Documenta Praehistorica XLV (2018)

The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal

transformation of human history

Trevor Watkins
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
t.watkins@ed.ac.uk

ABSTRACT – The objective of this paper is to set the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic transformation (ENT)
within the truly long-term of human evolutionary history. The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic transforma-
tion takes us out of the world of Palaeolithic mobile foraging into a new world, in which the scale
and organisation of the social group and the tempo of socio-cultural evolution were transformed. The
scale and diversity of cultural innovation and social organisation can be seen to be linked in co-evo-
lutionary feedback loops that have been characterised as ‘cumulative culture’, ‘ratcheting’ effects, or
‘runaway’ cultural evolution. The up-scaling of communities and the intensification of their interac-
tion and networking enabled the emergence of super-communities that became the first large-scale
societies, an inflection point on an accelerating curve of complex cultural, social and economic de-
velopment, en route to emergent socio-political hierarchies, urbanism, kingdoms and empires.

KEY WORDS – Epipalaeolithic; Neolithic; Southwest Asia; cultural evolution; cumulative culture; cul-
tural niche construction

Prehod med epipaleolitikom in neolitikom

kot klju;na preobrazba v zgodovini

IZVLE∞EK – Namen ≠lanka je umestitev preobrazbe v ≠asu med epipaleolitikom in neolitikom zno-
traj dejansko dolgoro≠ne zgodovine ≠lovekove evolucije. Ta preobrazba je pomenila spremembo iz
paleolitskih lovcev in nabiralcev v nov svet, v katerem sta se spremenila tako obseg kot organizacija
dru∫bene skupine kot hitrost dru∫beno-kulturne evolucije. Obseg in raznovrstnost kulturne inovaci-
je in dru∫bene organizacije je lahko povezana s co-evolucijskimi povratnimi zankami, ki so ozna≠e-
ne kot ‘kumulativna kultura’, u≠inek ‘zobnikov’ ali kulturna evolucija ‘pobega’. Pove≠anje skupnosti
in njihovih interakcij in mre∫enj je omogo≠ilo pojav super-skupnosti, ki so postale prve dru∫be veli-
kega obsega oz. to≠ka preloma na krivulji hitrosti kompleksnega kulturnega, dru∫benega in ekonom-
skega razvoja, na poti k nastajajo≠im hierarhijam, urbanizmu, kraljevinam in cesarstvom.

KLJU∞NE BESEDE – epipaleolitik; neolitik; jugozahodna Azija; kulturna evolucija; kumulativna kul-
tura; konstrukcija kulturne ni∏e

Introduction

It has been the conventional wisdom that the first lithic and Neolithic specialists that our ‘Neolithic re-
development of farming economies was the most volution’ constitutes the most important research
important moment in history, serving as the foun- field in prehistoric archaeology. However, the Epi-
dation on which civilisations have been formed and palaeolithic-Neolithic transformation (hereafter the
on which the formation of our modern world is ulti- ENT) is in an awkward situation. It is not at the tran-
mately dependent. It is beyond question within the sition between prehistory and history: for people
international community of Near Eastern Epipalaeo- concerned with historical periods, the Neolithic is

