by Peter Watson
61. By the same token, the fact that the Neanderthals were around in the Ice Age, and produced no art that we know of, strongly suggests that they were intellectually incapable of producing such artefacts.
62. Mithen, Op. cit., 197.
63. Ibid.
64. Rudgley, Op. cit., 196.
65. At the el-Wad cave in the Mount Carmel area near Haifa in Israel, a piece of flint was discovered, dating to 12,800–10,300 BP, which had been modified as a sort of artistic double-entendre. From certain angles, the figure resembles a penis (say the modern palaeontologists), from another angle it looks like a set of testicles, though the actual carving, when examined in detail, represents a couple, seated, facing each other, and engaged in sexual intercourse. Rudgley, Op. cit., pages 188–189.
66. Eliade, Op. cit., page 20.
67. Scientific American, November 2000, pages 32–34.
68. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 367. Randall White further reports that many of the beads were made of ‘exotic’ materials–ivory, steatite, serpentine–the raw materials for which were obtained in some cases from 100 kilometres (60 miles) away. This raises the possibility of early ideas of trade. Ibid., 375–376. Different sites had similar motifs (sea shells, for example) at similar excavation levels, showing that early aesthetic ideas radiated between peoples (an early form of fashion?). Ibid., page 377.
69. Mithen, Op. cit., page 200.
70. David Lewis-Williams, The Mind in the Cave, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2002, page 127.
71. Ibid., pages 199–200 and 216–217.
72. Ibid., pages 224–225.
73. Ibid., pages 285–286.
74. Will Knight and Rachel Nowak, ‘Meet our new human relatives’, New Scientist, 30 October 2004, pages 8–10.
CHAPTER 2: THE ORIGINS OF LANGUAGE AND THE CONQUEST OF COLD
1. The actual figures were 67 and 82 respectively, but this seems overly specific. Mithen, Op. cit., page 119.
2. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 343.
3. Klein with Edgard, Op. cit., page 19.
4. The Nelson Bay inhabitants had ostrich shells which they used as water containers on their journeys inland; those at Klasies did not.
5. Mithen, Op. cit., page 250. For the lice research, see: Douglas, Op. cit., page 28.
6. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 439.
7. Ibid., page 451.
8. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., pages 54 and 68.
9. Stuart J. Fiedel, The Pre-history of the Americas, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1987, page 25.
10. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., page 215.
11. Ibid., page 225.
12. Brian Fagan, The Great Journey, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1987, pages 188–189.
13. Ibid., page 73.
14. Fiedel, Op. cit., page 27.
15. Fagan, Op. cit., page 79.
16. See Oppenheimer, Op. cit., page 233, for a map of the southerly routes.
17. Fagan, Op. cit., page 89.
18. Ibid., page 92. Though Berelekh is the most likely route taken by the palaeo-Indians, the Dyukhtai stone culture does not exactly resemble that found in north America and this is where another site comes in–Ushki, on the Kamchatka peninsula. Ushki is a large site of 100 square metres, where the stone tools at lower levels (12,000 BC) lack the wedge shape so characteristic of Dyukhtai. However, by later levels (8800 BC) the Dyukhtai tools are there. This raises the intriguing possibility that the Dyukhtai people pushed out the Ushki people, who were forced to look elsewhere. Fagan, Op. cit., pages 96–97. If Berelekh was the route taken, it would mean that early man travelled along the top of the world, walking or sailing (or rafting) along the shores of the East Siberian Sea and then the Chukchi Sea, to reach what is now Chukotskiy Poluostrov (Chukotsk peninsula). Uelen (Mys Dezhneva) is 50–60 miles from Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska. The very latest evidence traces the first Americans to the Jomon culture in Japan. International Herald Tribune, 31 July 2001.
19. Fagan, Op. cit., pages 108–109.
20. Ibid., page 111.
21. Frederick Hadleigh West, The Archaeology of Beringia, New York: Columbia University Press, 1981, pages 156, 164 and 177–178.
22. Fagan, Op. cit., pages 93ff.
23. Antonio Torroni, ‘Mitochondrial DNA and the origin of Native Americans’, in Colin Renfrew (editor), America Past, America Present: Genes and Language in the Americas and Beyond, Cambridge, England: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge, Papers in the Prehistory of Language, 2000, pages 77–87.
24. There is some evidence for Monte Verde being dated to 37,000 years ago and for Meadowcroft at 19,000 years ago. See: Oppenheimer, Op. cit., pages 287 and 291. But many archaeologists remain unconvinced.
25. Hadleigh West, Op. cit., page 87.
26. Fagan, Op. cit., page 92; Hadleigh West, Op. cit., page 132.
27. According to Michael Corballis, professor of psychology at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, language may have developed out of gestures. He makes the point that chimpanzees are much better at sign language than speaking and that, in their brains, the area corresponding to Broca’s area is involved with making and perceiving hand and arm movements. Deaf humans also have no difficulty developing sign languages. Corballis speculates that bipedalism enabled early man to develop hand and facial gestures first and that speech only developed after the rules had been laid down in the brain for grammar, syntax etc. See: Michael Corballis, From Hand to Mouth: The Origins of Language, Princeton, New Jersey, and London: Princeton University Press, 2002. For Kanzi’s ‘words’, see: Anil Ananthaswamy, ‘Has the chimp taught himself to talk?’, New Scientist, 4 January 2003, page 12.
28. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 397.
29. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., page 27.
30. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 406.
31. Ibid., page 412.
32. Ibid., chapter 10, ‘New skeletal evidence concerning the anatomy of middle Palaeolithic populations in the Middle East: the Kebara skeleton’, especially page 169. ‘Neanderthals not so dumb’, Mark Henderson, The (London) Times, 22 June 2004, page 4.
33. International Herald Tribune, 16 August 2002, page 1.
34. The gene was located in, among other sites, fifteen members of one family living in Britain, all of whom have profound speech defects and all of whom had a defective version of FOXP2.
35. Tore Janson, Speak, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, page 27.
36. Les Groube, ‘The impact of diseases upon the emergence of agriculture’, in David R. Harris (editor), The Origins and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, London: University College London Press, 1996, page 103.
37. Johanna Nichols calculates there are 167 American language ‘stocks’. Stephen Oppenheimer observes there are far more languages in South America than in the north. He provides a table, of different parts of the world, calibrating language diversity and period of human occupation. His graph shows essentially a straight line–in other words, there is a strong relation between time depth and language diversity. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., page 299. For William Sutherland’s claim that there are 6,809 languages in the world, see New Scientist, 17 May 2003, page 22.
38. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 39.
39. Terence Grieder, Origins of Pre-Columbian Art, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1982.
40. Oppenheimer, Op. cit., page 304.
41. Colin Renfrew and Daniel Nettle (editors), Nostratic: Examining a Linguistic Macrofamily, Cambridge, England: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1999, page 5.
42. Ibid., page 130.
43. Ibid., pages 12–13.
44. Nicholas Wade, ‘Genes are telling 50,000-year-old story of the origins of Europeans’, New York Times, 14 November 2000, page F9.
45. Renfrew and Nettle (editors), Op. cit., pages 53–67; Merritt Ruhlen, The Origin of Languages, New York: Wiley, 1994. Luigi Cavalli-Sforza and
Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, The Great Human Diasporas, New York: Addison-Wesley, 1995, pages 174–177 and 185–186.
46. Renfrew and Nettle (editors), Op. cit., page 68.
47. Ibid., pages 68–69.
48. Ibid., pages 54 and 398.
49. Gyula Décsy, ‘Beyond Nostratic in time and space’, in Renfrew and Nettle (editors), Op. cit., pages 127–135.
50. Steven Pinker and P. Bloom, ‘Natural language and natural selection’, Behavioural and Brain Science, volume 13, 1990, pages 707–784. Robin Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, London: Faber & Faber, 1996.
51. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 485.
52. Ibid., page 459.
53. Ibid., pages 468–469.
54. Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind, Op. cit., page 215.
55. Ibid., page 334.
56. Ibid., pages 333–334.
57. Mellars and Stringer, Op. cit., page 356.
58. Alexander Marshack, ‘Upper Palaeolithic notation and symbols’, Science, volume 178, 1972, pages 817–828.
59. Franceso d’Errico, ‘A new model and its implications for the origin of writing: the La Marche Antler revisited’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal, volume 5, number 2, October 1995, pages 163–206.
60. Rudgley, Op. cit., page 74.
61. Ibid., page 77.
62. Ibid., page 79. ‘Three is the magic number alphabets have in common’, New Scientist, 12 February 2005, page 16.
63. Donald, Origins of the Modern Mind, Op. cit., page 348.
CHAPTER 3: THE BIRTH OF THE GODS, THE EVOLUTION OF HOUSE AND HOME
1. Mithen, After the Ice, Op. cit., page 54.
2. Ibid., pages 12–13.
3. Chris Scarre, ‘Climate change and faunal extinction at the end of the Pleistocene’, chapter 5 of The Human Past, edited by Chris Scarre, London: Thames & Hudson, forthcoming, page 13.
4. David R. Harris (editor), The Origin and Spread of Agriculture and Pastoralism in Eurasia, London: University College London Press, 1996, page 135.
5. Ibid., page 144.
6. Ibid.
7. Goudsblom, Op. cit., page 47.
8. Scarre, Op. cit., page 11.
9. Harris (editor), Op. cit., pages 266–267. For the pig reference see Scarre, Op. cit., pages 9ff.
10. New Scientist, 10 August 2002, page 17.
11. Harris (editor), Op. cit., page 264. Bob Holmes, ‘Manna or millstone,’ New Scientist, 18 September 2004, pages 29–31.
12. Daniel Hillel, Out of the Earth, London: Aurum, 1992, page 73.
13. Mark Nathan Cohen, The Food Crisis in Prehistory, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
14. Groube, ‘The impact of diseases upon the emergence of agriculture’ in Harris (editor), Op. cit., pages 101–129.
15. V. G. Childe, Man Makes Himself, London: Watts, 1941.
16. Ibid., pages 554–555.
17. Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000 (French publication, 1994, translation: Trevor Watkins), page 15.
