Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Area of the Fertile Crescent, c. 7500 BC, with main Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites. The area of Mesopotamia proper was not fully settled by humans.
Geographical range	Fertile Crescent
Period	Pre-Pottery Neolithic
Dates	c. 10,800–8,500 BP c. 8800–6500 BC
Type site	Jericho, Byblos
Preceded by	Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
Followed by	Pottery Neolithic Halaf culture Hassuna culture Neolithic Greece Savanna Pastoral Neolithic Khirokitia Faiyum A culture

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, a Neolithic culture centered in upper Mesopotamia and the Levant, dating to c. 10,800 – c. 8,500 years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC. It was typed by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon during her archaeological excavations at Jericho in the West Bank, territory of Palestine.

Like the earlier PPNA people, the PPNB culture developed from the Mesolithic Natufian culture. However, it shows evidence of having more northerly origins, possibly indicating an influx from the region of northeastern Anatolia.

Lifestyle

Head of statue, Jericho, from c. 9000 years ago. Displayed at the Rockefeller Archeological Museum in Jerusalem.

Cultural tendencies of this period differ from that of the earlier Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), in that people living during this phase began to depend more heavily upon domesticated animals to supplement their earlier mixed agrarian and hunter-gatherer diet. In addition, the flint tool kit of the period is new and quite disparate from that of the earlier period. One of its major elements is the naviform core. This is the first period in which architectural styles of the southern Levant became primarily rectilinear; earlier typical dwellings were circular, elliptical and occasionally even octagonal. Pyrotechnology, the expanding capability to control fire, was highly developed in this period. During this period, one of the main features of houses is a thick layer of white clay plaster flooring, highly polished and made of lime produced from limestone.

Plastered skulls in situ at Yiftahel

It is believed that the use of clay plaster for floor and wall coverings during PPNB led to the discovery of pottery. The earliest proto-pottery was White Ware vessels, made from lime and gray ash, built up around baskets before firing, for several centuries around 7000 BC at sites such as Tell Neba'a Faour (Beqaa Valley). Sites from this period found in the Levant utilizing rectangular floor plans and plastered floor techniques were found at Ain Ghazal, Yiftahel (western Galilee), and Abu Hureyra (Upper Euphrates). The period is dated to between c. 10,700 and c. 8,000 BP or 8,700–6,000 BC.

Plastered human skulls were reconstructed human skulls that were made in the ancient Levant between 9000 and 6000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They represent some of the oldest forms of art in the Middle East and demonstrate that the prehistoric population took great care in burying their ancestors below their homes. The skulls denote some of the earliest sculptural examples of portraiture in the history of art.

Society

Jericho

Tell Aswad

Neba'a Faour

'Ain Ghazal

Yiftahel

Tell Abu Hureyra

Tell Ramad

Tell Ghoraifé

Tell Judaidah

Tell Tayinat

Alalakh

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Clickable map of the modern-day eastern Mediterranean showing important sites that were occupied in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Reconstitution of housing in Aşıklı Höyük, modern Turkey

Danielle Stordeur's recent work at Tell Aswad, a large agricultural village between Mount Hermon and Damascus could not validate Henri de Contenson's earlier suggestion of a PPNA Aswadian culture. Instead, they found evidence of a fully established PPNB culture at 8700 BC at Aswad, pushing back the period's generally accepted start date by 1,200 years. Similar sites to Tell Aswad in the Damascus Basin of the same age were found at Tell Ramad and Tell Ghoraifé. How a PPNB culture could spring up in this location, practicing domesticated farming from 8700 BC has been the subject of speculation. Whether it created its own culture or imported traditions from the North East or Southern Levant has been considered an important question for a site that poses a problem for the scientific community.

Extent

Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period, which existed between 8,200 and 7,900 BP. Juris Zarins has proposed that 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 animal domesticates, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in Southern Palestine, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the Red Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Iraq.

The culture disappeared during the 8.2 kiloyear event, a term that climatologists have adopted for a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present, or c. 6200 BC, and which lasted for the next two to four centuries. In the following Munhatta and Yarmukian post-pottery Neolithic cultures that succeeded it, rapid cultural development continues, although PPNB culture continued in the Amuq valley, where it influenced the later development of the Ghassulian culture.

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  Left side-view of an Ain Ghazal statue from the Archaeological Museum of Amman
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  The ʿAin Ghazal bicephalous statues, c. 6500 BC.
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  Musée du Louvre, Paris, Ain Ghazal statue frontal closeup
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  Right side-view of an Ain Ghazal statue

Artifacts

Around 8000 BC, before the invention of pottery, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as alabaster or granite, and employing sand to shape and polish. Artisans used the veins in the material to maximum visual effect. Such objects have been found in abundance on the upper Euphrates river, in what is today eastern Syria, especially at the site of Bouqras. These form the early stages of the development of the art of Mesopotamia.

