9th millennium BC
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The 9th millennium BC spanned the years 9000 BC to 8001 BC (11 to 10 thousand years ago). In chronological terms, it is the first full millennium of the current Holocene epoch that is generally reckoned to have begun by 9700 BC (11.7 thousand years ago). It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis, or by radiometric dating.
In the Near East, especially in the Fertile Crescent, the transitory Epipalaeolithic age was gradually superseded by the Neolithic with evidence of agriculture across the Levant to the Zagros Mountains in modern-day Iran. The key characteristic of the Neolithic is agricultural settlement, albeit with wooden and stone tools and weapons still in use. It is believed that agriculture had begun in China by the end of the millennium. Elsewhere, especially in Europe, the Neolithic continued.
Global environment
In the geologic time scale, the first stratigraphic stage of the Holocene is the "Greenlandian" from about 9700 BC to the fixed date 6236 BC and so including the whole of the 9th millennium. The starting point for the Greenlandian has been correlated with the end of the Younger Dryas and a climate shift from near-glacial to interglacial, causing glaciers to retreat and sea levels to rise.[1][2]
It has been estimated that the
During the millennium, there were
Population and communities
As the Neolithic began in the Fertile Crescent, most people around the world still lived in scattered
Near East
From the beginning of the 9th millennium,
Europe
It is believed that European sites settled before 8500 were still Palaeolithic, or at best
Japan
In Japan, the
Americas
In North America, the Paleo-Indian Clovis culture is believed to have ended around 8800 BC having fathered numerous local variants. One of these was the Folsom complex which was centred in the Great Plains and is dated from c.9000 to c.8000 BC. The people were hunter-gatherers who hunted the now-extinct Bison antiquus.[18]
In Patagonia, the Fell's Tradition prevailed through the millennium at Cueva Fell.[19] Another Paleo-Indian site in the region is the Las Cuevas Canyon near Los Toldos (Santa Cruz) where rock art has been found.[20]
In Central America, remains of three prehistoric human fossils have been discovered since 2006 in the cave system at Chan Hol in Quintana Roo, Mexico. All have been dated to around the 9th millennium.[21]
Early warfare
Evidence of a precursor to warfare has been found at Nataruk in Kenya. Remains of at least 27 individuals have been found and dated to 7550–8550 BC.[22] The condition of the skeletons indicates that a massacre took place as hands were bound and skulls were smashed by blunt force. Communities in Africa at the time would have been nomadic hunter-gatherers.[23]
Rise of agriculture
The Natufian culture continued to prevail in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian areas of the Fertile Crescent with their most significant site at Jericho (Tell es-Sultan) in the Jordan Valley. The Natufian people had been sedentary or semi-sedentary through the 10th millennium, even before the introduction of agriculture.[24]
By about 8500 BC, the Natufians were harvesting
The earliest known cultivation of lentils was at Mureybet in Syria, where wheat and barley were also grown. Lentils were later (by 7500 BC) found at Hacilar and Çayönü in Turkey.[28] Ganj Dareh, in Iranian Kurdistan, has been cited as the earliest settlement to domesticate animals, specifically the goat, towards the end of the millennium.[29][30]
Agriculture may have begun in the
Pottery and dating systems
Beginning with China c.18,000 BC, pottery is believed to have been invented independently in various places – for example, at Ounjougou in central Mali (dated c.9400 BC). These early innovations were probably created accidentally by fires lit on clay soil.[32][33][34][35] The potter's wheel had not yet been invented and, where pottery as such was made, it was still hand-built, often by means of coiling, and pit fired.[36]
The first chronological pottery system was the Early, Middle and Late Minoan framework devised in the early 20th century by Sir
Metallurgy
Copper (Cu, 29) was originally found in raw surface lumps and first used in the Middle East. It was later extracted from ores such as malachite.[40] A copper pendant from Mesopotamia is dated 8700 BC.[41] The use of copper and, from the eighth millennium, lead (Pb, 82) was gradual – it could not become widespread until systematic processes had been developed for extraction of the metals from their ores; this did not happen until about the sixth millennium.[40]
References
- ^ Cohen, K. M.; Finney, S. C.; Gibbard, P. L.; Fan, J.-X. (May 2019). "International Chronostratigraphic Chart" (PDF). International Commission on Stratigraphy. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 13 November 2019.
