ANCIENT TIMELINE OF CONCORDANCES 4 - Current Turn Away From Galactic Center: 11,527 BCE to 5047 BCE
Last Mini-Ice Age followed by start of Neolithic. Floods, last 5500. Dispersal during floods. 6,000 years of obsidian-trading, use of boats.
Universal language?? And this must be when the rivers etc got their names. ?Civilizations later buried by flooding?
First writing (signs). Proto-IE (Samarran) & start of IE expansion.

Back


    ++++++++++ Converted to BCE ++++++++++    
    START OF LAST TURN AWAY FROM GALACTIC CENTER    






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  11,527 - Leo became the constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (rose heliacally) on March 21 ("11,300 - 9220")
Earth turned away from galactic center
11,500 - Egyptian beginning of time – Zep Tepi – appearance of Sirius (Robert Bauval) - ?starts Sothic Cycle?
                Sphinx faces Leo before sunrise on spring equinox (Gods of Eden)
                Was Giza Sphinx built to mark precession into Leo? (Origin Map) = away from galactic center (I say)

11,000 - 9500 Younger Dryas cold period. In North America, forty million animals - giant beavers, woolly mammoths, mastodons, sabre-tooth cats, woolly rhinoceroses, sloths, tapirs, Arctic foxes, giant tree sloths, and many other large mammals disappeared at the beginning.

11,500-10,550 granaries Jordan - Dhra' near the Dead Sea - predate farming by 1,000 years -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623150619.htm


10,700 - 9,600 - Termed Allerod or Younger Dryas, there was a dramatic fall in temperature to a level as cold as the Ice Age minimum. Rise in sea levels temporally reversed, with water locked up in ice caps and glaziers. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
10,860 and 10,740 - Two dramatic rises in temperature, following major debris impacts. Mass extinctions, followed by a plunge in temperatures. World wide geological ash zone 15 - 35mm in depth, making barrier between Clovis and Folsom peoples in North America. - Tectonic uplift and great floods causing Lake Victoria to discharge into the Nile. This led to a massive extension of the high level lakes and a surplus of water into the semi arid Sahel, and the Sahara region. It is suggested that the Earth's atmosphere was . . . depleted by impacts from this debris cloud around this time. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html


11th millennium BCE - Fekri Hassan of University College, London: Nile: extremely high floods (Gods of Eden p 219 & 265)

Sometime in the eleventh millennium B.C.E., a sudden natural disaster struck Tiahuanaco (Hendaye page 373)
10,909 - Astronomy: Galactic Center was at its northern culmination (The Origin Map)
10,500 - Giza Plateau oriented to Orion's belt three stars (Origin Map xvii: Bauval)


BRITAIN: Some [people] survived the Younger Dryas in the British Isles, forming a permanent nucleus. (OB, 117 & 153)
11,000 - 10,000 - Figures and needles carved from bone, Creswell Crags, Britain. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/08/0818_040818_ice_age_caveart.html


MIDDLE EAST (continuing):
12,500–10,800 BC Early Natufians settled in the woodland belt where oak and pistachio were prevailing species. The underbrush of this open woodland was grass with high frequencies of grain. The high mountains of Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon, the steppe areas of the Negev desert in Israel and Sinai, and the Syro-Arabian desert. Houses are semi-subterranean, often with a dry-stone foundation, superstructure probably of brushwood. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian

Largest communities found: Jericho, Ain Mallaha, and Wadi Hammeh 27. Hunter-gatherers; located settlements at the boundaries between coastal plains and hill country. Buried their dead in cemeteries, with grave goods including stone bowls and dentalium shell. http://archaeology.about.com/od/nterms/qt/natufian.htm

11,000 - Wild rye seeds selected and propagated for cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates in Syria.
http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html


Melian [Melos] obsidian is to be found on the Greek Mainland as early as the Upper Paleolithic period at Franchthi Cave: chipped stone industry consists of flint and chert for the most part, although a small amount of obsidian from Melos appears well before the end of the Paleolithic period (ca. 10,900 b.c.). (Franchthi Cave is unique in Greece in having an essentially unbroken series of deposits spanning the period from ca. 20,000 B.C. (and probably even earlier) down to ca. 3000 B.C.) http://projectsx.dartmouth.edu/classics/history/bronze_age/lessons/les/1.html



------------- warming --------------
10,500 - 8000 reoccupation of North America, from east & west coasts into central Canada & arctic
11,000 - spear points found near Clovis, New Mexico, America (1930s).
10,500 - pottery appeared for the first time in southern Japan (Oppenheimer)
(10,500-9500) marshes at Monte Verde, southern Chile (Met Museum)


Late Natufian (10,800–9,500 BC). Most likely occurred in tandem with the Younger Dryas.
(10,000–8200) Eynan/Ain Mallaha, northern Israel - Natufian villages (Met Museum)
Natufians lived in caves & open air settlements along the eastern Mediterranean coast, 10,000-8,000 B.C. Harvested and stored wild wheat and barley. Numbers of mortars and stones for grinding grains and seeds, and many toothed sickle blades of flint. Also tools made of bone: awls, needles, spatulae, reaping knives, fishhooks, and harpoons. Animal sculptures of bone represent a continuity of Upper Paleolithic traditions, while dentalium shells used for beads, imported from the Mediterranean and Red Seas, indicate [boats]. Hunted gazelle, deer, and pigs, and kept domesticated dogs. (Gimbutas) / At Ain Mallaha (in Israel), Anatolian obsidian and shellfish from the Nile-valley found. The source of malachite-beads is still unknown. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian
Earliest archaeological evidence for the domestication of the dog. At Ein Mallaha in Israel, dated to 10,000 BC, the remains of an elderly human and a four-to-five-month-old puppy were found buried together.
At the cave of Hayonim, a man was found buried with two canids. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natufian


10,000-9000- Asikli Höyük was built in three phases - near Askaray, southern Turkey. Grid Reference: 38.349° N. 34.23° E.
As in Catal Höyük, the houses were mud brick and entered through the roof. Large numbers of artefacts made from obsidian, as well as bone, antler and copper, with an array of blade types. Dead [also] buried beneath the floor, and one skeleton shows evidence of trepanation. Diet of meat from both wild and domesticated animals and a variety of cultivated barley, wheat, peas and lentils. http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/turkeyashikli.htm + http://www.asiklihoyuk.org/AHeng.html

Many Upper Euphrates (Syria) cities: http://www.canew.org/uppermesop14cbox.html

Cyprus: The first undisputed settlement occurred in the 9th (or perhaps 10th) millennium BC from the Levant.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Cyprus

9800 Kurdistan - Kermanshah - Sahneh (discovery announced in May 2009)


9500 Nevali Cori - Turkey - "cult center"?


(earlier than) 9500 - Göbekli Tepe, south-central Turkey - Round megalithic buildings, walls of un-worked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic roof supports of limestone, up to 3 m high, with a bigger pair of pillars in the centre of the structures. Floors of burnt lime, and low bench running along the exterior wall. Built into the hillside . . . Similar defensive structures existed at Jerf al Ahmar [Syria, 9500- ] and Nevali Cori [8000- ]. No traces of domesticated plants or animals . . . were hunter gatherers. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html [dates at 9000]

Jerf al Ahmar is situated on the left bank of the Middle Euphrates in Syria. Occupation from end of the tenth millennium to the beginning of the ninth millennium (BC cal.) and corresponds with the beginnings of agriculture. http://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/france-priorities_1/archaeology_2200/archaeology-notebooks_2202/ancient-east_2224/syria-jerf-el-ahmar_2230/index.html

9500 - climate warms: floods 2 start (increase of to 60 meters below present over the next 3000 years - OB, 158)
9500 - dramatic warm-up after the Younger Dryas (OB, 155) / calendar or corrected years ago, not 10,000.

