The Development of Neolithic Culture
Summary. The
term Neolithic describes the period before the use of metals when stone tools
were used but when agriculture began to be practised. The origins of farming in
the Ancient Near East is described, and its spread westward until it reached
Ireland a few thousand years later.
Characteristics of
the Neolithic Period
Origins of Farming in
South West Asia
The spread of the
Neolithic cultures to 5,000 BC
Peoples, Languages, and
Social Structure
Early Neolithic Age in
the British Isles
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Neolithic Culture
Characteristics of
the Neolithic Period
In the first chapter the origins of the
human race, the course of the last Ice Age and its ending, the dispersion of
the white race and the repopulating of Europe following the retreat of the ice, the character
of the Palaeolithic peoples during the Ice Age, and of the Mesolithic peoples
after the Ice Age were described. This chapter describes the various changes
which came about in the Middle East from about 9000 BC onwards, the discovery
of techniques of farming, the use of metals, the invention of pottery and
bricks, of weaving and writing, and so on, and how these skills spread to many
parts of the world and led to a considerable increase in population, and how
Ireland was populated by these Neolithic farmers
The name Neolithic is a traditional one
but misleading. Early archaeologists distinguished between sites where only
stone tools were found and those where remains of bronze, or bronze and iron,
and called the three historic ages the Stone Age, the Bronze, and the Iron Age
respectively. The classification remains broadly useful. Later the Stone Age
was divided into the Old Stone Age or Palaeolithic period, and the New Stone
Age, or Neolithic, and this division too remains broadly useful. Palaeolithic
was restricted to cultures before the end of the last Ice Age. Later, divisions
into the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, and the Calcholithic, or Copper/Stone
Age where some remains or metal objects made of copper were found, were added.
In general, the term Stone Age denotes a time before the use of metal. But it
does not mean primitive. In Egypt great buildings were erected and
figures carved on stone without the aid of metal. Harder stones were used to
shape and grind softer ones. (No section has been devoted to the use of copper,
but some remarks about it will be found in the next chapter on the Bronze Age.
In time Neolithic came to be associated
with the farming and herding cultures, and Mesolithic used to describe the
post-glacial pre-farming cultures. This explains why the Mesolithic and
Neolithic cultures existed side by side. By Neolithic is now meant pre-metal
farming cultures. It is divided into three stages, Pre-pottery, Pottery, and
Calcholithic, indicated by the presence or absence of bits of pottery, or
pieces of copper. This distinction is chiefly useful in South West Asia as
elsewhere farming and pottery may have arrived at the same time. The term
Neolithic embraces every culture from the earliest farming communities, to the
highly developed city and temple cultures of the Ancient Near East, and the
great Megalithic cultures of Western Europe, only distinguishable from the
Bronze Age by the absence of metal.
.
These developments included the domestication of animals, the development of
techniques of agriculture, the training of the dog, the donkey, and the horse
to perform useful tasks, the invention of brick and pottery, the invention of
the wheel, the invention of netmaking and textiles, the invention of writing,
the development of warfare, the development of large-scale organisation and
control of populations, the development of ideas of religion and philosophy.
Apart from anything else, these permitted the enormous growth in numbers of the
human race. Herding and farming permit
the selection of seeds and animals best for a particular climate, can increase
the areas in which they can thrive, and increase their yields by techniques
such as working the soil, weeding, and irrigation. The introduction of bronze
did not produce significant changes. Neolithic society kept on developing on
then traditional lines. Nor did the introduction of iron
result in any significant change. The use of iron was not to make major
changes before the nineteenth century AD when it became available in prodigious
quantities. There was a continuous line of development from the first farming settlements
to the development of great cities and empires like those of Greece and Rome. Though
the Neolithic period was characterised by long string of inventions and
discoveries these were spread over a period of several thousand years, so the
changes were almost imperceptible. A discovery in one part of the area might
not reach a remote part for a hundred years. On the other hand, a century was
just a tenth part of a millennium. Some inventions like the used of metal
apparently spread very rapidly, and the whole of Europe and the Middle East made acquainted with the new
techniques in less than fifty years. Small groups of travelling smiths who kept
their trade secrets to themselves would have been responsible for the rapid
diffusion of the techniques. In principle, there is no reason why the art of
writing should not have been known in Ireland within fifty years of its development
in the Near
East. But if
it was known in Ireland no evidence of this fact survives.
