My European Family

by Karin Bojs

  Archaeologists at Dhra’ have found a number of small buildings, all of which are circular or oval in shape. Built of stone and mudbrick, they are partly sunken into the ground. Some appear to have been primarily dwellings. However, there are also some round structures that seem to have been used as granaries. The oldest of these is about 11,300 years old.

  Just as in Khirokitia, built over a millennium later, these granaries had raised wooden floors supported by plinths. In many cases the floor would have sloped – awkward in a dwelling, but practical for grain storage. Quantities of barley and oat seeds have been found next to the round buildings, together with stone mortars and storage vessels made of woven plant fibres daubed with clay to make them watertight.

  Similar remains of granaries have been found at a number of other sites along the River Jordan, in northern Syria and south-eastern Turkey.

  There are no definite signs that the people living in Dhra’ actually cultivated grain themselves. They were probably gatherers, just as previous generations had been. They would have gone in search of barley and oats growing wild on the mountainsides, cut the stalks with flint tools and carried the sheaves home to their camp. Everyone there would have shared the food, as hunter-gatherer peoples had always done.

  The difference was that the people of Dhra’ had begun to develop methods for storing grain for extended periods of time, which meant they were no longer obliged to be so mobile. Increasingly, they could settle down. Young children, freed from the strenuous business of continual migration, were more likely to survive. The population grew, and the very first signs of private wealth and a class-based society began to emerge.

  According to Kuijt and Finlayson, grain-storage technology was the most critical factor on the way to an agricultural society. In their view, the first granaries were the threshold to civilisation.

  And there were sentinels guarding that threshold.

  ***

  Two things happened when people began to accumulate large stocks of grain. Firstly, the grain attracted mice. Secondly, the mice attracted cats. People had every reason to be delighted when cats began to eat the mice that were rife in their grain stores. They no doubt did all they could to encourage these cats to stay in their villages, by feeding them, playing with the kittens and even petting the full-grown cats – if the adult cats would let people stroke them.

  Today, cats are the world’s most common domestic animal. The domestic cat is a close relative of its wild counterpart, Felis silvestris. DNA studies suggest that all the domestic cats in the world are descended from a subspecies of Felis silvestris living in the Middle East.

  It was more difficult than usual to draw up a genealogical table for the world’s domestic cats, as tame cats often run off and interbreed with local wild cats. But in 2007 an extensive study was published that compared the DNA of nearly 1,000 wild and domestic cats from all over the world. The results show that the domestic cat’s closest wild relatives today live in remote desert areas in the Middle East.

  So cats come from the desert. Even today, many domestic cats have retained their natural camouflage colouring; they are still sandy and grey in colour, with stripes on their backs.

  For a long time, archaeologists’ oldest evidence of domestic cats came from the Egypt of the Pharaohs. Back in the 1940s, a mural painting nearly 4,000 years old of a cat attacking a rat was found in the grave of the provincial governor Baket III. There is also an alabaster vessel of nearly equal antiquity which skillfully depicts a cat, with eyes of rock crystal and copper.

  In the necropolis of Abydos, 17 complete skeletons of cats have been found that were apparently sacrificed nearly 4,000 years ago. In recent years, Belgian archaeologists have found even more ancient burial places in Egypt containing the skeletons of cats that appear to have been tame. They were buried nearly 6,000 years ago.

  During the millennia that followed, a veritable cult of the cat emerged in Egypt. A number of Egyptian goddesses were believed to take feline form. The best-known is Bastet, who symbolised motherhood and, according to some sources, fertility and sexuality as well.

  Temple employees began to rear cats on a truly industrial scale. Visitors to temples could pay for a cat to be killed and mummified. The visitor could then offer up the mummified cat to the gods. Underneath the temples were long subter­ranean passages whose walls were lined with small niches in which these votive offerings were placed. One excavation of the temple at Bubastis revealed several thousand cat mummies.

  Herodotus, the Greek historian, described about 2,450 years ago how people in the Nile Valley worshipped Bastet by holding huge processions, bathing in the Nile, drinking copious quantities of wine and sacrificing cats. That Christi­anity has often associated cats with the Devil may not be so strange. The early Christians, after all, were confronted by a widespread cult of the cat.

  Finds made by French archaeologists in Cyprus have extended the history of the domestic cat by several millennia. When the first settlers came to Cyprus by boat, their cargo included both dogs and cats; there were no wild cats among the island’s indigenous fauna.

  The oldest remains of cats’ bones in Cyprus date back 10,600 years. But the most significant find, from a village called Shillourokambos, is about 9,500 years old. A human being and a cat were each assigned their personal burial place, just 40 centimetres (16 inches) apart.

  The human, of indeterminate sex, was around 30 or perhaps a little older. He or she was interred with unusually rich grave goods: a seashell, a stone pendant, a fragment of ochre and several flint tools of different kinds. A further 24 seashells were buried in a small pit right next to the grave.

  While the cat was not accompanied by any gifts for the afterlife, it was clearly placed in a newly dug grave of exactly the right size and immediately covered with earth. It was a large, rangy animal – as big as wild tomcats of the subspecies living in the Middle East. About eight months old at the time of its death, it may have been killed to accompany the dead person in the neighbouring grave.