9500 - Isnan's and Qadan's technological skills replaced by cruder: agriculture disappears from Egypt (Gods of Eden)

9500 - 8500 - The first farming communities (Pre-pottery Neolithic A) appeared in the warm conditions which marked the beginning of the postglacial period, and increased quantities of obsidian (both from Cappadocian and Bingöl sources) came into circulation. Although each source dominated in it own area (Cappadocian in the west and Bingöl in the east), some Bingöl obsidian reached the middle Euphrates and some traveled further down the Levant.
http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/ObsidianRoutes/ObsidianRoutes.php

9500 - Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan, above Greater Zab river, 325 miles ENE of Abu Hureyra (N Syria) - copper pendant             (then no more metalwork found until 7200) [Quest for the Past: flowers in graves]

Copper pendant, northern Iraq, dates to 8700 BC. http://www.copper.co.za/education/history.htm

VERY EARLIEST NEOLITHIC IN MIDDLE EAST:
9700 - 8500 - Fig tree earliest domesticated plant. (June 2, 2006 Science magazine) evidence for parthenocarpic figs at the Pre Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA 8300-7300 BC) sites of Gilgal, Jericho, Netiv Hagdud and Gesher (Jordan Valley) and Mureybit (Euphrates Valley), at roughly the same time as rice domestication in Asia, but 5000 years earlier than millet or wheat or any other seed plant in the middle east. http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/a/fig_trees.htm
9000 - 7500 - Introduction into Cyprus of domesticated Mesopotamian fallow deer, with sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Hunter gatherers change to farmers, at some sites such as Mureybet, in less than 100 years. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

8500 - 6000 Azilian [late Paleolithic] (Gimbutas, 331)
8000 - Mureybet, on west bank of Upper Euphrates in N Syria: earliest examples of 'lightly fired clay vessels'. (Gods of Eden)

9500 - agriculture & domestic animals: Tell Abu Hureyra on Upper Euphrates in N Syria - stone pestles, rubbing stones, milling stones - wild barley, einkorn (wild) wheat, wild rye + not indigenous (Gods of Eden page 267)
[9000 - einkorn wheat harvested Syria. (Bradshaw)]
Around 9000 - sheep first domesticated in northern Mesopotamia and einkorn wheat harvested in Syria. (Oppenheimer)
late 10th millennium - Iraqi Kurdistan: Zawi Chemi: grinding stones to produce flour from wild cereal grains (Gods of Eden)


9500 - from Alaska > Inuit, Aleut, Na-Dene speakers
(ca. 9500–3000) Blackwater Draw, New Mexico: projectile points (Clovis & Folsom)


9400 Mali ceramic - Africa's earliest


There are two notable absentee regions to that first Eurasian flowering of agricultural skills - the east coast of Asia and Southeast Asia. There is fragmentary evidence of a Neolithic lifestyle in East Asia, with a wide range of tools such as choppers, scrapers, awls and grind ing stones, as well as pots, hearths and kitchen waste going back to a much earlier period. Tends to be scattered in inland caves. Almost total absence of open Neolithic sites in lowland areas dating from 10,000 to 5000 BC.

As Peter Bellwood has pointed out the prime 'home' sites for the culture of rice - where, climatically, the least manipulation is required to grow it - are in tropical Indo-China down to the Malay border, Burma, Bangladesh and the extreme south coast
of China. (Oppenheimer)

Southeast Asia was the cradle of plant and animal domestication. People had easy access to fish, so they could settle in one place. Bananas/plantains are native from Behar north to the Himalayas and Malaya. The ginger family, including turmeric. Aroids, especially taro. Yam - east side of Bay of Bengal and Indochina. Palms (sago palm, pandans, bamboos, sugar cane) - India & Indochina Dicotyledon shrubs, vines, trees - leguminous derris cultivated for fish poison (perhaps the original way fish were caught) and insecticide, breadfruits, citrus, persimmon. They cultivated mostly carbohydrates for starch and sugar. Protein, fats and oils came from fish.

Southeast Asia domesticated animals of the household - dog, pig, fowl, duck, and goose.
(Southwest Asia domesticated herd animals.) (Seeds, Spades, Hearths, and Herds - Carl O. Sauer 1972/


  Languages:
(African)
Agglutinative:
Bantu (Luganda)
Dravidian
Austronesian
Saharan
Vasconic

or: Nostratic >
Afro-Asiatic
Kartvelian
Dravidian
Eurasiatic > Altaic, Uralic, Indo-European





Magdalenian still in Europe? but mostly overall withdrawal from Europe to Mediterranean refuges?

15,000 - 10,000
Blood Type B develops in Himalayan highlands. First appears in India or the Urals among a mix of Caucasion and Mongolian tribes.
Moved on to Eastern Europe, northern and southern China, India.









10,900 -
GREECE obsidian use
CYCLADES














ANATOLIA
obsidian use & trade
10,000-8200
Natufian
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Asikli Hoyuk





Barley cultivated (first?)

10,000- Holocene geological epoch. It has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS 1, and can be considered an interglacial in the current ice age.














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First copper use

 








































































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9367 - Cancer became the constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (rose heliacally) on March 21
9220 - Last time Regulus rose and was visible on eastern horizon just prior to equinox sunrise: sign that Leo had ended, and floods predicted by rain would start.