This
leads to another point. Given that knowledge could be disseminated fairly
rapidly why did the urban civilisation as it developed in the Middle East not
spread north of the Alps and into Russia at an earlier date? Apart from those
planted artificially by the Romans cities did not develop in northern Europe and Russia until after 1,000 AD. The Neolithic
and Bronze Age societies in Russia and Northern Europe developed along different lines. The
pastoral economy of the steppes perhaps did not favour city life, but why did
cities not develop along the Danube where a sufficient density of population could
have built up on the fertile lands? The Greeks developed cities along the
northern shores of the Black Sea after 500 BC, but the interior of Russia was unaffected.
There
were in later Neolithic times a broad range of cultures as each group took some
elements from what was available and adapted them for its own use, and rejected
others. In some regions building with brick and stone was not adopted and
building with timber continued until after 1,000 AD. Not only in northern Europe, but also in China and Japan with highly developed cultures, timber
construction remained the preferred mode. In central Africa the original grass huts remained in
use in places until the present day. In Ireland when the great burial mounds were
being built, we may assume that the more learned classes had a fair idea of
what was being done elsewhere in Europe and in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Their information by our counting may have been
a century out of date but they would have known where to get the relevant
experts if they required them. Had they needed writing experts they could have
obtained them. They would have been in the same
position as the Irish monks in the early Christian period some 3,000 years later.
Travel to and from the Continent and the exchange of ideas was probably easier
then than in the later period when every local chief along the way had to be
bribed to allow free passage.
The Mesolithic period lasted for
several thousand years in Northwest Europe but it lasted for a comparatively brief span in
South West Asia. Just as there is one human race which spread throughout the
world commencing about 50,000 years ago in the latest stages of the Ices Ages,
so there is only one Neolithic culture which commenced in the Ancient Near
East, during the last retreat of the ice, commencing about 10,000 years ago
(Some American scholars argue for a separated development of farming in the
Americas, but certainly, with regard to Europe, Asia, and Africa, there was
only one place and time of development.) All Neolithic cultures are thus
connected, and derived from a common source. This can be regarded as broadly
true for all aspects of the culture, ideas and beliefs, as well as material
discoveries and inventions. The Neolithic culture (and the Megalithic culture)
in Ireland are essentially the same as the Neolithic cultures of the Middle
East, but the earliest surviving written records from the latter region are
thousands of years older than those from Ireland.[Top]
Origins of Farming in South West Asia
Part
of South West Asia is called the Fertile Crescent from the crescent-shaped area of
fertile lands in the river basins of the Nile, the Euphrates, and the Tigris. All the great early civilisations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China, were formed on the fertile soils of
the great rivers. But it would seem that farming did not originate in the river
valleys themselves but in the mountains in Iran and Iraq above the river valleys.
The
Mesolithic Natufian culture that centred on Palestine in the post-glacial period is famous
for its stone sickles that were used for harvesting wild cereals. The culture
is named after an excavated site in Palestine near Mount Carmel. This culture has been dated around
10,000 BC. All dates before about 5,000 BC contain an inaccuracy of 300 years
either way as carbon-14 dating, though better than nothing, are inaccurate
before that date. Sites are being constantly re-dated, but the general sequence
of events remains largely unchanged (Renfrew)
Nevertheless
it would seem that animal herding commenced around 9,000 BC, and this is taken
to mark the commencement of true farming with continuously occupied villages
(Laing, L. and J. 101ff). It developed somewhere between the southern shores of
the Caspian Sea and Jericho in southern Palestine and was for a considerable time
confined to that area. Planting and reaping of crops followed soon after,
certainly within a thousand years. The
villages of Jarmo in northern Iraq and Jericho in Palestine vie for the title of the earliest
farming village. Sun-dried bricks were
used to construct a shrine at Jericho about this time, and not long
afterwards great brick walls were constructed around it for defence. As Hawkes
remarked, it was astonishing how quickly the new farmers developed towns. The
earliest occupations of both Jarmo and Jericho antedate the making of pottery.