  The French researchers believe the two graves demonstrate strong bonds between people and cats. Cats did not benefit people just in practical ways – by hunting mice – but also held a spiritual significance. This view of cats as possessing a spiritual status is also supported by a number of figurines made of stone and clay found in the settlements of the earliest farmers in Cyprus, Israel, Turkey and Syria. A stone cat figurine predating the cat’s grave has also been found in Shillourokambos.

  One can speculate as to whether the person in the grave was a shaman, a priest or a priestess, with the cat as totemic symbol and closest assistant. The two may have been associated with a combined granary and temple.

  In south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria, archaeologists have found a number of large, round stone buildings that stood in the middle of villages. They were considerably larger than the houses there – up to 10 metres (33 feet) in diameter. Just as in Dhra’, Jordan, some of them have been interpreted as being granaries. Hiding places containing objects of value such as flint tools, shells and greenstone beads have been found in the walls and the floor. These buildings also appear to have been places where people congregated for ritual purposes. In other words, they were a kind of early temple.

  The most ancient settlement in Cyprus that we know of today is called Klimonas. People began to settle there at least 10,800 years ago. Klimonas also had a large round building in the middle of the village. Its inhabitants used flint tools whose appearance shows that their makers were probably from northern Syria. They also brought both dogs and cats with them, as shown by finds of bones and jaws.

  ***

  It is quite conceivable that the cat was the first to take the initiative when humans and cats started cohabiting. To that extent, the story of the cat resembles that of the dog; many researchers think it was dogs that domesticated us, not vice versa. But to an even greater extent than dogs, cats live in human society on their own terms. They differ in several significant ways
from dogs, as well as from most other domestic animals.

  Nearly all other domestic animals originally lived in herds, packs or flocks. This is why they readily know their place in a hierarchy, such as the pecking order in a henhouse, a barn or a family. Wild cats, on the other hand, live alone; they are more solitary animals that get together chiefly for mating purposes. Eleven thousand years of cohabitation with humans have only partially mitigated that trait.

  Dogs, and many other domestic animals, have undergone genetic changes making them more childlike. As a result of this arrested development, they have become more like puppies, both psychologically and physically – more rounded, plumper, more good-humoured and playful, less serious and aggressive. Cats, on the other hand, have undergone relatively little genetic change since the times when they lived alone in Middle Eastern deserts. They have remained adult, retaining their wild relatives’ traits far more than other domestic animals.

  In fact, all this begs the question of whether cats can really be regarded as domestic animals at all. The term used by many researchers is ‘semi-domesticated’, ‘domesticated’ being the term for animals or plants bred so as to be of service to humans.

  In November 2014, an international research team published a large-scale comparison between the DNA of wild and domestic cats. They identified 13 genes showing marked differences. These genes have clearly changed in cats descended from those cohabiting with humans for the last 11,000 years. Most of the genes identified express themselves in the brain. They have an impact on fear and on the brain’s reward system. Domestic cats also seem to have marginally better night vision. This may reflect an adaptation going back to the time when they used to hunt mice in dark granaries.

  The researchers concluded that bold cats which enjoyed being stroked and petted had a better chance of survival around people. Initially, wild cats were attracted to human villages by food, not least the mice proliferating in the granaries. Even then, the most daring cats had an advantage, as they were not frightened off by the presence of humans. Cats that actually allowed people to scratch them behind the ears got on even better. They had a better chance of surviving and having kittens that would also be well cared for. And the more accommodating and ready to learn the kittens were, the more likely they were to live longer and have kittens of their own.

  So that’s the way it is. The cat’s journey towards full domestication continues even today, and many are only halfway there.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The First Beer

  Humans invented agriculture in different parts of the world, each group presumably independently of the others. The indigenous peoples of South and Central America cultivated various types of squash as early as 10,000 years ago. People in South-east Asia domesticated pigs at least 8,500 years ago. But the world’s oldest traces of agriculture are to be found in the Middle East.

  Searching the scientific literature for the cradle of early agriculture, I discovered a curious fact. To my surprise, I ended up just where this book begins – in the region where anatomically modern humans interbred with Neanderthals.

  Sex with Neanderthals may appear to be an anomaly, a mere detail of our prehistoric past. Yet that was how our life outside Africa began. A tiny amount of genetic material from the Neanderthals probably made it easier to live in the cool climate of Europe. The traits passed on by the Neanderthals enabled our immune defence, digestion, skin and hair to adjust, helping us to cope with a new and harsher environment.

  We know we must have received this Neanderthal input somewhere along the way while modern humans were migrating from Africa to Asia and Europe. However, all that DNA researchers can say – rather vaguely – is that this happened about 54,000 years ago, ‘somewhere in the Middle East’.

  This prompted me to turn to Ofer Bar-Yosef from Israel – a veteran of Middle Eastern archaeology – and ask him to suggest a more specific location. He proposed Galilee as the most reasonable possibility. The region was rich in resources that would have supported both a Neanderthal population and the newly arrived modern humans. There was drinking water, plenty of gazelles and other animals to hunt, and fruit, nuts, herbs and nutritious grasses to round off people’s diet. After our conversation, the discovery of a skull confirmed that modern humans really did live there 55,000 years ago, a mere 40 kilometres (25 miles) away from the Neanderthals.