One of the earliest Neolithic sites in India is Lahuradewa, at Middle Ganges region, C14 dated around 7th millennium BCE. Recently another site near the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers called Jhusi yielded a C14 dating of 7100 BCE for its Neolithic levels. A new 2009 report by archaeologist Rakesh Tewari on Lahuradewa shows new C14 datings that range between 8000 BCE and 9000 BCE associated with rice, making Lahuradewa the earliest Neolithic site in entire South Asia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic


9220 - 3150 - no major building construction in Egypt (none discovered yet)

Nabta Playa, (Sahara), southwestern Egypt, is a large, internally drained basin, which during the early Holocene (ca. 9,000 - 3500) was a large and important ceremonial center. Megalithic structures. http://www.comp-archaeology.org/WendorfSAA98.html

9000 - obsidian workshop discovered at Kaletepe at the foot of Mount Göllü in the volcanic region of Cappadocia. http://www.thy.com/en-int/skylife/archive/en/2003_2/konu4.htm

9000 - Jericho: The earliest settlement was located at the present-day Tell es-Sultan (or Sultan's Hill).
Construction at the site apparently began before the invention of agriculture, with construction of stone of the Natufian culture structures beginning earlier than 9000 BCE. Includes obsidian from unknown source. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho


The first Austronesian speakers are believed to have originated on the island of Taiwan following the migration of a group, or groups, of Pre-Austronesian speaking peoples from continental Asia approximately 10,000-6000 B.C. Due to a lengthy split from these populations, the Proto-Austronesian language and cultures emerged on Taiwan. (Blust,1988) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_people
9000 - evidence of pots being made in China and Indo-China
9000 - 8000 - squash on the tropical coast of Ecuador / rice along the marshy banks of the Yangtze in China. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
(9000–3000) Pachmari Hills, central India - cave paintings
India: At the Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka humans lived throughout the Upper Paleolithic (10th to 8th millennia BC), revealing cave paintings dating to ca. 7000 BC; the Sivaliks and the Potwar (Pakistan) region also exhibit many vertebrate fossil remains and paleolithic tools. Chert, jasper and quartzite were often used by humans during this period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_Stone_Age

(9000–8000) Fell's Cave, far southern Chile
9000 - 8000 Folsom points (?=Americas?)
9000 - 7000 first evidence of boats, as waters are receding
           (says Dennis Stanford re Clovis-Solutrean arrowheads - History Channel: Journey to 10,000 BCE (2008))

9000 - Sheep bred at Zawi Chemi Shanidar, Zagros region, Turkey - Archaeological Atlas of the World -Whitehouse 1975


8500 - The full impact of farming and domestic livestock came with Pre-pottery Neolithic B after 8500 BC, when farming communities expanded both to Cyprus and Cappadocia – in the latter case, no doubt drawn by the high-grade obsidian resources, which were traded around the entire middle Euphrates and Levant, and indeed over to Cyprus. Bingöl obsidian now traveled east as far as the middle Zagros. http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/ObsidianRoutes/ObsidianRoutes.php

8500 - Advance of woodland vegetation in Eastern Turkey and Western Iran, not completed until 3,500 BC.
http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html


8300 - Occupation of Tell Qarqur on the Orontes river at the northern edge of the Ghab Valley in NW Syria. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
8200 - end of Natufian (see above)


8200 - Sudden drought leading to the rapid drying up of many of Africa's lakes, leaving layers of dead fish in the sediments. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
__________________________________________
8000 - (both) "Würm and Wisconsin glaciation ended" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_glaciation
America: glaciers reached their maximum extent 13,000 and had almost completely melted by 8,000. It was during this glacial advance that a finger from the glacial ice sheet moved south through the Purcell Trench in northern Idaho, near present day Lake Pend Oreille, damming the Clark Fork River creating Glacial Lake Missoula.
Glacial Lake Missoula, which existed on and off during the last ice age. The lake formed in the valleys of western Montana when glaciers cut off valley's exit, causing water to pile up behind them. Eventually, the lake reached depths of over 2,000 feet before the combination of pressure, melting, and the buoyancy of ice caused the glacial dam to fail. At that point, the lake emptied at a rate of about 10 cubic miles an hour, taking much of the topsoil of eastern Washington into the Pacific with it and leaving scars visible to this day. http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2006/03/3154.ars + http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/story.html

8000 - Edakkal, Wayanad district of Kerala, India. Three pre-historic caves (Edakkal Caves) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edakkal

8000 BC (before) Yuchanyan Site, China - Site in the period between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Daoxian County, Hunan Province - early pottery and cultivated rice. http://www.chinaculture.org/cnstatic/doc/exhibition/20e.doc

FULL NEOLITHIC IN MIDDLE EAST AND ANATOLIA:

By 8000 - cereals were fully domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean area, and the Natufian culture was followed in the east Mediterranean and Anatolia by Pre-Pottery Neolithic (food-producing culture without pottery). (Gimbutas)

8000 - fully domesticated wheat, barley, pulses Jericho (Jordan, NW of Dead Sea)
8000 - Sagalassos, southwestern Turkey, earliest settlement - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagalassos
8000 - Nevali Cori (now under south-central Turkey reservoir) - Cereals cultivated and animals domesticated.
Nevali Çori: copper: looks more smelted than worked, like in Tell Ramad, Magzalia and other sites.http://www.canew.org/debhauptmannbox.html
8000 maize may have been domesticated in Mexico - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080627163156.htm

8,000 - carvings - pictograms, uncovered at Jerf el Ahmar, Syria, on the left bank of the Euphrates River. Four of them appear to be some sort of tool with a large groove on one side and combinations of lines, arrows and animal outlines carved on the other side. Two smaller flat oval-shaped rocks are engraved on both sides. One depicts a large insect connected to an owl-like figure with circles as eyes; its other side is covered with 34 crescent shapes bearing dots. The second flat stone bears arrows, zigzags, and other shapes on one side and a grid and snake on the other. [First writing?] (New Scientist, December 1996)

"The sequence at Diaotonghuan . . . spans the later Pleistocene into the early Neolithic period. This cavern overlooks a small, swampy basin (Zhao 1998). The excavators have identified 16 sequential zones of occupation, and recovered samples of rice phytoliths, the hard silica bodies found in the rice plant. . . . rice was again abundantly represented during zone E, 8000-6000 BC. . . . (Genetic Linguistic Archaeological Perspectives on Human Diversity in Southeast Asia - Li Jin, Mark Seielstad, Chunjie Xiao 2002 (page 7) - C. F. W. Higham)


early eighth millennium BC - Ganj Dara, near Kermanshah in Iranian Kurdistan, fired pottery and tiny clay figurines, far in advance of the stone, wood, plaster and basketry work typical of this period. (Gods of Eden, 28)
eighth millennium BC - foothills of Kurdistan: clay tokens for trading. Became smaller and more complex. (Gods of Eden)


8,000 - "First animal domesticated"[not] (in Mideast at least - not): goats
Zagros Mountains that run through western Iran and northeastern Iraq - http://www.mnh.si.edu/highlight/goats/
two distinct places of domestication: the Euphrates river valley at Nevali Çori, Turkey (11,000 bp), and the Zagros Mountains of Iran at Ganj Dareh (10,000). http://archaeology.about.com/od/domestications/qt/goats.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat
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8000 - 5000 absence of open Neolithic low sites in East Asia [perhaps now underwater??]
8000 - 5000 absence of Paleolithic sites in Egypt - http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/paleo/mappal4.html (& next map)
8000 - 4500 Egypt Nile, eastern Sahara green savannah (rains) = period when Giza Sphinx could get rain markings