- ^ Mike Walker & others (14 June 2018). "Formal ratification of the subdivision of the Holocene Series/Epoch (Quaternary System/Period)" (PDF). Episodes. Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09. Retrieved 11 November 2019. This proposal on behalf of the SQS has been approved by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and formally ratified by the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).
- ^ Winter, Barbara. "Bering Land Bridge". SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Archived from the original on 28 April 2015. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
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- ^ "Holocene Volcano List". Global Volcanism Program. Smithsonian Institution. 2013. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
- ^ "Grímsvötn". Global Volcanism Program. Smithsonian Institution. 2013. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
- JSTOR 1531855.
- ^ Oliver Dietrich; Çigdem Köksal-Schmidt; Jens Notroff; Klaus Schmidt (2016). "Establishing a Radiocarbon Sequence for Göbekli Tepe. State of Research and New Data". NEO-LITHICS 1/13 the Newsletter of Southwest Asian Neolithic Research.
- ^ Curry, Andrew (November 2008). "Gobekli Tepe: The World's First Temple?". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2 March 2019.
- ISBN 978-83-90379-63-0.
- .
- ^ Thissen, L. 2002. Appendix I, "The CANeW 14C databases, Anatolia 10,000-5000 cal. BC". In "The Neolithic of Central Anatolia. Internal developments and external relations during the 9th–6th millennia cal BC", Proc. Int. CANeW Round Table, Istanbul 23–24 November 2001, edited by F. Gérard and L. Thissen. Istanbul: Ege Yayınları.
- ^ Milner, Conneller & Taylor 2018, pp. 225–244.
- ^ "Nuts give clue to 'oldest' Scots site". BBC News. 26 May 2001. Retrieved 24 May 2019.
- ^ "Aeroe History". Aeroe Island. 11 November 2015. Archived from the original on 29 September 2015. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
- (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
- ^ "Folsom complex". Edinburgh: Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
- .
- S2CID 165615499. Retrieved 23 July 2020.
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- ^ Lahr, M. Mirazon; Rivera, F.; Power, R. K.; Mounier, A.; Copsey, B.; Crivellaro, F.; Edung, J. E.; Fernandez, J. M. Maillo; Kiarie, C.; Lawrence, J.; Leakey, A.; Mbua, E.; Miller, H.; Muigai, A.; Mukhongo, D. M.; Baelen, A. Van; Wood, R.; Schwenninger, J.-L.; Gran, R.; Achyuthan, H.; Wilshaw, A.; Foley, R. A. (21 January 2016). "Inter-group violence among early Holocene hunter-gatherers of West Turkana, Kenya". Nature. 529 (7586): 394–411. Retrieved 26 March 2023 – via go.gale.com.
- ^ Handwerk, Brian (20 January 2016). "An Ancient, Brutal Massacre May Be the Earliest Evidence of War". Smithsonian Magazine. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 22 July 2020.
- ISBN 978-08-02824-00-4.
- ^ Bronowski 1973, p. 65.
- ^ Bronowski 1973, pp. 64–69.
- ^ Bronowski 1973, p. 69.
- ^ Pulses, Sugar and Tuber Crops by Chittaranjan Kole, 2007, Introduction 5.1.1, page 91, quoting Cubero JI (1981) Origin, taxonomy and domestication. In: Webb C, Hawtin G (eds) Lentils. CAB, Slough, UK, pp. 15–38.
- PMID 10731145.
- ^ What's Bred in the Bone, Discover (magazine), July 2000 ("After investigating bone collections from ancient sites across the Middle East, she found a dearth of adult male goat bones—and an abundance of female and young male remains—from a 10,000-year-old settlement called Ganj Dareh, in Iran's Zagros Mountains. This provides the earliest evidence of domesticated livestock, Zeder says".)
- PMID 19383791.
- ^ Chazan 2017, p. 197.
- PMID 19549877.
- ^ Ozkaya, Vecihi (June 2009). "Körtik Tepe, a new Pre-Pottery Neolithic A site in south-eastern Anatolia". Antiquity Journal, Volume 83, Issue 320.
- ^ Richard 2004, p. 244.
- ^ a b Bellwood 2004, p. 384.
- ^ Bury & Meiggs 1975, p. 6.
- ^ a b c Mithen 2003, p. 60.
- ^ S2CID 167007661.
- ^ a b Bronowski 1973, p. 125.
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