottoman military, in May 1453. The victors inherited his remaining territory in the Balkans. The Hungarian lands under Turkish rule had become part of the Habsburg monarchy by 1688. in the Great Turkish War . The Serbian Revolution , 1804–1833. created modern Serbia. The Greek War of Independence , 1821–1832, created modern Greece, which recovered most of

12726-502: The other major crop domesticated were rice, millet, maize (corn), and potatoes. Crops were usually domesticated in a single location and ancestral wild species are still found. [1] Early Neolithic farming was limited to a narrow range of plants, both wild and domesticated, which included einkorn wheat , millet and spelt , and the keeping of dogs . By about 8000 BC, it included domesticated sheep and goats , cattle and pigs . Not all of these cultural elements characteristic of

12852-502: The other. Having supposed that it was sick, he kills it off: "The Near East has never been more true to itself than in its lurid dissolution; past and present are fused together in the flare." To Toynbee the Near East was a spiritual being of a " Janus -character", connected to both east and west: The limits of the Near East are not easy to define. On the north-west, Vienna is the most conspicuous boundary-mark, but one might almost equally well single out Trieste or Lvov or even Prag. Towards

12978-700: The period. This site was developed by nomadic hunter-gatherer tribes, as evidenced by the lack of permanent housing in the vicinity, and may be the oldest known human-made place of worship. At least seven stone circles, covering 25 acres (10 ha), contain limestone pillars carved with animals, insects, and birds. Stone tools were used by perhaps as many as hundreds of people to create the pillars, which might have supported roofs. Other early PPNA sites dating to around 9500–9000 BC have been found in Palestine , notably in Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jericho ) and Gilgal in

13104-581: The postdiluvian Old Testament history ..." By arrow-headed writings they meant cuneiform texts. In defense of the Bible as history they said: "The primeval nations, that piled their glorious homes on the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Nile, are among us again with their archives in their hands; ..." They further defined the nations as "... the countries lying between the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and

13230-536: The preceding period. The Formative stage is equivalent to the Neolithic Revolution period in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the southwestern United States it occurred from 500 to 1200 AD when there was a dramatic increase in population and development of large villages supported by agriculture based on dryland farming of corn (maize), and later, beans, squash, and domesticated turkeys. During this period

13356-454: The predominant way of life, the sensitivity to these shortages could be particularly acute, affecting agrarian populations to an extent that otherwise may not have been routinely experienced by prior hunter-gatherer communities. Nevertheless, agrarian communities generally proved successful, and their growth and the expansion of territory under cultivation continued. Another significant change undergone by many of these newly agrarian communities

13482-417: The previous megalithic temples. It is presumed the population arrived from Sicily because of the similarity of Maltese dolmens to some small constructions found there. With some exceptions, population levels rose rapidly at the beginning of the Neolithic until they reached the carrying capacity . This was followed by a population crash of "enormous magnitude" after 5000 BC, with levels remaining low during

13608-496: The previous reliance on an essentially nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence technique or pastoral transhumance was at first supplemented, and then increasingly replaced by, a reliance upon the foods produced from cultivated lands. These developments are also believed to have greatly encouraged the growth of settlements, since it may be supposed that the increased need to spend more time and labor in tending crop fields required more localized dwellings. This trend would continue into

13734-565: The rearing of animals or both. Outside Western Asia Aceramic Neolithic groups are more rare. Aceramic Neolithic villages had many attributes of agricultural communities: large settlement size, substantial architecture, long settlement duration, intensive harvesting of seeds with sickles, equipment and facilities for storing and grinding seeds, and containers. Morphological evidence for domestication of plants comes only from Middle PPNB ( Pre-Pottery Neolithic B ), and by Late PPNB some animals, notably goats, were domesticated or at least managed in most of

13860-422: The region of Balochistan , Pakistan, around 7,000 BC. At the site of Mehrgarh , Balochistan, presence can be documented of the domestication of wheat and barley, rapidly followed by that of goats, sheep, and cattle. In April 2006, it was announced in the scientific journal Nature that the oldest (and first Early Neolithic ) evidence for the drilling of teeth in vivo (using bow drills and flint tips)

13986-637: The region that is in Asia (ie., not including Egypt , the Balkans , and Thrace ) is "now commonly referred to as West Asia ." Later on in 2012, the FAO defined the Near East as a subregion of the Middle East. The Near East included Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syrian Arab Republic, and Turkey while the Middle East included the Arabian Peninsula, the Caucasus, and Iran. At the beginning of

14112-692: The rise of metallurgy, and most Neolithic societies on the whole were relatively simple and egalitarian. Beyond Eurasia, however, states were formed during the local Neolithic in three areas, namely in the Preceramic Andes with the Caral-Supe Civilization , Formative Mesoamerica and Ancient Hawaiʻi . However, most Neolithic societies were noticeably more hierarchical than the Upper Paleolithic cultures that preceded them and hunter-gatherer cultures in general. The domestication of large animals (c. 8000 BC) resulted in

