General characteristics of the Neolithic. Neolithic

The Neolithic was the highest and final stage of the millennia-long Stone Age. The Neolithic period is characterized primarily by a significant improvement in the technology of making stone tools. The most important feature of the new technique is the final finishing of stone tools by grinding or polishing, as well as sawing and drilling the stone. Using this technique, Neolithic man could, with greater success than before, give the stone the desired shape. Tools were made from a variety of stones, including those softer than flint, layered and fine-grained, but flint and hard rocks such as jade or jade were also processed using new methods. However, the process of polishing stone was very labor-intensive and improved the productive qualities of the tools relatively little1. Therefore, most tools were not polished, and flint continued to dominate the industry. Old methods of stone processing by beating, chipping and squeezing were widely used, while the technique of squeezing retouching reached its peak2. Europe in the Neolithic era (VI - IV millennium BC) To obtain high-quality stone rocks, people switched to underground stone mining. In the Neolithic, flint mines appeared, known in the territory of modern England, France, etc. Huge workshops of flint tools are also known, the products of which were distributed very far from the place of their production. The bow and arrows have been significantly improved. Arrowheads were given a variety of shapes depending on the type of game for which they were intended. New tools for wood processing appeared. Axes are especially characteristic of the Neolithic. The Neolithic ax, which was more suitable for cutting trees, facilitated the cutting down of forest areas during slash-and-burn farming, and later, the processing of trunks for piles and other buildings, the hollowing out of single-tree boats and other work. Many tools associated with gathering, and later with agriculture, were made from stone: weights for digging sticks in the form of massive disks with a hole in the middle, pestles, mortars, grain grinders, hoes, and sickles. Hoes were made of bone and horn, and sickles were made of horn with sharp-cut flint inserts. One of the most important innovations of the Neolithic era was the invention of ceramics. The invention of molding and firing pottery allowed man to improve methods of cooking and expand the range of food products. Most common in primitive society there was the production of vessels using the molding method (the so-called tape, or rope, technique). Bundles approximately 3-4 cm thick were made from clay, which were applied to the mold in a spiral and, when applied, were compressed and smoothed, resulting in a rough clay vessel. The discovery of clay firing was the discovery of a method for producing a fundamentally new material not found in nature - anhydrous silicate, into which clay turns during firing. It is difficult to overestimate not only the economic, but also the historical and cultural significance of this discovery: Stone Age man realized that soft clay, by firing, could turn into a hard substance close to stone, from which the most important tools were still made. The presence of ceramics among the people of that time was so characteristic feature Neolithic that it was even otherwise called the “ceramic age”. However, it turned out that this name is just as inaccurate and cannot characterize the Neolithic, like its name “the age of ground and polished stone.” Cultures were discovered (first in the Middle East, and then in Europe) that, by other characteristics, could be called Neolithic, but did not know ceramics. The completely logical term “ceramic-free Neolithic” was introduced. Sometimes, along with it, the term “pre-ceramic Neolithic” is used, which is less precise, since some Neolithic monuments, due to specific local conditions, do not have pottery, although ceramics had already been invented during the period of their existence3. Thus, polished stone tools and ceramics turned out to be characteristic features of the Neolithic, but not necessary, and for defining the Neolithic as historical era the most important economic features were put forward: changes in the methods of obtaining food of the Neolithic tribes - the spread of agriculture and cattle breeding. It was a turning point economic activity , the transition from a consuming economy to a producing one. G. Child proposed the term “Neolithic revolution”4 to define this turning point, and as his opinion became stronger, the presence of agricultural and livestock farming began to be considered the most important feature of the Neolithic. The term “Neolithic revolution” itself can hardly be considered successful. The process of transition from hunting-gathering to agricultural-pastoral farming lasted for millennia, it consisted of many searches and retreats, and from this point of view the word “revolution” is inapplicable. As for Europe, here in the Neolithic, agriculture and cattle breeding did not become the main branches of the economy everywhere, and many tribes remained hunting and fishing, not knowing agriculture even as an auxiliary branch of production. We also call such tribes Neolithic, and not only because their existence is synchronous with the spread of agriculture and cattle breeding among other tribes. They also experienced peculiar qualitative differences in the economy: the improvement of tools and the use of new technology in their manufacture, the appearance of ceramics, the differentiation of hunting weapons, the development of intertribal exchange, etc. Thus, the economic criterion for defining the Neolithic as a historical era is also not universal. Recognizing that new phenomena in industrial life, the transition from a consuming to a producing economy played a huge (in its consequences - truly revolutionary) role in the further development of mankind, we must base the definition of the Neolithic on a set of features, from which neither the appearance of ceramics nor new ways of stone processing. At the same time, there is no need to require the presence of all these features to recognize a particular culture as Neolithic. Major achievements of the late Neolithic include the invention of spinning and weaving. Fiber for spinning threads was initially produced from wild plants - nettles, wild hemp and tree bast. Then they began to spin threads from sheep's wool and wild flax. For a long time weaving was produced without a loom, i.e., in fact, it remained weaving. Neolithic fabrics are especially well known to us from their remains on pile settlements and imprints on vessels. The invention of spinning threads was of great importance for the fishing industry, as it made it possible to make nets. Significant progress in the Neolithic era occurs in the development of means of transportation. Numerous finds of dugout canoes, oars, skis and sleighs date back to this era. The Neolithic era is characterized by the emergence of a strong settled way of life and significant settlements. The types of dwellings are different: from Holland to the Danube long houses with many hearths are known, which probably served as dwellings of a whole family or big family. Along with them, Neolithic dwellings of an individual one-room structure are known in Central Europe and the Balkans (Karanovo, Otzaki-magula, Nea Nicomedia). These are rectangular houses (9.5 m long and 5 m wide) with frames of massive pillars fixed in the ground that supported walls woven from willow or made from split tree trunks and coated with clay and dung. Such houses were often divided into a porch or entryway and one room. In Switzerland and the southern part of Germany, houses were placed on stilts that rose above the shallow waters along the shores of lakes. We have little data to reconstruct the social structure of the Neolithic era. Large collective dwellings or small dwellings (for couples), closely connected to each other, indicate communal farming. Ethnographic analogies suggest the existence of a matriarchal-tribal system among tribes neolithic era. Changes in economic life led to changes in ideology; a different attitude of man to nature as a whole emerged. Primitive humanity began to believe less in the power of magical actions. A cult of nature began to take shape, personified in the images of all kinds of spirits of the animal and plant world, earthly and heavenly forces. The maternal-tribal cult of housewives and guardians of the hearth received further development. Perhaps the cult of female ancestors and progenitors, known among some more developed nations, began to emerge. The meaning of Neolithic clay figurines has not yet been clarified. It is possible that they still served for various magical rites, which is why many of them were found broken. Complication religious ideas expressed, in particular, in the development of the funeral cult. The Neolithic is dominated by crouched burials, sometimes sprinkled with red ochre, occasionally accompanied by food pots, stone tools or shell decorations. In the Late Neolithic, corpse burnings appear. IN fine arts During the Neolithic era, there was a transition to a conventional manner of execution, to deliberate simplicity, stylization, and depiction of parts instead of the whole5. Stylized symbols appear in images on ceramics: crosses, swastikas, double-sided axes, etc. It is possible that the spiral - one of the leading elements of the ornament - also had some symbolic meaning. Development productive forces led to significant population growth. Based on some calculations by R. Braidwood and C. Reed regarding early agricultural communities in the Middle East, it is believed that as a result of the “Neolithic revolution”, the population of the globe increased a hundredfold over 8 thousand years, and its average density increased from 0.04 per sq. km, as it was in the Upper Paleolithic, up to 1 person per sq. km. km6 (6). The first “demographic explosion” in human history is taking place (using modern terminology)7. The emergence of agriculture and cattle breeding, associated with certain environmental conditions, increased the unevenness in the historical development of mankind. The uneven development of culture and its local uniqueness in different territories, which emerged in the Paleolithic, intensified even more in the Neolithic. There are already dozens of archaeological cultures of the Neolithic era. Tribes of different countries in different time were at the Neolithic stage of development. Most of the Neolithic monuments of Europe and Asia date back to the 8th-3rd millennia BC. 8 The end of the Neolithic period marks the discovery by mankind of the possibility of using metals for the manufacture of tools. The first such metal was copper9. The period of distribution of copper tools is called the Eneolithic (aeneus in Latin - copper, lithos in Greek - stone) or Chalcolithic (halkos in Greek - copper). In essence, the Chalcolithic is difficult to distinguish from the Neolithic. Copper tools did not replace stone ones; in the “Copper Age” most tools were made of stone. However, the very fact of the appearance of a new substance for the manufacture of tools - metal, which determined the further progress of the development of technology - was of great importance. Scientists from different European countries have different attitude to the term "Chalcolithic" ("Chalcolithic"). Scientists northern countries they use it to highlight the stage of transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age and include all cultures in which metal appears, even imported ones. In Eastern European countries (Hungary, Czechoslovakia) and France, there is a concept of “Eneolithic”, close to the one adopted in our country10. In Britain and the Scandinavian countries, only the terms “Neolithic” and “Bronze Age” are used; megalithic and other cultures of the transitional period are referred to as the Neolithic. In Spain, the term “Chalcolithic” has recently ceased to be used, and the monuments of this period are attributed to the Mediterranean Bronze Age, which immediately follows the Neolithic. Taking into account this discrepancy, as well as the fact that for historical periodization the selection of the Chalcolithic era is not of fundamental importance, in this chapter I consider Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures together. In many archaeological periodizations that have become classic, for example Dechelette, the Copper Age refers to the Bronze Age I. I attributed to the Bronze Age only those cultures and monuments in which bronze, rather than copper, items appeared, fully understanding the convention and inaccuracy of drawing such a line in the historical aspect.