14 DOI> 10.4312\dp.45.2
 The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal transformation of human history

remote prehistory, the province of archaeologists, that will be familiar because it has been developed
potsherds, flints and animal bones, while for those and adopted by scientists from other disciplines.
concerned with the long-term questions of human
evolution or Palaeolithic archaeology, the Neolithic While most research effort has been devoted to the
is a brief postscript, the equivalent of ‘the end of his- identification of the when and where of domestica-
tory’. tion of plants and animals and the adoption of farm-
ing, and many in the wider public have learned that
Many non-archaeologists think of the ENT as the the transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer is the
pivot of human history in some way. To take just one central issue in the Neolithic, I want to broaden the
example, the economic and social historian Paul Sea- focus beyond the origins of agriculture. The progres-
bright (2004) has explored how our vast contempo- sive changes that led from classic Upper Palaeolithic
rary societies can function when we each live in The hunting and gathering subsistence strategies to the
Company of Strangers. On the first page he writes: effective farming strategies of the later aceramic
“Our teeming, industrialised, networked existence Neolithic were obviously important and unprece-
is not some gradual and inevitable outcome of hu- dented, but they are one element in a larger, more
man development over millions of years. Instead complex process. My starting point in this paper is
we owe it to an extraordinary experiment launch- the observation that the general characteristic of
ed a mere ten thousand years ago. No-one could the ENT is the accelerating pace of events that can
have predicted this experiment from observing the be calibrated in the classification of the archaeolo-
course of our previous evolution, but it would for- gical record. Through the approximately fifteen mil-
ever change the character of life on our planet.” lennia of the Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic of South-
The ‘extraordinary experiment’ is the Neolithic of west Asia, the pace of cultural innovation and accu-
Southwest Asia. He contrasts the time before the Neo- mulation increased dramatically. At its simplest,
lithic with the time since, amazed at how the seden- using the characteristics of cultural assemblages to
tary farming populations of the Neolithic “with bare- distinguish archaeological periods and sub-periods,
ly a pause for breath in evolutionary time ... had Palaeolithic specialists work in terms of hundreds of
formed social organizations of startling complex- thousands of years for the earliest periods, and tens
ity. Not just village settlements but cities, armies, of thousands of years in the more recent Palaeolithic.
empires, corporations, nation states, political mo- The pace quickens in the Epipalaeolithic of South-
vements, humanitarian organizations, even inter- west Asia, the Levant in particular: the early, middle
net communities”. and late sub-periods of the Epipalaeolithic each ac-
count for two or three millennia. Differentiating sub-
Paul Seabright is exceptional in that he has appre- phases within the late Epipalaeolithic Natufian, spe-
ciated that there was much more to that period than cialists begin to count in terms of one or two thou-
simply the formulation of effective farming practices. sand years for an early, late, and final sub-phase.
For many non-archaeologist authors of general ac- The sub-periods of the early Neolithic are counted in
counts of long-term human history, the domestica- centuries, and the scale of archaeological periods
tion of plants and animals and the beginnings of continues to quicken in the following periods.
farming are the significant advance of the Neolithic
of Southwest Asia. If we find that non-archaeologists For that reason, I have become interested in graphs
mistreat or misunderstand our Neolithic, it can only that depict accelerating change in human history or
be because archaeologists have not been sufficient- human evolution. Such upward curving graphs come
ly clear and have failed to communicate their work at very different scales. A classic example that caught
and their ideas to the wider world, both among aca- my eye some time ago, and which I at first misread,
demics or other disciplines and the interested pub- related to the Industrial Revolution in England
lic. There are at least two ways to ensure that com- (Clark 2007). In the late 18th century, an almost flat
munication to a wider public is more effective: (a) line at the bottom of the graph began to curve up-
we should set aside the kind of fact- and jargon-filled ward, and, through the decades of the early 19th
style that we use when writing for each other, and century, it rapidly approached a cliff-like, near verti-
(b) adopt a framework for our narrative that is wide- cal acceleration. I was interested in the accelerating
ly used beyond archaeo-logical circles. In this essay population density of the ENT, and this, I thought,
I want to try to set the ENT of Southwest Asia in a could be a graph of the population explosion that
wider, evolutionary context, one that is based in the accompanied the Industrial Revolution; in fact, it
archaeology of the period, but is framed in terms graphed over a few decades the growth of British