18. Ibid., page 16.
19. Ibid., page 22.
20. Ibid., pages 39–48. See also: Ian Hodder, The Domestication of Europe, Oxford: Blackwell, 1990, pages 34–35, for an allied theory.
21. Cauvin, Op. cit., page 44. See John Graham Clark, World Prehistory, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1977, page 50, for curvilinear houses at Beidha in Jordan.
22. Cauvin, Op. cit., page 69.
23. Ibid., page 125.
24. Ibid. See Erlich Zehren, The Crescent and the Bull, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1962, for an earlier discussion of bull tombs in the Middle East.
25. Cauvin, Op. cit., page 128.
26. Ibid., page 132.
27. Mithen, After the Ice, Op. cit., page 59.
28. Fred Matson (editor), Ceramics and Man, London: Methuen, 1966, page 241.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., page 242.
31. Ibid.
32. Goudsblom, Op. cit., pages 58–59.
33. Matson, Op. cit., page 244.
34. Mithen, After the Ice, Op. cit., page 372.
35. Matson, Op. cit., page 245.
36. Ibid., page 210.
37. Ibid., page 211. See Clark, Op. cit., page 55, for key radio-carbon dating for Tepe Sarab.
38. Matson, Op. cit., page 207.
39. Ibid., page 208.
40. Ibid., page 220.
41. Ibid. See also Clark, Op. cit., pages 61ff. for another outline of where pottery first appeared.
42. Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, Op. cit., volume 1, pages 114–115. Some of the dolmens are vast–one at Soto, near Seville in Spain, is 21 metres long and has as pediment a granite block that is 3.40 metres high.
43. Colin Renfrew, Before Civilisation, London: Cape, 1973, pages 162–163.
44. Ibid., page 164.
45. Ibid., page 165.
46. Alastair Service and Jean Bradbery, Megaliths and Their Mysteries, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979, page 33.
47. Ibid., page 34.
48. Ibid., page 35.
49. Chris Scarre, ‘Shrines of the land: religion and the transition to farming in Western Europe’, paper delivered at the conference ‘Faith in the Past: Theorising an Archaeology of Religion’. Publication forthcoming, edited by David Whitley, page 6.
50. Douglas C. Heggie, Megalithic Science: Ancient Maths and Astronomy in North-Western Europe, London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 1981, pages 61–64.
51. Eliade, Op. cit., page 117.
52. Service and Bradbery, Op. cit., pages 22–23.
53. Marija Gimbutas, The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe: 6500 to 3500 BC, London: Thames & Hudson, 1982, page 236.
54. Ibid., page 237.
55. Ibid., page 177.
56. Ibid., page 24. This is confirmed by Hodder, Op. cit., at page 61, where he also explores female symbolism on pottery.
57. In her book The Gods and Goddesses of Old Europe: 6500 to 3500 BC, Op. cit., Marija Gimbutas also explores links between these original ideas and the ideas of the Greeks in regard to their gods. In particular, she finds that the Great Goddess survives as Artemis: the rituals surrounding her worship recall the ceremonies hinted at in the ancient statues of Old Europe (for example, Artemis Eileithyia–‘child-bearing’), pages 198–199.
58. Matson, Op. cit., page 141.
59. Ibid., page 143.
60. Leslie Aitchison, A History of Metals, London: Macdonald, 1960, page 37.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., page 38.
63. Ibid., page 39. See Clark, Op. cit., page 92, for a discussion of Susa pottery and the adoption of metallurgy.
64. Aitchison, Op. cit., page 40.
65. Ibid., pages 40–41.
66. Ibid., page 41.
67. One explanation for this rapid dispersal of technological knowledge has been put down by James Muhly to the invention of writing, which we will come to in Chapter 4. See Theodore Wertime et al. (editors), The Coming of the Age of Iron, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980, page 26. But there are other possibilities. The earliest true bronzes–tin bronzes–that occur in any quantity are found at Ur, in Mesopotamia, just before the middle of the second millennium BC, though the suggestion has been made that, since the Sumerians were immigrants from further east, and since the same metallurgical advances were also found at Mohenjo-Daro, on the Indus, perhaps the Sumerians first appreciated the principle of bronze-making in their original homeland, and the knowledge then spread in both directions, but needed the discovery of substantial tin deposits before it could find proper expression: Aitchison, Op. cit., page 62. This theory is further supported by the fact that Sumer’s bronze period lasted for only 300 years, then dropped off, as local tin deposits became exhausted: Wertime, Op. cit., page 32.
68. Aitchison, Op. cit., page 78.
69. Ibid., page 82.
70. Ibid., page 93. See Clark, Op
. cit., pages 179 and 186 for illustrations showing daggers lengthening into swords.
71. Aitchison, Op. cit., page 98.
72. Wertime, Op. cit., pages 69–70 and 99.