Farming techniques before the manufacture of pottery by baking clay had been
invented may have spread as far west as Thessaly in Greece. At Jarmo they possessed stone bowls,
finely ground and polished axes and adzes, sickles and querns. They grew emmer,
einkorn wheat, and barley. They kept sheep, goats, oxen and pigs (Hawkes op.
cit 224). With the invention of pottery (c. 6500 BC) and weaving we have the
complete list of Neolithic characteristics, tillage, herding, polished axes and
hoes, pottery and cloth. Linen cloth has been dated to 7,000 BC. The first use
of metals, gold and copper, has been dated to 6,900 BC, and curiously it appears
about the same time in South East Asia and among the Danubian tentative attempts at farming.
[Top]
The spread of the Neolithic cultures to 5,000 BC
It
has now been established by genetic studies that the population of Europe at the present day is essentially the
same as it was in the Palaeolithic period. It follows that agriculture spread
chiefly by imitation and teaching, and not by the spread of a new incoming
population
The
farming revolution was confined for a while to the area within which it was
first developed. Then it spread out into Egypt and the Aegean. By 4500 BC it had reached most of
central Europe, and had spread along the Mediterranean to Italy, Spain, France, and the British Isles, and in a northerly direction into
southern Russia. The diffusion of ideas proceeded in waves, first the pre-pottery techniques, then
early pottery styles. (The techniques of agriculture, etc. were introduced into
China, but were adapted by the local population.
This was obviously the case in Africa as well).
This
spread was largely caused by imitation by the Mesolithic peoples. But there were two other factors involved.
One was that outside the fertile and irrigated lands of South West Asia the
fertility of the light cultivated soils quickly became exhausted, so in places
like the Danube basin communities periodically
uprooted themselves and moved elsewhere. But even without the exhaustion of the
soil, when a community grew too large for the light tillable soils to support,
the community could send out a colony of young men and women to find and work
lands of their own. Agriculture enabled a given tract of land to support a much
denser population.
The
other cause of the diffusion of the techniques was the search for raw materials
and with it the growth of trading. These materials might be flints, or
semiprecious stones, or pieces of natural pure gold or copper, or ivory, or
various rocks to make pigments. When a source of supply was found a settlement
was likely to be formed.
The
pattern of life and many of the crafts practised then were continued in many
parts of Europe up until recent centuries. Not all
areas colonised were suited to the cultivation of Near Eastern cereals and in
these the tending of animals became more important. In Europe cattle and swine became more important
than the original sheep and goats. There was local pottery-making, spinning and
weaving, basketry, tanning of leather, the shaping of leather for clothes, the
growing of crops, the herding of animals, milking, cheese-making, brewing, and
baking. Primitive ploughs were made from crooked branches; the antlers and
shoulder blades of animals used as shovels; Boats made of skins over a
framework replaced the dugout canoes. By 3000 BC the wheel arrived in Western Europe.
Danubian and South West Russian farmers The winds in glacial times spread wind-blown loess
soils across central Europe
that proved admirable for the spread of farming. The loess soils along the Danube were easily worked but there were many
of them, so the farmers could always move on when the initial fertility of the
newly farmed land declined. This they apparently did every 25 years or so. They
built substantial houses. The advance of farming populations continued on into
northern France and southern Scandinavia where they settled as neighbours to
the Mesolithic Ertbølle people for several centuries. As the farming culture
spread into North
Western Europe
a characteristic form of pottery with engraved lines known as linear pottery or
Bandkeramik spread with them.