8000 - Recolonisation of Britain & Scandinavia (date included in the big sweep date above)
Sand, on the Inner Sound coast of the Applecross Peninsula in Western Scotland. A small number of shell middens were known as rare traces of Mesolithic settlement when a rock shelter and shell midden at Sand, Applecross on the coast of Wester Ross, Scotland was selected for detailed excavation. Around 7500 BC the first users of the rock shelter had worked antler and stone to make tools. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sand%2C_Applecross


Vennemann argues for an ancient post-glacial European language sub-stratum on the basis of river-names. He calls this language family Vasconic (i.e. linguistically like the Basque and as with their re-expansion, originating in the Basque refuge and spreading north, west and east). (OB, 248) [UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE??]

7600 Paris - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/dig-shows-paris-is-3000-years-older-than-first-thought-854341.html

7500 separation of Ireland from Europe

7500 - 6000 river deltas formed >>> agriculture success

7500 - 7000 During the Late PPNB the first pieces of Cappadocian obsidian appeared on the north-Levantine coast, and at the same time greater exchanges between the eastern and western wings of the northern Fertile Crescent were mediated through sites like Bouqras on the Euphrates, sustained by its trading links in both directions. In many parts of the region the traffic was handled by major sites such as Çatalhöyük, Tell Abu Hureyra, Beisamoun, Ain Ghazal and Tell Basta. http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/ObsidianRoutes/ObsidianRoutes.php

7500 - 7000 - First stone beads: extremely long PERFORATED beads of hard agate, carnelian, quartz, i.e.
- Abu Hureyra (agate beads to 5.5 cm) (N Syria)
- Ashikli Hoyuk, near Aksaray in S Turkey (burgundy agate necklace of 10 oval and butterfly wing-shaped beads (2.5 to 5.5 cm).

7260 - 5620 rice, pottery, adzes Sakai Cave, Malay Peninsula - first large-scale rice-growing? (Oppenheimer)

 











OBSIDIAN TRADING

Kaletepe, Turkey obsidian


JERICHO obsidian














































Fully domesticated barley



Writing / Alphabet

8000 - Jerf el Ahmar on the Upper Euphrates of N Syria: earliest writing: on flat, oval-shaped stones: lines, arrows, animals. (Gods of Eden)



8000 - 6000 giraffe petroglyphs in Niger. Dabous carving (Sahara).



FIRST RETURN TO EUROPE AFTER LGM ?





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7207 - Gemini became the constellation that rose in the east just before the sun (rose heliacally) on March 21

Graves: "original" zodiac: Fish at winter solstice, ram, bull, twins at spring equinox, crab, lion, virgin at summer solstice, scales, scorpion, bowman at fall equinox, goat, waterman (page 380-381)

7200 - Cayonu: 250 miles WNW of Shanidar cave, 37 miles N of Diyarbakir (E central Turkey): copper: two pins, one bent fish-hook and a reamer or awl. Later other copper items, including oval-shaped beads. Trade spread to other sites in Kurdistan.

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7250 - 5000 - 'Ain Ghazal, North-Eastern Jordan, on the outskirts of Amman. Neolithic site. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/'Ain_Ghazal
Einkom wheat, emmer wheat and two-row barley were domesticated during the 8th and 7th millennia in settlements
between southeast Europe and Afghanistan. (Gimbutas)


By 7000 - Barley cultivation was developed in the Indus Valley. (Oppenheimer)
Mehrgarh, one of the most important Neolithic (7000 BC to c. 2500 BC) sites in archaeology, lies on what is now the "Kachi plain" of today's Balochistan, Pakistan. It is one of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia.
Early Mehrgarh residents lived in mud brick houses, stored their grain in granaries, fashioned tools with local copper ore, and lined their large basket containers with bitumen. They cultivated six-row barley, einkorn and emmer wheat, jujubes and dates, and herded sheep, goats and cattle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh

By 7000 - root crops such as taro grown in New Guinea Highlands, using ditches to drain swamps for crop-growing. (Oppenheimer)

By 7000 - crop cultivation started in North, Central and South America. (Oppenheimer)

7000 - 4000 warm and wet "Moist Phase' / much human activity at Nabta Playa, Egypt (Wendorf excavations) [= RETURN]
7,000 - High and wild stage of the Nile peaks through the reduction of rainfall at the two key river sources. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
7000 - agriculture spread as far as Pakistan,
first farming villages Asia Minor, first pots in Near East.
Sheep were domesticated in the hilly flanks of the Zagros Mountains (Iran, Iraq) and in the Taurus Mountains (Turkey) before 7000 B.C. where they had previously been hunted in the wild. (Gimbutas)
7000 - Cayonu, Turkey: Old World's earliest known piece of cloth, wrapped around an antler, linen? woven from local flax? - http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13918831.300-strands-from-the-dawn-of-time-.html
7000 - first evidence of the Neolithic on the island of Crete (ceramics) - http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/History/Minoans.html

7000 - Abu Hureyra: large cockleshell with traces of powdered malachite (not native), used in predynastic Egypt as eye shadow. (N Syria)
7500-5700 / 7000 - Çatalhöyük / Çatal Höyük: first evidence of activity - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatalhöyük
7000 Metsamor Armenia
7000 - first evidence of agriculture in New Guinea (Met Museum)
7,000 - A mixed fermented wine of rice, honey and fruit was being drunk in Northern China.
http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

(7000–5700) Jiahu - Yellow River basin of Henan Province, central China -
            houses, kilns, pottery, turquoise carvings, tools made from stone and bone, bone flutes (Met Museum)


India Neolithic: 7000 - 5500 The aceramic Neolithic (Mehrgarh I,Baluchistan, Pakistan). One of the earliest Neolithic sites in India is Lahuradewa, at Middle Ganges region, C14 dated around 7th millennium BC.[5]. Recently another site near the confluence of Ganges and Yamuna rivers called Jhusi yielded a C14 dating of 7100 BC for its Neolithic levels.[6]

South India Neolithic 3000 -1400. Characterized by Ashmounds since 2500 BC in Karnataka region, expanded later to Tamil Nadu. Comparative excavations carried out in Adichanallur in Thirunelveli District and in Northern India have provided evidence of a southward migration of the Megalithic culture[7]

The ceramic Neolithic lasts up to 3300 BC, blending into the Early Harappan (Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age) period.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Asian_Stone_Age