NEOLITHIC AGE. EARLY AGRICULTURAL CULTURES OF THE NEOLITHIC ERA OF SOUTH EURASIA

1) Neolithic was the last period of the Stone Age. Its beginning in Eurasia dates back to the 6th millennium BC, it is usually associated with the appearance of ceramic dishes. This date is quite arbitrary, and the transition itself was not instantaneous. The rest of the stone inventory of the early Neolithic period does not always differ from the Mesolithic.

In the Neolithic in the northern hemisphere, nature acquired a more stable character than in the Mesolithic and an appearance close to the modern one. Along the shores Arctic Ocean the tundra stretched, to the south - the forest-tundra, from the Baltic to Pacific Ocean there was a strip of forests, to the south of which lay forest-steppes and steppes. In each vegetation zone its corresponding animal world developed.

The Neolithic is associated with fundamental changes in the method of production, called the Neolithic Revolution, and a number of innovations that have become the property of mankind.

In the south of Russia, partly in Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Ukraine and Moldova, during the Neolithic era, in a number of places, people switched to productive forms of economy - agriculture and animal husbandry. However, in most of the territory of Eurasia in the Neolithic, the economy remained appropriative, its basis was hunting, fishing and gathering.

In the Neolithic, old stone processing techniques were preserved and continued to prevail. There was a technique of double-sided beating, Levallois technique, and retouching. But none of these techniques were suitable for processing stones such as jade or jasper, since they do not produce correct chips. Grinding, sawing and sharpening of stone, as well as grinding, appear, with which tough stones are well processed. Grinding began to be used in the manufacture of flint tools. The blanks obtained by beating or chopping were processed on a flat stone, adding wet sand, which was the grinding material. It was also added to the end of the hollow tube when the stone was drilled. Drilling appeared in the Neolithic, although not everywhere. New stone processing techniques are also one of the differences of the Neolithic. ,

In some areas, the extremely limited supply of flint led to the widespread use of bone tools, the forms of which are varied and stable. Community bone-carving workshops are emerging, an example of which is a workshop in a settlement

In the Neolithic, stone chisels, chisels, and adzes appeared, the differentiation of which was facilitated by the spread of grinding and sharpening of stone tools. The stone ax became a highly productive tool: archaeologists tried to cut down a pine tree with a diameter of 25 cm, which took 75 minutes. All methods of stone processing, including grinding and drilling, were mastered by man in the Mesolithic, and later only became more widespread and improved. The industry at Caspian sites is characterized by high technology of stone processing: extremely regular prismatic cores and microliths are common. In the Caucasian Black Sea region, stone polishing was mastered - a number of polished axes were found at the site. The Neolithic ended the Stone Age and brought humanity to the threshold of a new era. The Neolithic was the time of the formation and beginning of the spread of the productive economy. The technology of stone processing reached an extremely high level of development and was subsequently supplemented by only a few, although important, but no longer changing it. general techniques.