Another stream of the farming culture spread
from the lower Danube into southern Russia. This was called the Tripolye culture.
This was, as has been noted, a stream of culture, not a movement of population,
though doubtless there was some movement of peoples.
Mediterranean farmers Farming arrived comparatively late in Egypt and indeed after the invention of
pottery. From the Levant or eastern shores of the Mediterranean, farming spread into Egypt and along the North African coast, and
at the same time, along the north shores of the Sea, through Anatolia and the Aegean to southern Italy, and the east coasts of Spain. It has been noted by Hawkes (p. 238) that in the course of this spread,
some elements of the Neolithic revolution got left behind (for example weaving
did not reach Britain), but also some elements like pottery and ground axes
were adopted by the Mesolithic inhabitants before they started to practice
farming. The northern branch of this Mediterranean spreading was the more
important as far as Western
Europe was
concerned, but pottery fragments show also an Egyptian influence. (This may not
be unimportant when we consider the spread of megalithic culture. Later still
the Egyptian form of monasticism reached Western Europe through Rome and Marseilles, rather than the Syrian form.) The
earliest wave had simple impressed pottery, but a later wave had a distinctive
painted pottery. These waves spread along the coasts, and from island to island.
From southern France they advanced up the Rhone valley, and
up the Atlantic coast of France until they met the Danubian farmers
coming overland.
The
earliest farming in Western
Europe seems
to have arrived from the direction of the Mediterranean. The economy consisted of mixed farming with
emphasis on cattle breeding. Sheep, goats, and pigs were also kept; emmer,
einkorn, wheat, and barley were cultivated. They had a dark-surfaced, undecorated
pottery of simple rounded forms.
Russian or Pontic herders The
Neolithic developments spread also into southern Russia directly through the Caucasus and not via Anatolia and the Danube. From the coast of the Black Sea they spread up into central Russia. It would seem that agriculture
reached northern Europe from Russia through Poland, though there were also influences
from the Danube. In both Russia and northern Europe, as elsewhere, a preponderant element
of the Mesolithic peoples survived. A characteristic of these northern peoples
was the use of a stone battle-axe, which was modelled on a bronze original. By
the time the northern cultures had developed the Bronze Age had arrived in
southern Europe and the Middle East. This particular branch of the spread
of farming is mentioned, for it is from this region that the Indo-European
speakers fanned out. These herders gradually became able to sustain themselves
from the produce of their herds, especially on milk products, so tillage except
in favoured spots became unimportant. It seems too that among them the horse
was first domesticated. The further east one went, the less was the
rainfall, the poorer the grass, and the greater the need to keep moving the
flocks and herds about. The Greeks called such peoples nomads.
There
are some points to be observed about the pastoral culture of the steppes.
Pastoralism does not support as dense a population as tillage. Consequently the
steppes are rather thinly populated. The use of the horse enabled them to
combine in large numbers for particular purposes such as a raid, and this gave
the impression that they are very numerous. When they conquered other peoples,
very few of them settled in the conquered districts, and are within a few
generations absorbed into the local population.
Western Europe
and Britain The Neolithic Age lasted in the British Isles for about 3000 years, from the arrival
of the first farmers about 5000 BC until the arrival of the Beaker Folk with
bronze goods about 2000 BC. The first date marked a clear break in culture; the
latter did not. The Neolithic way of life continued virtually unchanged for
millennia to come, though as centuries passed bronze weapons and utensils were
increasingly used without necessarily displacing the stone ones. The presence
of bronze on a site just allows the archaeologist to date it more accurately.