7,000 - Oldest dated remains on the 13-hectacre Catalhoyuk (Catal hoyuk/Çatal Hüyük) site in Southern Turkey, containing hundreds of buildings packed tightly together with common walls, and with entrances through the roofs. British archaeologist James Mellaart, then at the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, estimated that it was home for 10,000 people. Christian O'Brien identified fruit fly chromosomes drawn on the walls of one of the key buildings. . . . similar Stone Age towns or cities, such as Mureybet in Syria, started to turn up all over the eastern Mediterranean. . . . http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html
Obsidian tools were probably both used and traded for items such as Mediterranean sea shells and flint from Syria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Çatal_Hüyük
The finest Anatolian obsidian was mined at the base of Hasan Dag. Catal Huyuk, located near rivers in a flat, game-filled plain, was an ideal trading site for the obsidian. http://www.telesterion.com/catal2.htm

7000 - 6500 In the Final PPNB period (in which pottery was in use in some areas) the coastal parts of the northern Levant, previously showing no evidence of Neolithic occupation (and probably occupied by forest foragers) now show impressive amounts of Cappadocian obsidian in Neolithic contexts. This probably indicates a new trade route to the Levant via Cilicia and the coast. This supplemented the earlier central-Euphrates route, and reduced the role of the Levantine super-sites such as Ain Ghazal, which had previously enjoyed a near-monopoly. Obsidian now reached a greater diversity of sites by a variety of routes. http://www.archatlas.dept.shef.ac.uk/ObsidianRoutes/ObsidianRoutes.php

7000 - oldest neolithic inhabitant of the Balkans, in a position that is typical for the neolithic burials, left side down in a contracted position with the knees reaching up to the head level and with the arms clenched. Grncarica, Macedonia. http://www.makfax.com.mk [see full cite]
7000 - First human presence in the locality of Lepenski Vir - Mesolithic - Serbia, central Balkan peninsula - wikipedia

NEOLITHIC MOVES INTO SOUTHEAST EUROPE:
Cattle and pigs were domesticated between 7500 and 6500 B.C. in Anatolia. (Gimbutas)
By 7000-6500 B.C., the Near East
and southeast Europe were sharing a full agrarian complex wherein all communities were dependent upon a rich variety of cereals, legumes (peas and lentils), sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle. It was in this period that the production of ceramics was discovered. (Gimbutas)

7000 - another type of ceramic flow sailed [boats] west along the north coast of the Mediterranean from the Italian and Sicilian coastlines to the Mediterranean coasts of France and Spain. The ceramics in this instance had attractive dotted and
dashed lines created by making impressions on the wet clay with the edge of a cockle (Cardium) shell. Cardial Impressed Ware or just Cardial Ware. None of the early Cardial Ware sites show evidence of a full farming lifestyle (e.g. cereals and animal domestication) apart, possibly, from some sheep. (OB, 202)


7000 - Stonehenge car park: A set of post-holes, held three very large pine trunks each nearly a metre in diameter. (OB, 162)

The earliest traces of human activity in the Cyclades date to the 7th millennium BC and come from Melos, which seems to have been visited by people from mainland Greece in search of high-quality obsidian. This hard volcanic rock was extensively used throughout the Aegean in the Neolithic period but also in the Bronze Age for the manufacture of cutting tools and weapons. http://www.cycladic.gr/frontoffice/portal.asp?cpage=NODE&cnode=36

Neolithic Jarmo, settled around 7000 BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Ancient_Mesopotamia
6750 - Jarmo village, on a tributary of the Lesser Zab river in foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan: copper items, as well as a single bead made of smelted lead, oldest metallurgy in Old World. (Kurdistan mountains teem with ore deposits.)
6750-5750 Jarmo figures with heads with almond-shaped eyes.


6,600 - 6,200 - 11 separate symbols inscribed on the tortoise shells, buried with human remains in 24 Neolithic graves unearthed at Jiahu in Henan province, western China. Aggregations of small pebbles were found close to several of the tortoise shells. The Jiahu researchers propose that the shells once contained the pebbles and were used as musical rattles in shamanistic rituals. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2956925.stm
The archaeologists say they bear similarities to written characters used thousands of years later during the Shang dynasty, which lasted from 1700-1100 BC.


6500-5800 - earliest sign of rice in China is further up the Yangtze at Pengtoushan, but it is not clear if the grains were from wild or domesticated plants. (Oppenheimer)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6600 - sea levels reach maximum after 300 year increase, floods peak at 12 meters below present; then recede a bit during the next 1600? years (OB, 158)
6000 - 5500 floods 3 = final dramatic rise - migrations Op
6500 - Land bridge between Europe and Britain disappears (Origins of the British = OB, 2)
NEOLITHIC MOVES INTO EUROPE:
6,800 -- 4000 BC Agriculture spread rapidly across Europe - Analysis of ancient Middle Eastern pig remains across Europe reveals that although cultural exchange did happen, Europe was definitely colonised by Middle Eastern farmers. (But within 500 years after the local domestication of the European wild boar, the new domestics completely replaced the Middle Eastern pigs that had arrived in Europe as part of the 'farming package'.) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070903204822.htm
6500 to 5500 B.C - Domestication of cattle and pigs was continued locally in Europe. (Gimbutas)

6500 - 3500 Neolithic in east-central and southeast Europe (Gimbutas, 331): E Adriatic & W Yugoslavia; Greece & Thessaly; Central Balkans, E Balkans; S Romania, & Thrace; Transylvania; Moldavia & W Ukraine; Middle Danube; Tisza.
6500 - 3000 Neolithic in western and central Mediterranean (Gimbutas, 331): Iberia; S France & Brittany; Sardinia & Corsica; Malta; Italy.

Apparently related with the Anatolian culture of Hacilar, the Greek region of Thessalia is the first place of Europe known to have developed agriculture, cattle-herding and pottery. These early stages are know as pre-Sesklo culture. The Thessalian Neolithic culture soon evolves in the more coherent culture of Sesklo (c. 6000 B.C.), which is the origin of the main branches of Neolithic expansion in Europe. Practically all the Balkans Peninsula is colonized in the 6th millennium from there. That expansion, reaching the easternmost Tardenoisian outposts of the upper Tisza gives birth to the proto-Linear Pottery culture, a significant modification of the Balkan Neolithic that will be in the origin of one of the most important branches of European Neolithic: the Danubian group of cultures. In parallel, the coasts of the Adriatic and southern Italy witness the expansion of another Neolithic current of less clear origins. Settling initially in Dalmatia, the bearers of the Cardium Pottery culture may have come from Thessalia (some of the pre-Sesklo settlements show related traits) or even from Lebanon (Byblos). They are sailors, fishermen and sheep and goat herders, and the archaeological findings show that they mixed with natives in most places. Other early Neolithic cultures can be found in Ukraine and Southern Russia, where the epi-Gravettian locals assimilated cultural influxes from beyond the Caucasus (culture of Dniepr-Don and related) and in Andalusia (Spain), where the rare Neolithic of La Almagra Pottery appears without known origins very early (c. 5800 B.C.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_Europe
6500 - minor freeze-up (OB, 154)
6400 - 6000 shorter cold spell
6200 - abrupt cooling event across the Northern Hemisphere and which is documented by multiple types of paleoclimate records as lasting several decades to a few centuries. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/legrande_01/


