Millennium between 8000 BC and 7001 BC
Millennia
:
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Centuries
:
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- 80th century BC
- 79th century BC
- 78th century BC
- 77th century BC
- 76th century BC
- 75th century BC
- 74th century BC
- 73rd century BC
- 72nd century BC
- 71st century BC
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The
8th millennium BC
spanned the years 8000 BC to 7001 BC (c. 10 ka to c. 9 ka). In chronological terms, it is the second full millennium of the current
Holocene
epoch and is entirely within the
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
(PPNB) phase of the
Early Neolithic
. It is impossible to precisely date events that happened around the time of this millennium and all dates mentioned here are estimates mostly based on geological and anthropological analysis, or by radiometric dating.
Global environment
[
edit
]
In the
geologic time scale
, the first
stratigraphic stage
of the
Holocene
epoch is the "
Greenlandian
" from about 9700 BC to the fixed date 6236 BC and so including the whole of the 8th millennium. The Greenlandian followed the
Younger Dryas
and essentially featured a climate shift from near-glacial to interglacial, causing glaciers to retreat and sea levels to rise.
[1]
[2]
Towards the end of the 8th millennium, the
Holocene Climate Optimum
(HCO) ? also called the Holocene Thermal Maximum (HTM) ? began as a warm period lasting roughly 4,000 years until about 3000 BC.
Insolation
during summers in the northern hemisphere was unusually strong with pronounced warming in the higher latitudes such as Greenland, northern Canada and northern Europe with a resultant reduction in Arctic sea ice.
[3]
During the 8th millennium, there were five
known volcanic eruptions
which registered magnitude 5 above on the
Volcanic Explosivity Index
(VEI). These were at
Rotoma Caldera
in
New Zealand
's
Taup? Volcanic Zone
about 7560 BC;
Lvinaya Past
in the
Kuril Islands
about 7480 BC;
Pinatubo
on the island of
Luzon
in the
Philippines
about 7460 BC;
Fisher Caldera
, on
Unimak Island
in the
Aleutians
about 7420 BC; and at
Lake Toba
in
North Sumatra
about 7400 BC.
[4]
The biggest eruptions were at Fisher Caldera, VEI 6, producing more than 50 km
3
(12 cu mi) of
tephra
[5]
and at Lake Toba, VEI 8, which, according to
Toba catastrophe theory
, had a major effect on the early human population.
[6]
The date of c. 7640 BC has been theorised for the impact of
Tollmann's hypothetical bolide
with Earth. The hypothesis holds that there was a resultant global
cataclysm
such as the legendary
Universal Deluge
. Bolides are
asteroids
or
comets
.
[7]
According to radiometric dates, the main occupation phases recognized at
Shillourokambos
took place between the end of the
9th millennium BC
and the end of this millennium, long before the
Khirokitia
Culture.
[8]
The fact remains that its disappearance in the Middle Phase at
Shillourokambos
, in the second half of this millennium, is not an isolated incident but one of a number of expressions of a deep cultural change.
[8]
Population and communities
[
edit
]
Outside the Near East, most people around the world still lived in scattered
hunter-gatherer
communities which remained firmly in the
Palaeolithic
.
Within the Near East,
Neolithic
culture and technology had become established throughout much of the
Fertile Crescent
by 8000 BC and was gradually spreading westward, though it is not believed to have reached Europe till about the end of this millennium. Planting and harvesting techniques were transferred through Asia Minor and across the Aegean Sea to Greece and the Balkans. The techniques were, in the main, cultivation of wheats and barleys; and domestication of sheep, goats and cattle.
The
world population
was probably stable and slowly increasing. It has been estimated that there were some five million people c. 10,000 BC growing to forty million by 5000 BC and 100 million by 1600 BC. That is an average growth rate of 0.027% p.a. from the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age.