2) Ancient pottery is one of the branches of human economic activity. It is associated with the most ancient production of artificial materials that arose in human society. Before he appeared ancient man used natural materials, sometimes subjecting them to mechanical processing. For example, stones, bones, shells, wood, and animal skin were used to make household items. And pottery is a qualitatively new stage in the relationship between man and nature. The plastic raw materials used in pottery - clay, silt - in their natural state do not have the qualities that clay vessels need. That is, it is not fireproof or waterproof. And only after a person carries out some targeted actions (selection and preparation of raw materials, making a vessel, firing), a finished product is obtained from the raw materials. It was in the process of working with pottery that man first learned to transform natural material, changing its inherent qualities with the help of his own knowledge and his will. Pottery production arose early in human history. Initially, its purpose was to make dishes and other small household crafts from plastic materials (silt, silty clay, clay). The emergence of pottery dates back to the Neolithic (in the Volga region - 8,000 thousand years ago).

Fragments of ancient pottery are the most common finds at archaeological sites. Its study helps determine the cultural affiliation and chronological affiliation of various monuments and cultures.

Pottery is a system of interconnected labor skills at all stages of tableware production. In general, the process of making ceramics includes three stages: preparatory (at this stage the selection of raw materials, their extraction, processing and preparation of the molding mass take place); creative (at this stage the actual vessel of a certain shape is manufactured) and fixative (at this stage the vessel is given strength and its moisture permeability is eliminated). Since in traditional societies there was a mechanism for transferring knowledge and skills from generation to generation through contact, that is, personally, most often through related channels, and also because these skills were quite conservative, the totality of labor operations turned into conservative cultural traditions. And for each individual human “collective” these cultural traditions were specific. Therefore, by studying the ceramics of different archaeological cultures and identifying these specific pottery traditions characteristic of different groups of ancient populations, it is possible to make historical reconstructions. The emergence of mixed technological traditions was possible only in the process of cultural mixing of bearers of different labor skills. In the primitive era, such mixtures were possible if people with different labor skills were included in the joint cultural and economic activities of groups.

3) In 1926-1939 N.I. Vavilov identified 7 main geographical centers of origin of cultivated plants.

South Asian tropical center (about 33% of the total number of cultivated plant species).

East Asian center (20% of cultivated plants).

South-West Asian center (14% of cultivated plants).

Mediterranean center (approximately 11% of cultivated plant species).

Ethiopian center (about 4% of cultivated plants).

Central American Center (approximately 10%)

Andean (South American) center (about 8%)

Thus, tropical India and Indochina with Indonesia are considered as two independent centers, and the South-West Asian center is divided into Central Asian and Western Asian; the basis of the East Asian center is considered to be the Yellow River basin, and not the Yangtze, where the Chinese, as a farming people, penetrated later. Centers have also been established ancient agriculture in Western Sudan and New Guinea. Fruit crops (including berries and nuts), having larger areas, extend far beyond the centers of origin. The reason for this lies in its predominantly forest origin (and not in the foothills as for vegetable and field crops), as well as in the peculiarities of selection. New centers have been identified: Australian, North American, European-Siberian.

Some plants were introduced into cultivation in the past outside these main centers, but the number of such plants is small. If previously it was believed that the main centers of ancient agricultural crops were the wide valleys of the Tigris, Euphrates, Ganges, Nile and other large rivers, then Vavilov showed that almost all cultivated plants appeared in the mountainous regions of the tropics, subtropics and temperate zones. The main geographical centers of the initial introduction into culture of most cultivated plants are associated not only with floristic richness, but also with ancient civilizations.

It has been established that the conditions in which the evolution and selection of a crop took place impose requirements on the conditions of its growth. First of all, this is humidity, day length, temperature, and duration of the growing season.

As studies of specific monuments show, the transition to a productive economy is an extremely complex process. But what in the diet of producing societies could have an impact on human biology? Research in the field of human evolutionary biology shows that the dynamics of such morphological indicators as overall body size, brain volume, such behavioral characteristics as the size of the food search area, the level of aggressiveness, gender differences in activity - all this is in one way or another directly related to the type of nutrition. In hunter-fisher-gatherer societies, the ratio of food obtained by hunting and obtained through zoo- and phyto-gathering is always associated with the degree of mobility of the population, with the characteristics of the demographic structure. It is generally difficult to characterize the nutritional characteristics of people in the early productive economy, since cultural diversity is superimposed on landscape and zonal diversity; the phenomenality of food traditions begins to prevail over patterns. In order for the productive economy to enter the life of society, serious social events had to occur. In this regard, ethnographic observations describing the relationships between tribes of hunter-gatherers, pastoralists and farmers are very important. Relations between hunters and farmers and cattle breeders everywhere take the form of an exchange of labor products. Farmers copied patterns of jewelry and body treatments from hunter-gatherers. The funeral rites were copied from the farmers. “The pygmies and farmers treated each other with some contempt, considering the other side to be second-class citizens or even animals.

The pastoralists were more aggressive towards the neighboring Bushmen, as they needed to expand their pastures. Due to the reduction of available land, hunter-gatherers are losing much-needed resource flexibility. As a result, they begin to specialize in fishing rather than farming. They are happy to take dogs and other pets, but do not express interest in breeding them themselves. Thus, they are ready to perceive the results of the cultural activities of pastoralists and farmers, and not to reproduce elements of this culture. Hunter-gatherers are not adapted to the monotonous, exhausting work of people in a productive economy. This is an insurmountable obstacle for them. Farmers adopt only spiritual manifestations from hunter-gatherers and join some of their cults. Thus, it is obvious that not every hunter-fisher-gatherer society carries within itself the potential for development into a producing society. The emergence of agricultural settlement is invariably associated with a change in the demographic structure and an increase in the birth rate. Considering an increase in the birth rate in a population as an indicator of an improvement in life is not always legitimate. More often than not, in human societies, high birth rates accompany low levels of economic and social development.