6500-3100 - oldest known place of worship dedicated to the dugong, or sea cow, on an island just north of Dubai, Arabia
http://www.physorg.com/news173036950.html

6400 - 4900 Orion in the position at summer solstice that appears to be reflected in Nabta Playa structures (Origin Map)
            and this is the other extreme of the tilt angle of Orion from 16,500 BCE
6000 - 5000 Nabta Playa, Egypt - (The Origin Map: oriented to Pole Star Vega) -
            "earliest Neolithic settlement in Egypt". Pottery and grain (barley) (Wendorf/Schild 1980: 277),
            but hunting of hares and gazelles was still important - http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/paleo/nabtaplaya.html
6000 - 5000? Egypt: Fayum, Qarunian Mesolithic knives and scrapers - http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/fayum/fayumb.html

6000 - 4000 BC. - Egypt: Faiyum culture had flint arrowheads and stone tools. Crude pottery without decoration. Sickle blades of wood and stone. Mixed hunter/farmer society. - http://www.nemo.nu/ibisportal/0egyptintro/2aegypt/index.htm

The Vinča signs, also known as the Vinča alphabet, Vinča-Turdaş script, or Old European script, are a set of symbols found on prehistoric artifacts from southeastern Europe. Some believe they constitute a writing system of the Vinča culture, which inhabited the region around 6000-4000 BC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinča_signs

Hassuna or Tell Hassuna is an ancient Mesopotamian site situated in Iraq, south of Mosul. By around 6000 BC people had moved into the foothills (piedmont) of northernmost Mesopotamia where there was enough rainfall to allow for "dry" agriculture in some places. These were the first farmers in northernmost Mesopotamia (the region known as Assyria). They made Hassuna style pottery[1] (cream slip with reddish paint in linear designs). Hassuna people lived in small villages or hamlets ranging from 2 to 8 acres (32,000 m2). Even the largest Hassuna sites were smaller than PPNA Jericho had been 1000 years before and much smaller than Çatal Hüyük, which was still occupied in Anatolia. Probably few if any Hassuna villages exceeded 500 people. At Tell Hassuna, adobe dwellings built around open central courts with fine painted pottery replace earlier levels with crude pottery. Hand axes, sickles, grinding stones, bins, baking ovens and numerous bones of domesticated animals reflect settled agricultural life. Female figurines have been related to worship and jar burials within which food was placed related to belief in afterlife. The relationship of Hassuna pottery to that of Jericho suggests that village culture was becoming widespread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hassuna
(The most neolithic site in Assyria is at Tell Hassuna, the center of the Hassuna culture.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria


6000 - Strikingly large houses uncovered during excavations at Tell el-Oueili (a few kilometres east of [later] Uruk). Occupation of a well planned 20ha Neolithic village at Sha'ar Hagolan, with paved streets, monumental courtyard size houses, sophisticated social organisation and one of the richest collections of pre-historic art ever found. [near later Sumer] http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

6000 - Southeast Asia: obsidian started being moved greater distances + first Austronesian dispersal (Oppenheimer)
THIS WOULD BE WHEN AUSTRONESIANS OF SUNDALAND COULD HAVE BEEN DISPERSING
AND DOES ALLOW TIES TO START OF SUMER. AND HOW ABOUT HALAF?
AND IS THIS WHEN THE RIVERS GOT THEIR SIMILAR-ROOTED NAMES?

Ancient reed craft [boats] are traditional to Lake Titicaca Bolivia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Sumer and Indus Valley (Heyerdahl)

6000s - Early Neolithic people on the western side of India started agriculture, planting six-row barley, and herding cattle, sheep and goats. (Oppenheimer)
6000 - Indus Valley civilization (Harrappan culture) has its earliest roots in Mehrgarh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harapa
One of the earliest sites with evidence of farming (wheat and barley) and herding (cattle, sheep and goats) in South Asia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh


6000 separation of Britain from Europe (Oppenheimer)
6000 obsidian trading intensifies (Oppenheimer)

Çatalhöyük / Çatal Höyük (~6000 BC) features native copper artifacts and smelted lead beads, but no smelted copper. http://www.copper.co.za/education/history.htm

5900 Neolithic beginnings in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, E Baltic: Maglemose & Kunda (Gimbutas, 335)
Semites in Sweden - http://home.swipnet.se/~w-93783/main.html

--------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- ---------------------------
START OF THE COPPER AGE, START OF INDO-EUROPEANS
5850 - Arrival of
Neolithic farmers speaking an unknown language, bringing elements of Samara culture (6,000 BCE).
The Samara culture was an eneolithic (copper age) culture of the early 5th millennium BC at the Samara bend region of the middle Volga, discovered during archaeological excavations near the village of Syezzheye (Съезжее) in Russia.
The Eneolithic culture of the region is a proper name, referring to the Samara culture, the subsequent Khvalynsk culture and the still later early Yamna culture. [Yamna = Kurgan]
Samara culture sites: Other sites are Varfolomievka (on the Volga, actually part of the North Caspian culture) and Mykol'ske (on the Dnieper). Varfolomievka is as early as 5500 BC. These three cultures have roughly the same range. Marija Gimbutas was the first to regard it as the Urheimat (homeland) of the Proto-Indo-European language and to hypothesize that the Eneolithic culture of the region was in fact Indoeuropean. If this model is true, then the Samara culture becomes overwhelmingly important for Indo-European studies.
"Arrival of Neolithic farmers speaking a Proto-Euphratean language 5,850 BCE, bringing elements of Samara culture (6,000 BCE). The following Hadji Muhammed culture pioneers irrigation. Rivers, most Sumerian cities and crafts were named in Proto -Euphratean" [Sumer and Elam ppt]

--------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- --------------------------- ---------------------------

5750-ish - Canaries found (SunGod)

5750 - 4500 Halaf culture, originally noted above Khabur river near Ras al'Ain on Syrian-Turkish border
            (glazed pottery). Spread all over Kurdistan - thought of have been the
prime movers of obsidian trade.
            