About 5000 BC, as
the temperatures in the post-glacial period reached their maximum, in the warm
wet Atlantic period, the farming culture arrived in Western Europe. It came into France and Britain from the south, i.e. from the Mediterranean. At the same time the expansion of the
Danubian farming culture reached the Low Countries. But it was the southern stream which first
crossed into the British
Isles. About
the same time the builders of the megalithic structures arrived in
Brittany. What the connection there might be between
these streams is not obvious. There is this difference; farming is found
everywhere but megaliths are not. They are also found in areas like Denmark, where Danubian influences were
prevalent. Both the Danubian and the Mediterranean streams came originally from
the eastern Mediterranean. One followed the coasts of the Mediterranean; the other the valley of the Danube, avoiding the mountains.
Archaeologists detect some Egyptian and other North African traits in the
Mediterranean stream. It would seem that Britain was still connected to the Continent
by a land bridge over which the first farmers crossed. Ireland was probably already an island but
with a relatively narrow and smooth sea-crossing making it feasible to
transport small animals in primitive boats.
[Top]
Peoples, Languages, and Social
Structure.
Population Farming spread from South East Asia. But this spread of techniques was far
from simple; there were various movements in different directions at different
times that included some movements of population. Most recent studies have
shown that the basis of the present population of Europe derives from the Mesolithic peoples
and that farming spread much more by imitation than by movements of population.
Among the Mesolithic peoples, especially in the more northerly parts of Europe, would have been the survivors of the
Cro-Magnon people. Basically, the people of Europe today are the descendants of those hardy people
who weathered the Ice Age along the shores of the Mediterranean, and moved north as the ice retreated
and vegetation and wildlife returned.
Languages There
were probably several languages in South East Asia, where farming originated. We know of
at least one, Sumerian, which is unconnected with other languages. Etruscan too
may have come from Asia
Minor. Some
think that Basque was the original language of the Neolithic farmers. It is
possible, and indeed probable, that as Europe was re-populated after the Ice Ages, that the
language or languages spoken in the Mediterranean and North African region spread northwards as the
ice. This would have been earlier than the development of the so-called Hamito-semitic that probably originated about the eighth
millennium BC, and probably in the Sahara. But the fact remains that all languages spoken
in western Europe except Basque are derived from
Indo-European, and the indications are that the latter spread outwards from
southern Russia after 3000 BC.
Society It
would seem that the social structure of the early Neolithic farmers was in one
way very simple yet in another way quite complex. Society consisted of small
independent communities of perhaps 50 or 60 people who formed a village, and
farmed the locality for a period of up to 25 years before moving on. We can
reasonably assume that all the members of the village were closely related and
all recognised a particular man as their common ancestor, though the actual
relationships between individuals could have been second or third cousins. They did not place much emphasis on shelters
or elaborates structures for themselves. Most of their lives were lived
outdoors. The houses themselves were often but not always flimsy shelters. Like
African grass huts they were probably used only at night or when it was raining.
Up until modern times people mostly lived outside their
houses. Work was done outside, and likewise cooking. The climate in Western Europe in any case was much warmer than at
present.
There was at first no personal
ownership of the land or the animals, but they belonged to the group (Hawkes
263ff). But it would seem that ownership gradually transferred to the related
family kinship. In some places large communal dwellings were preferred; in
others villages were composed of small huts (ibid.). Ownership of the land
would have been allodial, i.e. it was owned absolutely by the individual or
group who had hacked the farmland out of the wilderness. The early farmers
removed the forest cover of much of Europe. This was
long before the feudal theory that everyone had to have some form of tenancy
from a superior lord. Even in later times when conquest of land was usual the
land still belonged to those who tilled it and lords merely acquired rights to
various dues or exactions. This was the common rule among the Indo-European
peoples.