There is a connection between the intensity of economic activity and the increase in the birth rate. Perhaps the sharp increase in the birth rate in societies of sedentary farmers is associated with the significant participation of women in agricultural work. In this case, we are dealing with a mechanism that connects the ability for a certain type of activity and a certain way of life with population growth. In the most general terms, we can say that changes in behavior entail demographic transformations. The idea that the specifics of nutrition (diet composition, regimen) can have an effect on the characteristics of a person’s physiology and psyche without his conscious participation in this seems important. In general, we can say that farming increases the proportion of carbohydrates in food and reduces the amount and variety of proteins.

There is no reason to attribute the decrease in these characteristics only to the nutrigenic factor. Environmental factors (humidity, temperature) have similar biological effects. There is probably no need to contrast climatic factors with nutritional ones, since the choice of nutritional strategy is one of the options for adapting society to local, including climatic, characteristics. Reducing overall body size (height, latitudinal dimensions, weight) is beneficial, and often vital, when food resources are limited. The parameters that determine the minimum required amount of energy and plastic substances should be considered: the need for physical strength and the need to warm the body (for areas with cold climates). Certain groups of the population may choose to reduce their body size to better ensure that the body receives energy and essential nutrients. Increasing the proportion of thermally processed food, food boiled in water, food with faster absorption significantly increases its energy value and reduces its nutritional properties. Here you can also give classic examples of vitamin C deficiency and beriberi disease (vitaminosis B). Heating and boiling water causes many water-soluble salts to precipitate out. Therefore, the intake of certain forms of minerals into the body decreases. The insipid taste of boiled and baked food is probably the starting point for the widespread development in culinary traditions of seasoning food with certain substances that enhance the taste of the dish. First of all, it is table salt. Until now, the attitude towards mushrooms in different cultures is not the same. According to K. Eijditz, many peoples of the North (from the Yakuts in the east to the Swedes in the west) experienced a traditional antipathy to mushrooms, which began to disappear relatively recently. Finnish researcher I. Maninnen shares the same opinion: “Finns still treat mushrooms with disdain. As a last resort, they only eat lamellar ones, and they won’t eat spongy ones.” The same thing, in his opinion, is observed among the Bashkirs and some peoples of Siberia. A number of similar facts can be traced from the literary materials. It is interesting that for many peoples of northeastern Eurasia, the rejection of mushrooms as food was combined with the use of red fly agaric as a narcotic drug. The mode of human life undergoes more significant changes. The amount of labor spent daily on agricultural work becomes extremely stressful and has many biological and social consequences. It is especially important to note that the ideas of hunter-fisher-gatherers about the connection between life-death-birth-fertility remain unchanged in structure. Only the central place in these cults is given not to the wild animal, but to the cultivated plant.

4) The agricultural and pastoral economy of the late tribal community is represented by a number of archaeological sites of the developed Neolithic and Chalcolithic.

The uneven development of various cultures and their local uniqueness in different territories, which emerged in the Paleolithic, intensified in the Neolithic. There are already dozens of archaeological cultures of the Neolithic era.

Neolithic culture developed most rapidly in the countries of the Middle East, where agriculture and breeding arose first livestock. Above we talked about the Natufian culture dating back to the late Mesolithic, whose carriers, as one can assume, had already made attempts to grow cereals. Signs of the emergence of a productive economy in Northern Iraq date back to an even earlier time. Here, in the foothills of Southern Kurdistan, settlements were discovered (Karim Shahir and others), the inhabitants of which apparently domesticated sheep and goats. The found fragments of grain graters and flint blades for sickles suggest that here, just like among the Natufians, highly specialized gathering was very developed, immediately preceding agriculture, or agriculture itself. Only in the 7th millennium BC. e. the process of evolution has reached a state where we can no longer speculate, but with complete confidence, state the cultivation of grain bread and the breeding of goats and sheep in many places. Economic progress is clearly visible in the sustainability of settlement areas. As a result of the renewal of periodically destroyed adobe houses over the centuries, Neolithic villages gave rise to powerful layers rising above the plain in the form of “residential hills,” or “telloi,” sometimes reaching 15 m in height or more. Some Early Neolithic sites have stone vessels, but not yet ceramics; this phase of development was called the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. In the Middle East, this phase is best represented by the lower layers of such monuments as Jarmo in Iraq, Ras Shamra in Syria, Hacilar in Turkey, Jericho in Palestine, Khirokitia in Cyprus.

A typical site of the Mesopotamian Neolithic is Tell Hassuna (in Iraq, near Mosul). The layers here range from the Early Ceramic to the Eneolithic periods. Already the first settlers left traces of their stay here in the form of curved walls and large jugs made of rough ceramics. Millstones and hoes made of polished stone indicate farming. Bone remains indicate hunting of gazelles and wild asses and breeding of bulls and sheep

In 5-4 millennia BC. e. agricultural tribes of the developed Neolithic also inhabited Egypt. In Upper (Southern) Egypt, the first farmers were people of the Badari culture (named after the modern settlement in the area of ​​which monuments of this culture were excavated). The settlements of the Badari culture were located on the spurs of the plateaus; dwellings were built from rods coated with clay, as well as from mats that served as screens. The basis of the economy was primitive agriculture and cattle breeding, combined with hunting. The land was worked with stone hoes. It is possible that the Badarians sowed without preliminary soil treatment - directly into the wet silt that remained on the shore after the Nile floods. The main tools were made of stone, wood and bone, but individual copper items were also found. The Badarians knew weaving and knew how to weave baskets.

Main events and inventions:

• o distribution of ceramic ware;
• o invention of a method for producing tissues;
• o the Neolithic revolution of the transition to agriculture and cattle breeding - the greatest event in human history;
• o new methods of stone processing, stone axe, adze;
• o stone and bone hoes, grain grinders.

Main features and achievements of the Neolithic era

The Neolithic was the last period of the Stone Age. Its beginning in Eurasia dates back to the 6th millennium BC, it is usually associated with the appearance of ceramic dishes. This date is quite arbitrary, and the transition itself was not instantaneous. The rest of the stone inventory of the early Neolithic period does not always differ from the Mesolithic.

In the Neolithic in the northern hemisphere, nature acquired a more stable character than in the Mesolithic and an appearance close to the modern one. Tundra stretched along the shores of the Arctic Ocean, forest-tundra stretched to the south, a strip of forests stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean, to the south of which lay forest-steppes and steppes. Each plant zone developed its own corresponding animal world.