Obtained from extinct volcano Nemrut Dag on SW shores of Lake Van. (Gods of Eden)
Halaf period: Tell Arpachiyah near Mosul in foothills of Iraqi Kurdistan: painted polychrome pottery of exceptional quality.
            Had cobbled streets, rectangular buildings, and round buildings with domed vaults (cf Mycenaea tholoi burial houses).
            Steatite pendants and small discs marked with incised designs (> stamp seals of Akkad, Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia.)
Halaf: Copper was also known, but was not used for tools. Glazed pottery painted with geometric and animal designs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halaf

- 5,000 - Sabi-Abyad (30 acres) polished obsidian, copper smelting, metal working, electro plating and the superb quality Halaf ceramics. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

5500 - Copper mining/trade at Gaza - Later early Egyptian Dynasty's require payment for Sinai copper in gold.
http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html


mid 6th millennium - inundation of the Black Sea > start of Pro-Indo-European dispersion (Fredrik T. Hiebert hypothesis)
6000 - 4000 - proposed: that a Proto-Indo-European existed as a living language, in the plains to the north of the Black Sea.
5500 - final over-topping 'flood' of the Black Sea (OB, 155) (floods)
Signs of human habitation hundreds of feet below the Black Sea where a catastrophic flood occurred 5500 BC,''rectangular structure,'' possibly that of a building, about 310 feet below the sea's surface. The rectangular structure measures about 12-feet in width and is 45-feet long, with carved wooden beams, wooden branches and stone tools collapsed among the mud matrix. "It's architecture and artifacts were of the Neolithic bronze age, which is from about 5000 BC,'' said Ballard. The team's chief archeologist, Fredrik Hiebert, said it was typical of the wattle and daub homes seen on land. "This looks to me, as an archeologist familiar with this region, like the typical architecture of the people who lived around the Black Sea,'' he said.
Explorer Finds Evidence of Life Before Great Flood - September 13, 2000 http://www.sullivan-county.com/z/black_sea.htm - Robert Ballard


5600 - Neolithic beginnings in Central Europe (Upper Danube): LBK pottery
5500 - DNA from the mitochondria of 24 skeletons of early farmers from 16 locations in Germany, Austria and Hungary, belonging to well known cultures that can be identified by the decorations on their pottery -- the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) and the Alföldi Vonaldiszes Kerámia (AVK). Six of these 24 skeletons contain genetic signatures that are extremely rare in modern European populations. Based on this discovery, the researchers conclude that early farmers did not leave much of a genetic mark on modern European populations. (2005) http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/11/051112125213.htm

5500 - Europe began milk drinking - region between the central Balkans and central Europe.

5500 – 4800 Samarran Culture identified at Tell Sawwan, where evidence of irrigation—including flax—
            establishes the presence of a prosperous settled culture with a highly organized social structure.
            Fine pottery: dark-fired backgrounds with stylized figures of animals, birds, geometric designs.
            Widely-exported, one of the first widespread, relatively uniform pottery styles in the Ancient Near East.


India: Mehrgarh residents of 5500 - 2600 put much effort into crafts, including flint knapping, tanning, bead production, and metal working. The site was occupied continuously until about 2600. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrgarh

5500 - Pre-Sumerian temple of Eridu, by mouth of Euphrates, established. Lots of fish bones.
5500 - 4750 - Jarmo in Iraqi Kurdistan: able to perforate hard stones: harder tip drills?? [techniques reappear]
5400 - Eridu, earliest city in southern Mesopotamia, founded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eridu ? = ? Samarra?
5400 - 5000 - Hajji Firuz Tepe in Zagros mountains of Iranian Kurdistan: first alcoholic beverage - wine similar to the retsina.


5,400 - Second sudden drought leading to the rapid drying up of many of Africa's lakes, leaving layers of dead fish in the sediments. Evidence of sudden global catastrophic events effecting climate. http://www.goldenageproject.org.uk/chronology.html

Lepenski Vir - Mesolithic - Serbia, central Balkan peninsula. It consists of one large settlement with around ten satellite villages 5300 - 4800 BC- culture reaching its peak - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepenski_Vir
"A rocky terrace . . . on the banks of the Danube in Yugoslavia is the site of Europe's oldest known settlement. The meticulously proportioned houses, spaced evenly with paved alleyways running behind them, were laid out in an odd trapezoidal shape. Each had a floor made of a sophisticated concretelike substance - baked limestone mixed with water, sand, and gravel. Embedded in it were post-hole support, threshold stones, a hearth, and a spherical boulder working the center of the house. Curious stone triangles were set around the hearth - possibly as some form of ancestor worship - and also occasional sandstone figures . . . The roof structures, angled upward at the entrance to allow smoke to escape, was probably covered with skins.
"Some experts believe that the people who lived at Lepenski Vir were speakers of the original Indo-European tongue. Nourished by a plentiful supply of fish, game, and wild fruits, many of them lived well into their seventies and eighties, free from hunger and disease. One day, however, they simply vanished, leaving a fine layer of dark sand over their stone tools, their sculpture, and their engimatic, methodically planned architecture." [Mysteries of the Past, 1977, 277]

275, 278 "evidence in favor of a Danubian origin for the Indo-Europeans, rather than one farther south. The Danube basin, for climatic reasons, would have been only moderately attractive to immigrant Mediterranean farmers, as compared with regions to the west, such as the Adriatic coast and southern Italy. Near the Mediterranean (including most of the Vardar Valley), winters are mild and moist, with summers hot and dry, so that crops are typically sown in winter or early spring in order to be harvested before the dry heat of summer sets in. North of the Balkans and adjacent mountain ranges, however, the climate changes rather abruptly from one like that of central California to one more like that of Iowa - rainfall throughout the year, and much colder winters. Crops must therefore be sown either in the fall, and allowed to winter over (thus, "winter wheat"), or in late spring, when the danger of frost is past. This amounts to saying that farmers from Greece could not simply have moved into the Danube basin; they would have needed to develop new agricultural techniques and probably also new strains of crop plants. It may well be for this reason that it took nearly a thousand years for agriculture to spread from Greece to the Danube." [Mysteries of the Past]
[BUT NOTE:] "British paleoclimatologist H. H. Lamb: no dry season in the Mediterranean even as late as A.D. 200. " [Mysteries of the Past, 251]

The Ubaid pottery of southern Mesopotamia has been connected via Choga Mami Transitional ware to the pottery of the Samarra period culture (c. 5700-4900 BC C-14) in the north, who were the first to practice a primitive form of irrigation agriculture along the middle Tigris River and its tributaries. The connection is most clearly seen at Tell Awayli (Oueilli, Oueili) near Larsa, excavated by the French in the 1980s, where 8 levels yielded pre-Ubaid pottery resembling Samarran ware. Farming peoples spread down into southern Mesopotamia because they had developed a temple-centered social organization for mobilizing labor and technology for water control, enabling them to survive and prosper in a difficult environment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer

------------ Later settlements (after Samarran) in southern Mesopotamia required complicated irrigation methods. ------------
The first of these was Eridu, settled during the Ubaid period culture by farmers who bought with them the Samarran culture from the north. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Ancient_Mesopotamia