So long as the land was cultivated by
hoes this work would have been done by the women, and rights in land passed
through the female line. The women were also probably responsible for spinning,
weaving, and making pottery, and indeed had probably invented those skills. Men
would have been responsible for managing the animals, for hunting and fishing,
and for clearing the forests. They too were probably the carpenters who built
the houses
In many ways the cashless society
resembled later monasteries. All control and the distribution of all rewards
was in the hands of the head of the family This meant that sons of the chief,
especially younger sons, were entirely dependent on their father all their life
for whatever he saw fit to give them, the clothes on their backs, their share
of the food, what they received as personal adornments. When landholding was transferred to the
smaller extended family there were many more heads of families, though the
control and distribution still remained with the head of each family. Even in
recent time when the holding of land passed to the head of the nuclear family,
sons were entirely dependent on their father for food, clothes, and cash unless
they could demean themselves to act as agricultural labourers. Knights in the
Middle Ages were totally dependant on their fathers for food, clothing,
weapons, etc. until they could acquire a piece of land through service to a
lord.
Gradually the room for moving was
restricted as the population increased, so each community had to occupy a given
area and move their tillage around it in rotation. Even so villages could be
several miles apart, separated by woods, marshes, and other wastelands. The
sites of the Neolithic period were for the most part undefended, though
Jericho, exceptionally, had walls almost from
the beginning. (These walls of Jericho fascinated the early archaeologists.
Joshua and the Israelites advancing from the desert in the Bronze Age had to
capture the walled city before they could occupy the Promised Land. He probably
succeeded by undermining the walls, masking the sound of digging by the blowing
of trumpets -Joshua 6. Irish tribes never mastered the art of storming a walled
city.) There were no doubt quarrels over water or grazing (Genesis 13.7) but
later on systematic warfare developed.
On the other hand they probably met the
other groups at fairs during the year, and in the developed Secondary Neolithic
phase co-operated with them in constructing great earthworks. But simple
co-operation was all that was required for these. In true Neolithic cultures
there seem to have been no chiefs, or overlords or rich persons, but it is
possible that towards the end of the period one chief would be selected to be
the headman or chief in several villages, but with inheritance through the
female line (Hawkes 268f). This co-operation could extend over a considerable
area, and enable large, prolonged, and complex works to be undertaken
When chiefdoms, aristocratic societies,
organised cities, and rich graves appear we are on the brink of the Bronze Age,
the age of warfare.
Religion We have no idea what the religion of the early
farmers was like. It is safe to assume that there were rites connected with the
various phases of the agricultural year. These rites would have been a
development of earlier seasonal festivals and of shamanistic rites. At what
stage the elaborate mythologies like those of Tammuz appeared we have no idea.
It is likely too that there were elaborate religious rites connected with the
great burial tombs. If there were rites there must have been an accompanying
system of beliefs; myth and ritual always go together. The myth explains the
rite; the rite makes the myth effective.
The religion of the early Neolithic
period seems to have been a development or continuation of the Palaeolithic
religion. Clay models of a female figure are still found suggesting a
preoccupation with fertility. Some have interpreted this as an indication that
the dominant deity was a female Mother Goddess, antecedent to the male senior
gods of the later pastoral peoples (Hawkes and Woolley 334ff). But it is
doubtful if the concept of male and female deities had emerged at this time.
But to survivals from Palaeolithic times there seems to have been added a cult
of the dead. This feature was to become very pronounced in the Chinese culture
and survived in Europe to be transformed in Christian times into the feasts of
All Saints and All Souls on the first and second of November. [Top]
The Early Neolithic Age in the British Isles (4,500 BC to 3,500 BC)
Earliest
Wessex farmers
As mentioned above farming arrived in Britain from France when the two were still connected
before 4500 BC. It would seem that the very earliest stream was from the
direction of the Mediterranean, but shortly afterwards Danubian
influences can be traced. They practised slash-and-burn agriculture, and set
about clearing the forests that covered the chalk downs in southern England. The trees were either felled with
stone axes, or killed by ring barking. The forests never recovered on the downs
largely because of the grazing by sheep and goats. They brought with them
domesticated sheep and goats, pigs cattle and dogs. Their cattle and pigs were
interbred with the local wild cattle and pigs so that the appearance of the
animals differed little from those in cave art. The only breed which has
remained unchanged since then is the Soay sheep, short-tailed, with a short
hairy brown fleece (Henson 3f). Cattle
and pigs are natural forest animals that would be turned out to browse on the
scrub. Sheep and goats can graze wetlands and bogs without destroying them. The
farmers planted emmer wheat and einkorn, but over time pastoralism became more
important. As the communities were small and the forests large, the flocks
would have to be moved about in the forests, though probably in a fairly
limited area. They constructed small huts and barrows. They traded with the
Mesolithic hunters who had not yet adopted agriculture (Stover and Kraig 42ff).