The Neolithic is associated with fundamental changes in the method of production, called the Neolithic Revolution, and a number of innovations that have become the property of mankind.

In the south of Russia, partly in Central Asia, Transcaucasia, Ukraine and Moldova, during the Neolithic era, in a number of places, people switched to productive forms of economy - agriculture and animal husbandry. However, in most of the territory of Eurasia in the Neolithic, the economy remained appropriative; it was based on hunting, fishing and gathering.

In the Neolithic, all previous achievements in stone processing were used (plate technology, and in some places microlithic, chipping techniques and pressing retouching). New methods of stone processing also appeared: grinding, drilling, sawing, polishing.

Rice. 19.

1 - sharp-bottomed vessel; 2, 3 - retouched arrowheads; 4 - stone ax

Using squeezing retouching, arrowheads, darts, piercings and knife-like plates were created. The technique of making inserted tools - knives and daggers - developed. In the Neolithic, polished axes, adzes and other tools made of stone were widely used, especially in forest areas. Initially, chips were used to make an ax blank, giving it the main features of the future weapon.

Then the ax was polished completely or only its working part, using special grinding plates. It was experimentally established that the production of ground axes was not a lengthy process, as previously thought.

Work on an ax made of siliceous shale required only 2.5-3 hours, and from more than hard rocks- from 10 to 35 hours. The stone was cut different ways: flint files, rope and bone tools. Drilling out bushings for handles in stone axes was done using a tubular bone, which was rotated, constantly adding sand under it. For this purpose, obviously, special frames were used. The workpiece had to be firmly clamped, the tubular bone was inserted into the sleeve and rotated with the help of a bow string, and sand was added. There is a fundamental technological and functional difference between the Neolithic ax and the adze. The ax is always symmetrical in shape, and the adze, intended for hewing, making boats, and troughs, is asymmetrical and has a beveled body. Polished axes and adzes mounted on wooden handles were quite advanced tools. With their help, it became possible to develop the forest areas of Eurasia, build more advanced wooden dwellings, boats, and manufacture various wooden devices.

Rice. 20.

I - area of ​​comb ceramics; II - Neolithic of the Central Russian Plain (region of pit-comb ceramics); III - Karelian Neolithic culture; IV - Kargopol culture; V - region of the White Sea culture of the north; VI - Neolithic of the south; VII - region of the Kama-Ural Neolithic; VIII - region of the Kelteminar Neolithic; IX - Dzheitun culture; X - West Siberian Neolithic region; XI - Neolithic Southern Siberia; XII - Baikal Neolithic region; XIII - Amur Neolithic region; XIV - Middle Lena Neolithic region; XV - Neolithic of North-East Asia and the Arctic zone

It is no coincidence that in the Neolithic the need for flint increased, and the first mine workings for stone extraction arose. Neolithic flint mines were discovered in the Upper Volga, Belarus and Bulgaria.

Neolithic people created new materials that were not typical of nature - ceramics and textiles.

The invention of pottery in the Neolithic was extremely important. Although in some places ceramic products appeared much earlier (for example, in Japan, ceramics have been known since the 9th millennium BC), ceramic dishes became widespread only in the Neolithic. Long before this, probably since the Middle Paleolithic, people used bark, wood, and twig baskets to store food supplies. Clay dishes made it possible to cook food. Simple in shape, it had a conical, slightly pointed bottom and a body that flared upward. Such vessels look like an egg with part of the blunt end cut off. That's why they are called ovoid. The most ancient clay vessels were made on a base woven from twigs. Along with this, another manufacturing method was used - by placing bundles of raw clay rolled into a ring on top of each other. The hand-made pottery was rough, poorly and unevenly fired. Neolithic vessels were mostly decorated with simple designs in the form of recesses, pits or herringbones.

The acquisition of dishes by mankind influenced subsequent history, changed everyday culture and human physiology. It was from the Neolithic that food began to be cooked. It also had archaeological significance: with the advent of ceramics, the number of archaeological sources sharply increased. Ceramics and fragments of vessels (shards) are becoming widespread archaeological material. In this regard, ornamentation on ceramics became of great importance as a source of research.

Another achievement of the Neolithic was the invention of methods for obtaining fabrics. Fiber suitable for spinning thread was produced from plants and wool. Making fabric is a complex and multi-stage process.

First you need to get fiber from animal hair or nettles, wild hemp, etc., and make threads from it that are twisted using a spindle. To make fabric, in addition to threads, a frame and a shuttle were required. The bed is a horizontal or vertical frame onto which the warp threads were pulled. To prevent them from getting tangled, they tied flat stone weights with holes. They are often found at settlement sites. Using a shuttle, transverse threads were passed through the warp threads from left to right and vice versa. Using a comb, the threads were compacted. This is how a simple weave fabric was obtained. All ancient fabrics were like this. They were used to sew clothes, sacks, bags, and make fishing gear. Archaeologists find only spindle whorls, ceramic or stone, round or conical with a hole in the center, which were put on a spindle, and sometimes small pieces of fabric as evidence of the fabric-making process. It is important that the fabric and clothing made from it are made by man himself; this is their fundamental difference from clothing made from animal skins.

In the Neolithic, two large zones of archaeological cultures developed - the zones of producing and appropriating economies. Arose within them Various types integrated farming, firmly associated with specific natural and geographical conditions. Each zone has its own characteristics of development and relationships between human groups and natural environment, their traditions in the development of technology, features of ceramics and ornament.

The Neolithic, or New Stone Age (from the Greek neos - new + lithos) is conventionally divided into early (7-4 thousand years BC) and late (4-3 thousand years BC) . But it is difficult to talk about an exact chronological framework, since with the increased unevenness of historical development, different primitive tribes passed through the Neolithic period at different times.

The Neolithic, unlike the previous stages of the Stone Age, differed to the least extent from the modern era in its climatic conditions, flora and fauna, and Neolithic man, based on his anthropological data, can no longer be distinguished from modern man.

During the Neolithic, there was a further expansion of the area of ​​human labor activity and its change, which consisted in the transition from collecting and appropriating forms of economy, collecting fruits and hunting, to producing ones - agriculture and animal husbandry. In 5-4 millennia BC. e. The beginnings of hoe and irrigation agriculture appeared, farmers switched to soil cultivation. And although the work of the first farmers was extremely difficult and depended entirely on the vagaries of the weather, this was the most important step of primitive man from complete powerlessness before nature to master power over it.