5300 - Cities of Sumer were the first to practice intensive, year-round agriculture. (Wikipedia)
5900 - 4000 / 5300 - 4100 Ubaid period of Sumer.

began before 5300 BC - c. 4100 BC. The Ubaid culture. Earliest settlement on the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia: the tell (mound) of Ubaid near Ur in southern Iraq has given its name to the prehistoric Pottery Neolithic to Chalcolithic culture.The invention of the wheel and the beginning of the Chalcolithic period. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubaid_period

During the 6th and 5th millennium BC the peoples of Ubaid Mesopotamia and the Arabian Neolithic interacted. Numerous sites identified in the Central Gulf region which contained pottery in the Ubaid style. Mostly coastal, and mainly found in NE Saudi Arabia, though also in Bahrain and Qatar. The majority were small and ephemeral, but a handful were large, with deep deposits and abundant pottery. (Abu Khamis, Dosariyah and Ain Qannas). Also smaller Ubaid sites in Bahrain and Qatar. Masry concluded that this part of Arabia had enjoyed a close and integral relationship with Southern Mesopotamia. More controversially, he suggested that the Mesopotamian and Ubaid-related Arabian sites should be regarded as part of the same social and economic system, and that the origins of Mesopotamian civilization lie as much in the Arabian Peninsula as in Mesopotamia. Meanwhile, Joan Oates and her collaborators proved through petrographic and compositional analysis that the Ubaid-style painted pottery from the Gulf states originated in Southern Mesopotamia (Oates et al. 1977). She had a simpler explanation than Masry, suggesting that Ubaid visitors travelled down the Gulf in search of fish and perhaps pearls, trading their pottery with local communities along the way. Since the 1970's, sites with small amounts of Ubaid pottery have been found further and further east, along the coast of the United Arab Emirates as far as Ra's al-Khaimah, and on certain islands in the Gulf. Recent excavations at Dalma have revealed postholes showing circular house structures, Ubaid pottery, plentiful fish remains and ancient date stones (Beech et al. 2000). There is evidence that the inhabitants of Dalma attempted to imitate Ubaid pottery using local materials, in this case, painted plaster. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/kuwait/backgrnd.htm

Peiligang Site (5500 BC-4900 BC) Earliest China Neolithic. Xinzheng, Henan Province. Central plains, relationships with the Yangshao Culture of the central plains. Stone saddle-quern and stone roller for grinding grains. Red pottery pot. - http://www.chinaculture.org/cnstatic/doc/exhibition/20e.doc

5500 - 3800 - rice first grown as a domestic crop Asia - Pengtoushan

MOVEMENTS NORTH AND WEST WITHIN EUROPE:
5500 - rapid spread of the Lincarbandkeramik (LBK) 'ceramics (pots) with linear bands' style, apparently up the Danube from its homeland in Hungary. Reached Austria, and then Frankfurt in Germany, almost before it left Hungary, covering 800 km within 100 years. After reaching the Central and North European plains up the Dnestr and Danube Rivers, LBK then spread rapidly north down the Vistula, Oder and Elbe. It did not, however, move right up to the Baltic or Atlantic coasts (so avoiding the settled coastal Mesolithic communities), but instead swung west and southwest through the Netherlands and Belgium, arriving in northern France by 5000 BC and finally reaching Normandy and its coast by 4500 BC. An eastward movement of LBK went round the Carpathians to Poland and on to the Ukraine at the same time, but pots had already appeared among Mesolithic
hunter-gatherers in Poland and western Russia and the lower Volga long before, around 7000 BC. (OB, 201)

5500 - 4500 - Cereals make their appearance at Cardial Ware sites. Settlements on the Atlantic coasts of France and the Iberian Peninsula. Their distribution indicates that they probably took both of the same two routes that would be
used by Phoenician and Greek tin traders much later on, through the Straits of Gibraltar and inland via Carcassonne across the Aude—Garonne corridor. (OB, 202)
5500 - La Hoguette pottery, found mainly in France, also seems to bridge the transition from the Late Mesolithic to the full Neolithic with ceramics, small-scale pastoralism and horticulture with cereal agriculture. The La Hoguette also fills in the geographical gap between the growing pincer movements of Cardial Ware in the south of France and LBK in the north. La Hoguette style was first found in Limburg, in the Netherlands, but is defined by bone-tempered pottery found at a site near La Hoguette in central Normandy. Although mainly found in the upper Rhone Valley, northern France, Switzerland and south-west Germany, in style La Hoguette resembles Cardial Ware farther south. Consistent with this south—north direction, a species of poppy, Papaver segiterum, originally from the south of France, was carried north as well. La Hoguette probably antedates LBK around the middle Rhine region where the styles overlap and even hybridize. (OB, 202-203)

5500 - Neolithic communities were well established in the middle Danube Valley and the Hungarian Plain . . .The forests of the loess were dense, and over very large areas supported insufficient biodiversity to attract hunter-gatherers. For horticulturists ready to ring-bark ancient trees and to bum undergrowth, allowing the ash to fertilize the soil, the old forest was a congenial zone to colonize. By 5000 BC huge tracts of Europe from the Vistula to the Seine had been settled. (OB, 210-211 - Cunliffe)


By 5300 - Separate spread into NW mainland Europe up the Danube from the Black Sea, arriving in the Netherlands. . . .
hallmarked by the spread of . . . pottery, known as Linearbandkeramik. (OB, page 16)


Vennemann's ancient post-glacial European language "Vasconic" was progressively overlaid from southeast Europe by Indo-European during the Neolithic starting from 5500 BCE, moving through central Europe and reaching Scandinavia by 4000. (OB, 249)



SUMMARY: Neolithic started in Middle East, spread to Anatolia, spread to SE Europe, spread to Europe, spread to northern Europe, finally reached western Europe (but not Britain, which was separated from mainland by water).
Meanwhile, agriculture intensified to year-round, irrigated, at Sumer. Black sea floods > start of IE expansion.

 



























































OBSIDIAN TRADING

Çatal Hüyük































Cyclades: obsidian




















Did these floods cover 6000 years of history, i.e. in Southeast Asia
&/or in Egypt?











































6000 - Romania Tartaria Vinca writing




















Southeast Asia: obsidian & dispersal due to flooding
(Austronesian) (Agglutinative)

New civilizations & languages:
- Indus
- Catalhoyuk (Sumerian, Elamite, Hurrian, Urartian, Hattic, Gutian, Lullubi, Kassite)
- Scandinavia: Uralic (Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian)

Altaic: Turkic, Mongolian & Manchu/Tungus.
Caucasian
Samara
Halaf
Basque
Ainu

Korean, Japanese?

N America: Salish, Blackfoot
M America: Nahuatl, Huastec
S America: Quechua Aymara
+ K'iche


See: Kahane: The Key











Halaf, Syria: obsidian



   

ON TO TAURUS AGE 5047 BCE