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  Jar in calcite alabaster, Syria, late 8th millennium BC.
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  Footed bowl in granite, Syria, end of 8th millennium BC.
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  Green aragonite tripod vase Mid-Euphrates 6000 BC Louvre Museum AO 28386
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  Calcite tripod vase, mid-Euphrates, probably from Tell Buqras, 6000 BC, Louvre Museum AO 31551
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  Alabaster pot with handles, Buqras region, 6500 BC Louvre Museum AO 28519
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  Alabaster pot Mid-Euphrates region, 6500 BC, Louvre Museum
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  Alabaster pot, Mid-Euphrates region, 6500 BC, Louvre Museum
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  Female statuette, 8th millennium BC, Syria

Genetics

Further information: Genetic history of the Middle East

Yarmukian figurines, Yarmukian culture (5500–5000 BC), Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B fossils that were analysed for uniparentals via ancient DNA, were found to carry the Y-DNA (paternal) haplogroups E1b1b (2/7; ~29%), CT (2/7; ~29%), E(xE2,E1a,E1b1a1a1c2c3b1,E1b1b1b1a1,E1b1b1b2b) (1/7; ~14%), T(xT1a1,T1a2a) (1/7; ~14%), and H2 (1/7; ~14%). The CT clade was also observed in a Pre-Pottery Neolithic C specimen (1/1; 100%). Maternally, the rare basal haplogroup N* has been found among skeletal remains belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, as have the mtDNA clades L3 and K.

DNA analysis has also confirmed ancestral ties between the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture bearers and the makers of the Epipaleolithic Iberomaurusian culture of North Africa, the Mesolithic Natufian culture of the Levant, the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture of East Africa, the Early Neolithic Cardium culture of Morocco, and the Ancient Egyptian culture of the Nile Valley, with fossils associated with these early cultures all sharing a common genomic West Eurasian/Near-Eastern component. A paper from 2021 would find that the Mesolithic Natufians cluster the closest with modern Saudi Arabians, Desert Bedouins and Yemenis. The Natufians were also close to, and ancestral to the ancient Levant PPNB/C and the later Levantine Bronze Age samples.

PPNB Plastered Skulls, Tell Aswad

Mathieson et al. (2015) & Lazardis et al. (2016), discovered that the Levant Neolithic samples from PPNB to PPNC were a mix of a component related to Natufians, and another lineage related to Anatolian farmers from Barcin and Mentese. In another study from 2021, the populations of the PPNB Levant were modelled as having 60.5% Israel Natufian Epipaleolithic related ancestry, and 39.5% Turkey Barcin Neolithic ancestry. Later, geneticists in 2022 using 1.2 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), discovered that the ancient DNA of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mesopotamia and Anatolia, showed that these populations were formed through admixture of pre-Neolithic sources related to Anatolian, Caucasus, and Levantine hunter-gatherers.

Altınışık, N Ezgi et al. (2022) studied 13 genomes from the PPNB at Cayonu, Turkey, and found they were formed by an admixture event between western and eastern populations of early Holocene Southwest Asia.

In 2023, Xiaoran Wang and team found that their six genetically analyzed PPNB individuals, were having ancestry from Levantine Epipaleolithic, Anatolian Neolithic, Iranian Neolithic, and Caucasus Hunter-Gatherers. The PPNB in general exhibited strong evidence of gene flow from populations related to Anatolia compared to the earlier Natufian hunter-gatherers. PPN individuals from Ain Ghazal further to the north in Jordan had a stronger genetic affinity with Anatolia than the PPN of Ba'ja, although not significantly so.

Diffusion

Carbon-14 dating

Map of the spread of Neolithic farming cultures from the Near-East to Europe, with dates in year BC

The spread of the Neolithic in Europe was first studied quantitatively in the 1970s, when a sufficient number of 14C age determinations for early Neolithic sites had become available. Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza discovered a linear relationship between the age of an Early Neolithic site and its distance from the conventional source in the Near East (Jericho), thus demonstrating that, on average, the Neolithic spread at a constant speed of about 1 km/yr. More recent studies confirm these results and yield the speed of 0.6–1.3 km/yr at 95% confidence level.

Analysis of mitochondrial DNA

Since the original human expansions out of Africa 200,000 years ago, different prehistoric and historic migration events have taken place in Europe. Considering that the movement of the people implies a consequent movement of their genes, it is possible to estimate the impact of these migrations through the genetic analysis of human populations. Agricultural and husbandry practices originated 10,000 years ago in a region of the Near East known as the Fertile Crescent. According to the archaeological record this phenomenon, known as "Neolithic", rapidly expanded from these territories into Europe. However, whether this diffusion was accompanied or not by human migrations is greatly debated. Mitochondrial DNA – a type of maternally inherited DNA located in the cell cytoplasm- was recovered from the remains of Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) farmers in the Near East and then compared to available data from other Neolithic populations in Europe and also to modern populations from South Eastern Europe and the Near East. The obtained results show that substantial human migrations were involved in the Neolithic spread and suggest that the first Neolithic farmers entered Europe following a maritime route through Cyprus and the Aegean Islands.

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  Modern distribution of the haplotypes of PPNB farmers
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  Genetic distance between PPNB farmers and modern populations

See also

• Holocene climatic optimum
• Levantine archaeology#Ceramics analysis
• Prehistory of the Levant
• Upper Mesopotamia#Prehistory

External links

Media related to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B at Wikimedia Commons