Hunting and the development of agriculture became the basis for the domestication of wild animals. The already tamed dog was joined by sheep, goats, pigs, and then a large cattle. Later, man domesticated the horse and camel. Cattle breeding, compared to hunting, provided not only more meat, fat, skin and bones, but also milk and wool. In turn, the development of cattle breeding contributed to progress in agriculture, as animals began to be used as pack and horse-drawn transport, and then as draft power in plow farming.

Following the natural gender and age division of functions, the first great division of labor occurred - the separation of cattle breeding from agriculture. The division of labor and the transition from an appropriating economy to a producing one marked the onset of the Neolithic economic revolution.

The new forms of economy that some tribes switched to radically changed the conditions of their existence and moved them far ahead in comparison with gatherers, hunters and fishermen. This was the impetus for many other progressive changes, causing profound changes in a person’s lifestyle, his worldview and psyche, in the development public relations. However, a significant part of the Neolithic tribes that lived in less favorable conditions, continued to engage in fishing and hunting, which has been preserved among the northern peoples to this day. The final approval of tribal associations took place.

As a result of the significant growth of productive forces in the Neolithic era, the old clan society (matriarchate) gave way to a patriarchal clan system (patriarchy), and the latter led to the emergence of a class society. At the same time, the primitive communal system in some areas of the globe continued to coexist for a long time with the new, class, slave-owning society, and in some places it has survived to this day.

By the end of the Neolithic, the development of primitive technology ended and craft technology, based on the use of simple tools, began to take shape. The long history of primitive technology does not know exact dates discoveries and inventions - it is not known who discovered fire, invented the axe, bow, wheel, boat, etc. Many of them were invented many times and forgotten until they were finally established in practice; there are also those that remain unclaimed to this day .

The origins of mining and the improvement of stone processing methods

The sharply increased needs of builders, farmers, cattle breeders and hunters for stone tools stimulated a sharp increase in its production and an expansion of the range of stone materials. Along with flint, new types of stone materials began to be used, jade, diorite, jasper, etc., and together with open mining methods, underground mining using mines (German: Schacht). At first these were just deep holes (up to ΙΟ-Ι 5 m), then vertical shafts with short horizontal workings (drifts).

To mine the stone, picks, picks and hammers made of horn and stone, bone spades, shovels and rakes, and wooden stakes were used. The excavation was carried out in leather bags and wicker baskets on ropes, and ladders were used to lift people up and down. Artificial lighting was provided using fat lamps, resin and birch bark torches, and incoming water was bailed out or drainage devices were created. Thus, we can already talk about the birth of mining.

The Neolithic is characterized by higher and more complex stone processing techniques. The operations of drilling, sawing and grinding were mastered, and the technique of pressing retouching was brought to the level of a real art. Mastering the sawing operation, which appeared in the Paleolithic and Neolithic, made it possible to give products the necessary shape depending on their functional purpose. To intensify it, sand (emery) and water began to be fed into the cut - this is how processes for cutting materials using cooling liquids first appeared. This method of “wet”, abrasive sawing was preserved for many hundreds of years when processing super-hard materials, in particular diamond.

Grinding, like sawing, which originated in the previous era, also underwent significant improvement. Along with “dry” grinding, a method of “wet” grinding appeared, in which the use of water provided not only cooling, but also self-sharpening of the abrasive tool and increasing the intensification of the cutting process.” For finishing decorations and finishing the cutting blades of woodworking tools, steel polishing operation is used.

Dyatchin N.I.

From the book “History of Technology Development”, 2001

The Neolithic is a period of human history identified by John Lubbock in the 19th century as an opposition to the Paleolithic within the Stone Age. Character traits Neolithic - stone polished and drilled tools.

Different cultures entered this period of development at different times. In the Middle East, the Neolithic began around 9500 BC. e. The entry into the Neolithic is timed to coincide with the transition of culture from the appropriating (hunters and gatherers) to the producing (agriculture and/or cattle breeding) type of economy, and the end of the Neolithic dates back to the time of the appearance of metal tools and weapons, that is, the beginning of the Copper, Bronze or Iron Age. Since some cultures of America and Oceania have still not completely transitioned from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, the Neolithic is not a specific chronological period in the history of mankind as a whole, but characterizes only the cultural characteristics of certain peoples.

Unlike the Paleolithic, when there were several types of people, all of them, except the last one, ceased to exist before the onset of the Neolithic.

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE NEOLITHIC

The Neolithic is a special era in the history of mankind; it ends the period of the Stone Age, during which people used only stone, bone and wood to make tools. The time when copper, and later its alloys, began to be used for the production of tools, weapons and jewelry, marks the end of the Neolithic and the entire Stone Age and the onset of the age of metals.

Due to differences in the pace and nature of development that developed back in the Mesolithic, the chronological framework of the Neolithic in different climatic zones are defined differently. So, in the “lands of the Fertile Crescent”, which includes the Middle East and North Africa, we can talk about the beginning of the Neolithic era already in the 8th-7th millennium BC. In Central Asia, Southern Europe and the Northern Black Sea region, the Neolithic dates back to the beginning or middle of the 7th millennium and lasts until the 4th millennium BC. In the forest zone of Eurasia, starting mainly at the turn of the 6th and 5th or 5th millennia BC, this era continued until the turn of the 3rd-2nd, and in some areas, especially in Far North may have lasted longer.

Neolithic is the era of the flourishing of technology for processing traditional materials - stone, bone and wood, with the widespread and improvement of such progressive processing techniques as grinding, drilling, sawing. Initially, the Neolithic was distinguished as the “era of polished stone.” In addition, at this time, ceramics became very widespread, used for various purposes - mainly for the manufacture of vessels, as well as various utensils - spindle whorls, sinkers, small plastics. It is often the presence of pottery that is considered a defining feature of the Neolithic era.