[
citation needed
]
Fertile Crescent
[
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]
By c. 7500 BC (see map above right), important sites in or near the Fertile Crescent included
Jericho
,
'Ain Ghazal
,
Huleh
,
Tell Aswad
,
Tell Abu Hureyra
,
Tell Qaramel
,
Tell Mureibit
,
Jerf el Ahmar
,
Gobekli Tepe
,
Nevalı Cori
,
Hacilar
,
Catalhoyuk
,
Hallan Cemi Tepesi
,
Cayonu Tepesi
,
Shanidar
,
Jarmo
,
Zrebar
,
Ganj Dareh
and
Ali Kosh
. Jericho in the
Jordan Valley
continued to be the world's most significant site through this millennium.
Catalhoyuk
(see image) was a large
Neolithic
and
Chalcolithic
proto-city
settlement in southern
Anatolia
which flourished from c. 7500 BC until it was abandoned c. 5700 BC.
[11]
Pottery and dating systems
[
edit
]
There was no pottery
per se
in the Near East at this time as the
potter's wheel
had not yet been invented. Rudimentary clay vessels were hand-built, often by means of
coiling
, and
pit fired
.
Dame
Kathleen Kenyon
was the principal archaeologist at
Tell es-Sultan
(ancient Jericho) and she discovered that there was no pottery there.
[14]
The vessels she found were made from stone and she reasonably surmised that others made from wood or vegetable fibres would have long since decayed.
[14]
The first chronological pottery system had been devised by Sir
Arthur Evans
for his
Bronze Age
findings at
Knossos
and Kenyon used this as a benchmark for the Near East Neolithic. She divided the period into phases called
Pre-Pottery Neolithic A
(PPNA), from c. 10,000 BC to c. 8800 BC;
Pre-Pottery Neolithic B
(PPNB), which includes the entire 8th millennium, from c. 8800 BC to c. 6500 BC; and then
Pottery Neolithic
(PN), which had varied start-points from c. 6500 BC until the beginnings of the Bronze Age towards the end of the
4th millennium
(c. 3000 BC).
Agriculture in the Americas
[
edit
]
It was from c. 8000 BC that agriculture developed throughout the Americas, especially in modern Mexico. There were numerous
New World crops
, as they are now termed, and domestication began with the
potato
and the
cucurbita
(squash) about this time.
[15]
[16]
Other crops began to be harvested over the next 7,500 years including
chili peppers
,
maize
,
peanut
,
avocado
,
beans
,
cotton
,
sunflower
,
cocoa
and
tomato
.
[17]
[18]
Other cultural developments
[
edit
]
The
Mount Sandel Mesolithic site
in
Ireland
is dated to c. 7900?7600 BC. This was long thought to be the earliest human activity on the island, until the discovery of the
Alice and Gwendoline Cave
pushed the date back to 10,000 BC.
[19]
The date for construction of a
round-house
near
Howick, Northumberland
is calculated c. 7600 BC by
radiocarbon dating
. The site is believed to have been occupied for about 100 years.
[20]
The
Homo sapiens
fossil from
Combe-Capelle
in southern France, discovered in 1909, is estimated to be 9,500 years old (c. 7500 BC).
[21]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Cohen, K. M.; Finney, S. C.; Gibbard, P. L.; Fan, J.-X. (May 2019).
"International Chronostratigraphic Chart"
(PDF)
. International Commission on Stratigraphy.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 9 October 2022
. Retrieved
13 November
2019
.
- ^
Walker, Mike; Head, Martin J.; Berkelhammer, Max; et al. (14 June 2018).
"Formal ratification of the subdivision of the Holocene Series/Epoch (Quaternary System/Period)"
(PDF)
.
Episodes
. Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS).
doi
:
10.18814/epiiugs/2018/018016
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 9 October 2022
. Retrieved
21 September
2022
.
This proposal on behalf of the SQS has been approved by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) and formally ratified by the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)
.