14238-771: The roof, with ladders positioned both on the inside and outside of the houses. Stilt-house settlements were common in the Alpine and Pianura Padana ( Terramare ) region. Remains have been found in the Ljubljana Marsh in Slovenia and at the Mondsee and Attersee lakes in Upper Austria , for example. A significant and far-reaching shift in human subsistence and lifestyle was to be brought about in areas where crop farming and cultivation were first developed:

14364-601: The same territories and are "generally accepted as comprising the countries of the Arabian Peninsula , Cyprus , Egypt , Iraq , Iran , Israel , Jordan , Lebanon , Palestinian territories , Syria , and Turkey ". Also, Afghanistan is often included. In 1997, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations defined the region similarly, but also included Afghanistan . The part of

14490-723: The sites. Some of the most famous Aceramic sites are located in the Republic of Cyprus . There was an Early Aceramic Neolithic phase beginning around 8200 BC. The phase can be best thought of as a "colony", or initial settlement of the island. Until the relatively recent discoveries of the Akrotiri and the Early Aceramic Neolithic phases, the Aceramic Neolithic culture known as the Khirokitia culture

14616-582: The southeast, the boundaries are even more shadowy. It is perhaps best to equate them with the frontiers of the Arabic language, yet the genius of the Near East overrides linguistic barriers, and encroaches on the Arabicspeaking world on the one side as well as on the German-speaking world on the other. Syria is essentially a Near Eastern country, and a physical geographer would undoubtedly carry

14742-418: The strait rules still in effect in most Arabic-speaking countries. The demise of the political Near East now left a gap where it had been, into which stepped the Middle East. The term Middle East as a noun and adjective was common in the 19th century in nearly every context except diplomacy and archaeology. An uncountable number of places appear to have had their middle easts from gardens to regions, including

14868-463: The west as Persia. In 1900 Thomas Edward Gordon published an article, The Problem of the Middle East , which began: It may be assumed that the most sensitive part of our external policy in the Middle East is the preservation of the independence and integrity of Persia and Afghanistan. Our active interest in Persia began with the present century, and was due to the belief that the invasion of India by

14994-869: Was found in Mehrgarh. In South India, the Neolithic began by 6500 BC and lasted until around 1400 BC when the Megalithic transition period began. South Indian Neolithic is characterized by Ash mounds from 2500 BC in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu . In East Asia, the earliest sites include the Nanzhuangtou culture around 9500–9000 BC, Pengtoushan culture around 7500–6100 BC, and Peiligang culture around 7000–5000 BC. The prehistoric Beifudi site near Yixian in Hebei Province, China, contains relics of

15120-409: Was found in the outskirts of Amman , Jordan . Considered to be one of the largest prehistoric settlements in the Near East , it was continuously inhabited from approximately 7250 BC to approximately 5000 BC. Settlements have rectangular mud-brick houses where the family lived together in single or multiple rooms. Burial findings suggest an ancestor cult where people preserved skulls of

15246-455: Was ground into flour. Emmer wheat was domesticated, and animals were herded and domesticated ( animal husbandry and selective breeding ). In 2006, remains of figs were discovered in a house in Jericho dated to 9400 BC. The figs are of a mutant variety that cannot be pollinated by insects, and therefore the trees can only reproduce from cuttings. This evidence suggests that figs were

15372-402: Was one of diet . Pre-agrarian diets varied by region, season, available local plant and animal resources and degree of pastoralism and hunting. Post-agrarian diet was restricted to a limited package of successfully cultivated cereal grains, plants and to a variable extent domesticated animals and animal products. Supplementation of diet by hunting and gathering was to variable degrees precluded by

15498-584: Was perhaps William Miller (1864–1945), journalist and expert on the Near East, who did the most in that direction. In essence, he signed the death warrant, so to speak, of the Age of Empires. The fall of the Ottoman Empire ultimately enmeshed all the others as well. In the Travel and Politics in the Near East , 1898, Miller claimed to have made four trips to the Balkans, 1894, 1896, 1897 and 1898, and to be, in essence, an expert on "the Near East", by which he primarily meant

15624-609: Was the Hamidian Massacres , which were being conducted even as the couple traveled the Balkans. According to Norman now, the empire had been established by "the Moslem horde" from Asia , which was stopped by "intrepid Hungary ." Furthermore, "Greece shook off the turbaned destroyer of her people" and so on. The Russians were suddenly liberators of oppressed Balkan states. Having portrayed the Armenians as revolutionaries in

15750-451: Was thought to be the earliest human settlement on Cyprus, from 7000 to 5000 BC. There are a number of Late Aceramic Neolithic sites throughout the island. The two most important are called Khirokitia and Kalavasos-Tenta . Late Aceramic Cyprus did not have much external contact because of a lack of settlement in the west or northwest during the period. However, Late Aceramic Cyprus was a well-structured society. The specific term Pre-Ceramic

15876-547: Was used in conjunction with the Middle East and the Far East (China and beyond), together known as the "three Easts"; it was a separate term from the Middle East during earlier times and official British usage. Both terms are used interchangeably to refer to the same region. Near East and Middle East are both Eurocentric terms. According to National Geographic , the terms Near East and Middle East denote

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