In the Neolithic, the formation and widespread spread of the productive economy (agriculture and cattle breeding) took place - one of the most important achievements in the history of mankind. Having emerged in early forms in the Middle East back in the Mesolithic, in the Neolithic it covered wide spaces of Eurasia, causing significant changes in all spheres of socio-economic activity - material culture, social structure way of life, worldviews. This phenomenon in human history is called the Neolithic Revolution

Neolithic Siberia

At the end of the Paleolithic, changes in nature begin that will force people to change their usual way of life. The glacier is melting rapidly, the climate is moistening and becoming warmer. Modern landscapes are emerging in Siberia. In the north there is tundra and forest-tundra, the central part of the Siberian territory is occupied by the green sea of ​​taiga, and in the south there are forest-steppes and steppes. Global changes are also taking place in the animal world. Mammoths and rhinoceroses are dying out. The dominant place is occupied by smaller animals. For example, deer and elk. The fauna of Siberia is becoming isolated into its familiar habitats. All these changes in the surrounding world could not but affect man. From eight to four thousand years ago, new types of activities and new images in art, new forms of beliefs appeared in the human community. Man is fully inhabiting the banks of rivers and the Siberian taiga. A new Stone Age, the Neolithic, is coming.

During the transition from ancient stone to new stone age, global changes in the nature of Siberia forced people to change their usual way of life. In a world where there is no longer room for giant animals, and hunting taiga ungulates was not easy and did not always end successfully, man had to look for a new, guaranteed source of food. Need forced people, literally, to plunge into bodies of water. Rivers, with their dense schools of fish, have long attracted the attention of the ancient inhabitants of Siberia.

Already in those days people could sail on water in boats. Although the presence of boats has not been reliably established, the presence in the stone inventory of specialized adze-shaped tools made of pebbles and large pieces of flint indirectly confirms the presence of water transport at the beginning of the Neolithic era.

The mythological views of Siberians were associated with boats and the water element in general. The upper reaches of the river were associated by ancient peoples with birth, sunrise, warmth, and light. The lower reaches - with death, cold, the end of the world. According to the archaic ideas of the Siberian peoples, after death, the soul of a person went down the river to the land of the dead. Therefore, in the Neolithic era, mysterious images of boats with people appear on the rocks. The strange, at first glance, armlessness and leglessness of the “passengers” can be explained by the fact that it is not living people who are depicted, but their souls traveling along the rivers of the afterlife. Please note: in each boat there is a large human figure in a “horned” headdress with an oar. In all likelihood, this is a carrier of souls. Captain of the Otherworld.

Among some peoples of Siberia, even until modern times, people were not buried in the ground, but were sent in boats downstream of the river. This is probably what Neolithic people did.

Water is associated with the appearance of images of a very fantastic appearance, only from a distance reminiscent of a human face. They were usually painted at the very edge of the water. Masks are images of spirits, owners of reservoirs. Success in fishing, safety when overcoming water obstacles and a prosperous life depended on them. The demonic appearance is explained by the fear of Neolithic people of underwater world.

The Neolithic is a time of cruel morals. It was impossible to save those drowning in the water, since this was against the will of the water spirit, who wanted to take it for himself. human soul, and with it life. The miraculously surviving tribesman was not accepted into the camp and was doomed to eternal exile.

In the history of mankind, it has happened more than once that one single invention literally turned our entire lives upside down. human civilization. Such an epoch-making invention in Neolithic times was the invention of the bow. It is quite possible that the Siberians were not the authors of the invention, but adopted the bow from their steppe neighbors who lived in the Middle and Central Asia, and then passed it on to tribes living even further to the east. But this does not change the essence of the matter. Hunting continues to be one of the most important sources of food for people. The appearance of onions was facilitated by changes in fishing conditions. Ungulates living in the taiga wilds are not the easiest prey. Deer is a very cautious animal; it is practically impossible to approach it at close range unnoticed. So people had to find a way to hunt that would allow them to avoid direct contact with animals.

Chalcolithic

South-Eastern Europe is one of the most important areas of the Chalcolithic era, and this is explained by a number of reasons. Firstly, this region, rich in copper deposits, was distinguished by stable settlement, which contributed to the long-term, autochthonous development of archaeological cultures with sustainable production activities of their bearers. Secondly, within its borders very early, during the 6th-5th millennium BC. e., there has been a transition from an appropriating economy to a producing one, promoting intensive population growth and the steady development of technology. Thirdly, in the 4th millennium BC. e. here there was an unprecedented rise in mining and metallurgical production, often called the “metallurgical revolution”. Despite all the conventions, this term correctly reflects the revolutionary nature of the multilateral changes in the life of the Eneolithic tribes of the Balkan-Carpathian region under the influence of their metallurgy. Fourthly, the earliest metallurgical province in the Old World and the only one in the Eneolithic, called the Balkan-Carpathian (hereinafter referred to as BKMP), developed here. Within its borders there is an unusually high level of metallurgy and metalworking technology, the achievements of which were reflected in the mass casting of heavy copper tools.

The Eneolithic BKMP geographically covered the north of the Balkan Peninsula, the Lower and Middle Danube, the Carpathian Basin, as well as the south of Eastern Europe from the Anterior Carpathians to the current Middle Volga(Fig. 12). Throughout this territory we find groups of “pure copper” with similar chemical characteristics, the trace impurities of which generally correspond to the deposits of the Balkan-Carpathian ore region. This copper reached the barren regions of the Northern Black Sea region not only in the form of finished products, but also in the form of ingots and forged semi-finished strip products, which stimulated the emergence of their own centers of metal production here. The results of spectral analyzes allow us to confidently say that metal traders covered spaces of 1.5-2 thousand kilometers; they moved from Southern Bulgaria and Transylvania all the way to the Azov region and even the Middle Volga region. So, the internal unity of the province is determined primarily by the uniformity of the chemical groups of copper that circulated within its borders.

No burial grounds were known on the territory of the Trypillian culture until the late stage of its development. Only isolated human burials under the floors of houses have been discovered. Such burials were found in Luka Vrublevetskaya, Nezvisko, and others. Burials of this type are usually associated with the cult of the fertility of Mother Earth. They are characteristic of many early agricultural cultures of South-Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

The Trypillian economy was based on agriculture and cattle breeding. Agriculture was associated with cutting down and burning forests and quite frequent changes in cultivated fields. The fields were cultivated with hoes made of stone and horn, and possibly with primitive plows using the draft power of bulls. A massive horny plow was found at the early Tripolye settlement of New Ruseshti, and in the area of ​​another settlement - Floreshti - a pair of clay figurine of bulls in a harness was discovered. Analysis of charred seeds and imprints of grains on ceramics allows us to conclude that the Trypillians cultivated different kinds wheat, barley, as well as millet, vetch and peas. In the southern regions they were engaged in gardening, growing apricots, plums and grapes. The grain harvest was harvested using sickles with flint inserts. The grain was ground with grain graters.