The density of population was still
very low. The village was shifted every ten to fifteen years, and long fallows
allowed the best soils to recover fertility. The loss of fertility was largely
caused by the depletion of nitrogen, but prolonged fallows allowed sufficient
nitrogen to be washed from the sky over a number of years. The clearance of
land by burning produced potash. Anything between two and twenty acres were needed to support an individual. Farming groups as
elsewhere probably numbered between 35 and 70 individuals. But on good soils
the lands held by each group were contiguous (Renfrew 148ff)
Neolithic
Farming in Ireland
By the time the Neolithic culture
arrived in Ireland it had been developing for thousands
of years. The first farmers in Ireland were not people with only the
rudiments of knowledge. They possessed the skills and techniques and the
knowledge developed by their forefathers. They were almost immediately able to
display their skills in the construction of the great megalithic monuments.
Three phases can be distinguished in
the Neolithic period in Ireland as in the rest of Western Europe. The first was the initial phases when
the first farmers commenced clearing the forests, pasturing their cattle, and
growing their cereal crops. The second, or mature phase, corresponded with the
period of the great earthworks and megaliths, when there was a considerable
population and some form of developed social organisation. The final phases was marked by the introduction of various features
that were to be prominent in the Bronze Age, the period in which, in some ways,
the ancient civilisation reached its climax in Ireland.
There is nothing peculiar about the
Neolithic period in Ireland. It was the same as in the rest of Western Europe. Dense forests and scrublands covered
the whole island. Though the Atlantic period was well advanced, the great forest
cover which absorbed much of the rain meant that boglands and marshes were less
of a problem than they became later. Bellamy notes that they fed their cattle
on the leaves of the nutrient-rich elm, then ring-barked the trees to kill the
canopy to let the sunlight on to the grass and perhaps their crops. Cows are
forest animals, and are browsers on leaves rather than grazers of grass. Cereals
were cultivated Grasses and nettles and weeds like plantains typical of cultivated
areas appear. The almost indestructible pollen in the bogs indicates their
presence. As the fertility of the soil declined the cultivated patch was
abandoned and a new one cleared by burning. Elm, pine, oak, and alder declined
while hazel and birch increased. These latter formed scrub
as the farmers moved on to the next patch of forest. This clearing had a
catastrophic effect on the forest soils that had been accumulating for 4,000
years. A change to a wetter climate in the Atlantic phase, and the removal of
tree cover led to a leaching of the soil, and to the formation of an impervious
iron pan beneath the surface. The result in the wetter parts was a widespread
covering of blanket bogs (Bellamy 92ff).
There was a plain shouldered pottery,
kite-shaped arrowheads and hollow scrapers of flint and chert. Axes were made
from igneous rocks in Antrim. The initial period, i.e. before the megalithic
period, probably lasted from 4500 BC to 3500 BC
The
People of Ireland
We have seen that Europe was re-peopled after the last retreat
of the ice by the descendants of the Homo
Sapiens people who were the hunter-gatherers in
the Upper
Palaeolithic
period. These Mesolithic peoples were thinly scattered over Europe and some few came to Ireland. For some millennia after their first
arrival in Ireland communication by traders or explorers
for raw materials was relatively easy from Ireland to the Near East. The likelihood is that a single
language and a single religious culture covered the entire area, both derived
from North
Africa like
the population. There were
no mass migration of whole peoples, successive waves massacring all
their predecessors, as earlier historians imagined. The population of Ireland today, like the population of Europe, consists substantially of the
descendants of the first Neolithic farmers and the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
The Neolithic farmers who came to Ireland were themselves descendants of the
Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Western Europe. (Genetic testing shows that the
author is descended from a woman who lived the Camargue region of southern France about 20,000 years ago.)
