Vase decorated with the Neolithic era
Acceleration of the human evolution
The passage of paleolithic to the Neolithic era - the neolithisation - is a set of sometimes radical, but also very progressive modifications economic and social. The Neolithic era is finally only one transition between the world from the hunters-gatherers and that from the history: ours. During all the paleolithic one, the men knew a remarkably stable lifestyle founded on the gathering, hunting and fishing. Their social organization hardly varied, made more or less wandering small groups, and their industry itself evolved little.
Double-side, principal tool of paleolithic, gradually was refined and diversified, but its use remained the same one during more than one million years. Integrated perfectly in nature, the man was satisfied to exploit, using a simple material, a all the more rich natural environment as the demographic pressure was reduced.
Essential discovery, fire allowed a control of the environment; this stage illustrates the progressive acceleration of the intellectual processes of the man - what recovers at the same time the techniques, the social life, spiritual and cultural.
The neolithisation, moment capital of this acceleration, is the whole of the processes implemented at the beginning of Holocene (period succeeding the last glaciation), and which led to an organization of the company such as we know it today.
However, if it is easy to analyze the technical inventions, it is it much less to encircle the mechanisms which set up a saving and modes in social relations and intellectual new.
After the glaciation of Würm
The control of the food resources by the man was done only very slowly. It is only at the end of the period - a few millenia on the thousands which account the whole of the paleolithic one - which acceleration is manifest. The gathering, hunting and fishing were effective means of getting food with a minimum of efforts. Not very many, mobile, hardly occupying that the rich areas, the men of paleolithic easily got that which they needed. However, with the paleolithic superior and final, the evolution accelerates. The a large number of known sites illustrates the demographic strong growth, parallel with the postglacial climatic improvement and the technical innovations.
After the end of the glaciation of Würm, towards -10 ' 000, the situation changes radically at the level of planet; this exceptional climatic improvement opens immense areas, rich in game and products of gathering, with human colonization. One then sees a true multiplication of the hunting weapons and fishing, in particular with the invention of the arc, whose effectiveness decreases the role of the community in hunting for the profit of that of the individual, which will influence the size of the groups.
The general tendency is with the reduction of the dimension of the tools (microlithism) and with the use of composite tools, i.e. formed of several lithic parts assembled in series; new technological requirements appear after an immense period of stability.
The men of paleolithic final control their activities with an unquestionable know-how. Hunting specializes and becomes seasonal; the territory of hunting is reduced, the more so as an unquestionable interest is carried to the small species and the intensification of the gathering. So the threshold of viability of the groups decreases, and the latter are limited to about ten people (nuclear family).
The natoufien example
The rooting in a restricted area is consolidated gradually. The example of Natoufiens in the Middle East, undoubtedly the group the best known one before the Neolithic era, is characteristic of this phenomenon. Their culture (- 10 ' 500 to -8 ' 200) extends from Israel in Syria current. Natoufiens are hunters-gatherers having widened their food possibilities: gazelles, birds, fish, tortoises, cereals and vegetables wild. If they are not at the origin of the neolithisation, part of their lifestyle advertisement: partial sedentarisation, reduction of the specific territory of hunting to each group (intensification of the exploitation of the natural resources, related to the population growth), use of the material of crushing (transformation into wild cereal flour), domestication of the dog. Natoufiens built small made hamlets of circular boxes, and pit-silos. The funerary rites confirm this identification with a reduced territory. The storage of wild cereals would have played a great part in the immobilization of the group.
Natoufiens thus have a double organization: the sedentary domestic activities approach the Neolithic lifestyle, while the research of food remains mobile, therefore of paleolithic type. It is possible that the rarefaction of game and the wild cereal resources around the zones in the course of sedentarisation led to new provisions to ensure a balanced food.