Agriculture was supplemented by domestic cattle breeding. Cattle predominated in the herd; pigs, goats, and sheep were of secondary importance. Horse bones have been found in a number of settlements, but the question of its domestication is not completely clear. According to some researchers, she was the object of a hunt. In general, the role of hunting in the Trypillian economy was still great. Meat of wild animals - deer, roe deer, wild boar - occupied a significant place in diet population. In some early Tripolye settlements, such as Bernashevka, Luka Vrublevetskaya, Bernovo, bones of wild animals prevailed over domestic ones. In settlements of the middle period, bone remains of wild species are sharply reduced (15-20%).

8. General characteristics of the Bronze Age. Fatyanovo culture

The Bronze Age is a special period in ancient human history, which stands out thanks to the archaeological data found during the period ancient history humanity. The era is characterized by the main, leading role of tools made of bronze, which was caused by the improvement of the processing of copper and tin obtained from ore and the further production of an alloy from them - bronze. The archaeological study of Bronze Age cultures, together with data from comparative linguistics and toponymy of the masses, is important for solving the problem of the formation and spread of the main groups of Indo-Europeans (including the Slavs, Balts, Thracians, Germans, Iranians, etc.) and the origin of many modern peoples. Conventionally, the Bronze Age is divided into three periods: early (XXV-XVII centuries BC), middle (XVII-XV centuries BC) and late (XV-IX centuries BC).

The Bronze Age is the second, much later phase of the Early Metal Age, which succeeded the Copper Age and preceded the Iron Age. How exactly ancient man came to the idea of ​​smelting copper ores using metallurgical methods is still not known. Perhaps, humans were initially attracted by the unusual red color of the nuggets located in the upper, oxidizing zone of the ore vein. This vein also concentrates multi-colored oxidized copper minerals, such as azure azurite, green malachite, red cuprite, etc.

The Bronze Age corresponds to a dry and relatively warm subboreal climate, in which steppes predominated. There is an improvement in the forms of cattle breeding: stabling of livestock, transhumance (yailage) cattle breeding. The Bronze Age corresponds to the fourth stage in the development of metallurgy - the appearance of copper-based alloys (with tin or other components). Bronze items were made using casting molds. To do this, an impression was made in the clay and dried, and then metal was poured into it. To cast three-dimensional objects, stone molds were made from two halves. Also, things began to be made using a wax model. Bronze is preferred for casting, because... it is more fluid and liquid than copper. Initially, tools were cast according to the old (stone) type, and only later did they think of using the advantages of the new material. The range of products has increased. The intensification of inter-clan clashes contributed to the development of weapons (bronze swords, spears, axes, daggers). Inequality began to arise between tribes of different territories due to unequal reserves of ore deposits. This was also the reason for the development of exchange. The easiest means of communication was waterway. The sail was invented. Carts and the wheel appeared in the Eneolithic. Communication between countries contributed to the acceleration of economic and cultural progress.

As a rule, people of this time lived in small villages located on sand dunes in river floodplains or on high coastal capes. The wide river valleys of the Kursk region, with an abundance of feed for livestock and convenient areas for cultivating the soil, contributed to the development of agriculture and livestock breeding among local tribes. Hunting and fishing played a secondary role. Weaving, processing of bone, leather and wood, and the manufacture of clay vessels, stone and metal tools were widespread.

The Fatyanovo culture received its name from the name of the first burial ground, opened in 1873 near the village of Fatyanovo, Danilovsky district, Yaroslavl region. One of its first researchers, A.S. Uvarov, attributed the Fatyanovo burial ground to the Stone Age (Uvarov, 1881). Subsequently, as new monuments of the same type were discovered and copper axes were found in some of them, they were attributed to the Copper Age (Spitsyn, 1903a, 1905). First scientific basis Fatyanovo culture was given by V. A. Gorodtsov (Gorodtsov, 1914a). He determined the territory of its distribution, the alienness of the local Neolithic culture and attributed it to the Bronze Age - to the 2nd millennium BC. e.

Now the Fatyanovo culture has occupied a significant place in the ancient history of the center of the Russian Plain. The huge territory of distribution of Fatyanovo monuments in the European part of the USSR, the influence of Fatyanovo culture on the further historical destinies of the ancient tribes of the Volga-Oka interfluve, its great contribution to the history of the development of the culture of the peoples of the USSR put this topic on a par with the most important issues of our historical science. In addition, the connection of the Fatyanovo culture with a large cultural-historical (ethnic) community - the cultures of corded ceramics and battle axes, widespread over a vast territory from the Rhine to the Volga-Kama and from Southern Sweden to the Carpathian region, as well as the connection of the latter with the issues of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs and Balts and the Germans brought the Fatyanovo problem into the ranks historical problems of pan-European significance.

The main sources on the Fatyanovo culture are still the burial grounds. Also important are the Fatyanovo cultural remains discovered at many late Neolithic sites in the Volga-Oka interfluve and in random places, mainly drilled stone axes.

9. Early and developed bronze of Siberia (Krotovskaya culture. Sopka and Rostovka burial grounds)

• The metallurgy of copper and bronze could only appear in those places where there were deposits of copper ores. In Siberia, large deposits accessible to primitive miners are confined to the mountainous regions of the Urals, Rudny Altai, Sayan and Transbaikalia. On the vast territory of Western, Eastern and North-Eastern Siberia There are practically no copper ore reserves in the Far East. Therefore, the era of early metal did not become a universal stage in the cultural and historical development of the entire Siberian population. Eneolithic monuments are known only in areas immediately adjacent to the mining and metallurgical regions. Monuments of the Bronze Age are much more widespread, but even at that time the culture of many tribes in Northeast Asia and the Far East was at the Neolithic level.
• The second feature of the Early Metal Age in Siberia is its short duration. Here it fits into one and a half millennia, while in the most ancient mining and metallurgical regions of the Old World, tools made of copper and bronze dominated for three thousand years. This is due to the fact that the ancient metal penetrated into Siberia relatively late, at the final stages of the development of Eurasian copper-bronze metallurgy

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