We have no idea however who the first
farmers in Ireland were or how the farming culture
arrived in Ireland. We know that in Europe in general the bulk of the present day
population is descended from the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers,
and that farming techniques spread largely by imitation. The land bridge
between Ireland had Scotland was probably broken in Mesolithic
times (Mitchell 63ff). But whether the Mesolithic population in Ireland had died out before the Neolithic
period or not it does not matter much. For the
Neolithic farmers, like their predecessors, would have come from Britain. The technical means for a large
number of people to sail directly from the Continent to Ireland did not exist
before the Spanish armada; the Norsemen depended on settlements all along the
coasts of Scotland; even the Danes, whose nearest settlements were on the east
coast of England, rarely appeared in Ireland. The population of Ireland is substantially the same as that of Britain.
Neolithic
Culture in Ireland
We are now in a position to pull
together the various strands of evidence to get a picture of life in Ireland in early Neolithic times. As there was
no Irish race distinct from other races the culture in Ireland was the same as in Western Europe. What we know about Neolithic society
and culture in Ireland is largely conclusions drawn from
archaeological investigation in Ireland and in the rest of the world. There are no written records or inscriptions
from the period, either because the art of writing was unknown or because
nothing was written on imperishable substances.
The agricultural or Neolithic
revolution took a long time to spread to Ireland. The slowness of the spread of
agricultural techniques was cause by the fact that a population of
hunter-gatherers had to learn and adopt a wholly different lifestyle. But once within the area of Neolithic culture
other inventions and discoveries spread more rapidly to Ireland. So scarcely more
than seven hundred years passed before the arrival of the first farmers and the
development of a full-blooded megalithic culture.
The warm wet forest and bog producing
climate in the Atlantic period 6500 BC to 2730 BC covered most of the Neolithic
period in Ireland. It had two temperature optima, one
about 5000 BC and the second about 3000 BC. The cooler, dry Sub-Boreal period
covers the Bronze Age in Ireland.
The first farmers would have followed
the contemporary practice in Europe, clearing patches of woodland or scrubland by the
use of fire and by ring-barking the trees. (See above under Wessex Farmers and Neolithic Farming in Ireland)
When the fertility of the forest soil was exhausted after several year
of cropping another likely patch of forest was cleared. Not all soils were able
to regenerate when left fallow. In many parts, especially in the wetter west
bogs developed. But where the soils were naturally fertile the population could
grow. Life could be lived at much higher altitudes than would be comfortable or
feasible today. It is not clear how much of the land at lower altitudes was
inhabited. Bogs had not yet formed, but poor drainage over much of Ireland would have led to marshy lands
unsuitable for cultivation, but very suitable for cattle-rearing. A very great
part of the soil that is tilled in Ireland today is the result of very extensive
field drainage systems put in place in the last few centuries. In the preceding
centuries, even if there were open drains around the fields the natural crop
was rushes. In many parts of Ireland to this day, even with undersoil
drains the natural vegetation is still rushes. Tilling the fields was done by
women using hoes; the men looked after the animals. In the earliest period
there were groups of people, all living more or less the same kind of life,
with a senior figure as leader or chief. There was little distinction regarding
wealth. The seems to have been no elaborate system of religion, and their beliefs
were probably much like what has been described in the Palaeolithic Period
The climate was warm so there was
little need for elaborate houses or shelters.
As in Africa today, shelter was need chiefly
against the rain. Life was lived outdoors. The organisation of society and the
holding of lands was doubtless the same as that of their contemporaries. The
same can be said of their religious beliefs
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