Early hunter-gatherer settlements and the emergence of agricultural villages in the Near East: a brief overview of Neolithic cultures
Keywords:
Middle East, Uruk, Neolithic, Mesopotamia, prehistoric culturesAbstract
The paper presents a brief introduction to the Natufian culture as the beginning of the sedentary life of anatomically modern humans, and then presents the Early Neolithic and Neolithic cultures and the main sites in the Middle East with a focus on the Levant and Mesopotamia. The first goal of the paper is to point out the cultural development after the transition to a sedentary lifestyle, which includes art, religion, rituals, economy, architecture and settlement construction, as well as social relations. The paper presents cultural changes chronologically and their impact on social changes in communities. Accordingly, the paper presents the basic cultural elements and technological inventions and social changes using examples from some of the main and most significant sites in the Middle East. The final goal of the paper is to present how cultural innovations such as agriculture and further cultural evolution in prehistory, as well as migrations, led to the creation of the first cities, and above all the first large city of Uruk, which became the forerunner of the Sumerian civilization.
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