  Having grown up in a Christian country, there are few places I have heard more about than Galilee. My first two years at school were devoted almost exclusively to the deeds of Christ in the region. The Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel told Mary that she would conceive through the Holy Spirit, was set in the Galilean town of Nazareth. It was on the shores of the Sea of Galilee that Jesus called his first disciples to him. There, too, they witnessed the miracle of an extraordinary catch of fish in the fishermen’s nets.

  A fishermen’s camp on the shores of the Sea of Galilee has also provided the earliest evidence of people living on wheat, barley and oats – the cereals that laid the foundations for European agriculture and civilisation. The archaeological site at Ohalo is so well preserved that it constitutes a small miracle in itself. This fishing settlement, inhabited some 23,000 years ago, comprised a number of oval huts built simply and rapidly from branches, foliage and grass, with a few fireplaces in between.

  One day, the hamlet was struck by a large fire that razed the huts. Almost immediately after that, the burnt remains were engulfed by the rising waters of the lake. Naturally, these two events were catastrophic for the hut-dwellers. But 23,000 years later, the fire and the rapid flooding proved to be an almost incredible stroke of luck. Fire and clay have preserved the contents of the settlement, providing archaeo­logists with almost ideal conditions for reconstructing life as it was lived at Ohalo.

  As a result, we know that the settlement’s inhabitants lived largely on fish from the lake, but also hunted gazelles, deer and a wide variety of birds. They gathered pistachio nuts, almonds and olives from the trees, as well as wild grapes and a wide range of herbs. In total, archaeologists have identified the remains of over 150 species in the settlement.

  The most significant find of all is a large, flat stone held down by smaller stones. This is the world’s earliest known millstone, on which the people of Ohalo ground the seeds of starchy grasses by moving a smaller stone back and forth. Israeli researchers have examined microscopic traces of starch from the stone, enabling them to establish that it was used for grinding emmer wheat, barley and oats. They have also identified traces of these grasses on the ground around the millstone, in the huts and around the fireplaces.

  Although archaeologists have found small, simple mortars from even earlier times in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic, the Ohalo millstone shows that milled grains accounted for a far larger share of the Ohalo people’s diet.

  The people of Ohalo lived from fishing and as hunter-gatherers. They cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as farmers. Yet here we see the first large-scale use of the crops that would eventually change humankind’s living conditions in so radical a way.

  The fact that Ohalo has remained so well preserved is the result of extraordinary circumstances. Wild grains may have been part of people’s staple diet over a wider area, without any remains having been preserved for posterity. Yet just as we can say that we must have acquired our Neanderthal genes in the Middle East, we can be quite certain that agriculture made its first appearance in that region.

  A number of researchers claim that this was a drawn-out and geographically diffuse process involving the whole region known as the Fertile Crescent. The region stretches from the Jordan Valley to northern Syria and south-eastern Turkey, down the valleys of the Euphrates and the Tigris, and towards the Zagros Mountains of Iran.

  Other researchers believe that agriculture developed in a far more concentrated way, in terms of both time and place. They contend that the whole package emerged in the course of just a few centuries, in the border regions of
Syria and Turkey. In my view, DNA and other clues now point more in this direction.

  ***

  The first clear signs of agriculture in the Middle East appear at the end of the Ice Age, some 11,500 years ago. This may of course be a coincidence. Some archaeologists strongly disapprove of attempts to explain human behaviour in terms of climate change; they prefer to emphasise internal psychological and social motives.

  However, many of those studying the issue perceive a close link between the altered climate and the first signs of agriculture. That link emerges very clearly with the hunting people known as the Natufians, who lived in Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria for millennia before any trace of agriculture appeared.

  The Natufians seem to have been at least partially sedentary, and their villages contain vestiges of small, round houses constructed on brick-built foundations. However, the Natufians’ houses were a great deal simpler than those we see in Cyprus and in other early farming settlements. They were more like sophisticated huts, with simple stone foundations, but without brick walls. The roofs were conical structures made of branches, foliage and grass, rather than the flat timber roofs covered in peat that emerged a few thousand years later.

  Natufian culture first blossomed between 14,500 and 12,700 years before our time, which corresponds exactly to the first warm period after the Ice Age. This was the time when the first known dog was buried at Bonn-Oberkassel together with two of my forebears from group U5b1, as I described earlier. And it was at exactly the same time that warmth drove the reindeer northwards, followed by their human hunters. People visited the region now known as Sweden for the first time, and life thrived in Doggerland, which now lies beneath the sea.

  The world’s first farmers had exactly the same origins as the hunters who were the first to people Europe. They were descended from the same small group of people who had left Africa and interbred with the Neanderthals some 54,000 years ago. But while my maternal grandmother’s female forebears continued their journey to Siberia and Europe, my paternal grandmother’s foremothers – who were to become farmers – stopped somewhere in the Caucasus or the Middle East. The two groups lived separate lives for over 30,000 years, after which they met again.