- ^
Park, Hyo-Seok; Kim, Seong-Joong; Stewart, Andrew L.; Son, Seok-Woo; Seo, Kyong-Hwan (11 December 2019).
"Mid-Holocene Northern Hemisphere warming driven by Arctic amplification"
.
Science Advances
.
5
(12). Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): eaax8203.
Bibcode
:
2019SciA....5.8203P
.
doi
:
10.1126/sciadv.aax8203
.
PMC
6905875
.
PMID
31844667
.
- ^
"Holocene Volcano List"
.
Global Volcanism Program
. Smithsonian Institution. 2013
. Retrieved
7 January
2021
.
- ^
"Grimsvotn"
.
Global Volcanism Program
. Smithsonian Institution. 2013
. Retrieved
7 January
2021
.
- ^
Ambrose, Stanley H. (1998).
"Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks, volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans"
.
Journal of Human Evolution
.
34
(6): 623?651.
Bibcode
:
1998JHumE..34..623A
.
doi
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10.1006/jhev.1998.0219
.
PMID
9650103
.
- ^
Kristan-Tollmann, E.; Tollmann, A. (1994). "The youngest big impact on Earth deduced from geological and historical evidence".
Terra Nova
.
6
(2): 209?217.
Bibcode
:
1994TeNov...6..209K
.
doi
:
10.1111/j.1365-3121.1994.tb00656.x
.
- ^
a
b
Le Brun, Alain. "Like a Bull in a Chine Shop: Identity and Ideology in Neolithic Cyprus." Archaeological Perspectives on the Transmission and Transformation of Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean, edited by Joanne Clarke, Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), 2005, pp. 113?17. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv310vqks.19
. Accessed 3 Feb. 2023.
- ^
Langer, William L., ed. (1972).
An Encyclopedia of World History
(5th ed.). Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company. p.
9
.
ISBN
978-03-95135-92-1
.
- ^
a
b
Dever, William G. (1978). "Kathleen Kenyon (1906?1978): A Tribute".
Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
.
232
. American Schools of Oriental Research: 3?4.
doi
:
10.1086/BASOR1356696
.
S2CID
167007661
.
- ^
Spooner, D. M.; et al. (2005).
"A single domestication for potato based on multilocus amplified fragment length polymorphism genotyping"
.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
.
102
(41): 94?99.
Bibcode
:
2005PNAS..10214694S
.
doi
:
10.1073/pnas.0507400102
.
PMC
1253605
.
PMID
16203994
.
- ^
Smith, Bruce D. (February 2001).
"Documenting plant domestication: The consilience of biological and archaeological approaches"
.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
.
98
(4): 1324?1326.
Bibcode
:
2001PNAS...98.1324S
.
doi
:
10.1073/pnas.98.4.1324
.
PMC
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.
PMID
11171946
.
- ^
Smith, A. F. (1994).
The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery
. University of South Carolina Press. p. 13.
ISBN
978-15-70030-00-0
.
- ^
Piperno, Dolores R.; Ranere, Anthony J.; Holst, Irene; Iriarte, Jose; Dickau, Ruth (2009).
"Starch grain and phytolith evidence for early ninth millennium BP maize from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico"
.
PNAS
.
106
(13): 5019?5024.
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:
2009PNAS..106.5019P
.
doi
:
10.1073/pnas.0812525106
.
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.
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.
- ^
Viney, Michael (23 April 2016).
"Another Life: The case of the knee-capped bear"
. Dublin: The Irish Times Ltd
. Retrieved
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2021
.
- ^
Richards, Julian (17 February 2011).
"Britain's Oldest House?"
.
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. London: BBC
. Retrieved
8 January
2021
.
- ^
Hoffmann, Almut; Hublin, Jean-Jacques; Huels, Matthias; Terberger, Thomas (2011). "The Homo aurignaciensis hauseri from Combe-Capelle ? A Mesolithic burial".
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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
PMID
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.
Bibliography
[
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]