15
 Trevor Watkins

household income. Industrialised production, a re- ed human infancy, the plasticity of the human brain,
volution in transport infrastructure, a rapid growth the expansion of its cognitive capacities, the increase
of population, the growth of household income, and in human social group size, and language as the
the expansion of markets for all sorts of new prod- mode of communication and socialisation that kept
ucts, and the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers (Mokyr groups together and cohesive. Just as Clark’s graph-
2009) were just some of the interacting elements in ing of the explosive growth of family income repre-
the Industrial Revolution that interacted upon one sents one element in the complex of the industrial
another in a complex of positive feedback loops. revolution, so Dunbar’s graphing of the accelerating
expansion of the hominin neo-cortex ratio also rep-
Acceleration and accumulation resents one element in a complex of evolutionary
interactions.
There have been accelerating curves of other kinds
and on quite different scales earlier in human evo- Dietrich Stout and a French colleague, Thierry Chami-
lutionary history. Robin Dunbar, for example, has nade, have taken a somewhat different route through
graphed the accelerating growth of the hominin the evolutionary complex. They argue for the co-
brain and its pre-frontal cortex relative to the scale evolution of cognitive skills, language and the abili-
of the hominin body (Fig. 1). Dunbar was able to re- ty to accumulate a sophisticated cultural package of
late the neo-cortex ratio of the brain to social group stone tool-making skills (Stout, Chaminade 2009;
among living primates (Dunbar 1997; 1998), and 2012). Again, their graph (Fig. 2) shows an accelerat-
from that, to extrapolate the increasing scale of so- ing curve through the long term of the Pleistocene,
cial groups across the three million or so years of but what is graphed here is the increasing flexibility
human evolution. This is the basis of his ‘social brain of tool-making technology. This research adds prac-
hypothesis’, relating brain size and cognitive sophi- tical and conceptual cultural knowledge to the equa-
stication to the size of hominin social groups, argu- tion of co-evolution of cognition, scale of social
ing that these have co-evolved. Dunbar has also group, language and culture.
argued that gossip and chatting in small groups (that
is, language) must have evolved to take over the role In his book The Evolved Apprentice Kim Sterelny, a
of one-to-one grooming. Although I do not think that philosopher interested in (human) evolutionary the-
Dunbar defines it as such, what he has been describ- ory, traces the long-term development of coopera-
ing is a series of complex, cumulative, gene-culture tion, and the evolution of social and cognitive skills
co-evolutionary feedback loops that involve extend- embedded in a cultural niche adapted for cultural
transmission (Sterelny 2011). Ste-
relny is a leading figure among
those who have been developing
the idea that the human cultural
niche evolved to support increas-
ingly large-scale cooperation and
increasingly effective social learn-
ing. Certainly, by the time of Ho-
mo sapiens, young people had be-
come very adept at working out
who were the best teachers from
whom to learn advanced cultural
skills, and there were cultural
norms that enabled skilled and
experienced older people to trans-
mit their skills – what Sterelny
calls apprentice learning. Consi-
dering how sophisticated and
complex Homo sapiens cultures
Fig. 1. Dunbar’s representation of the increasing scale of the neo-cor- were by the Upper Palaeolithic,
tex of the hominin brain. The timescale is in millions of years (and Sterelny at that time found it dif-
runs from right to left). The graph shows how increasing neo-cortex ficult to think how to account for
ratios relate to increasing social group size. the sudden and dramatic changes

16
 The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal transformation of human history

to network, and to belong to a wider

community as the ‘release from proximi-
ty’ (Gamble 1998; 1999). But they were
at the limits of their cultural capacity to
sustain sufficiently large numbers of peo-
ple who could maintain meaningful con-
tact with one another.

Kevin Laland is Professor of Behavioral

and Evolutionary Biology, and, like Hen-
rich, has recently published a book that
summarises decades of collaborative re-
search, describing many years of obser-
vation and simulation experiments that
illustrate the importance in human evo-
lution of skills in cultural innovation and
Fig. 2. Stout and Chaminade graph the accumulation of techni- the capacity for cumulative culture with-
cal variation in the making of stone tools over time. The time-
scale runs from right to left in millions of years.
in the cultural niche (Laland 2017). Like
Henrich, Laland highlights “the signifi-
that marked the Holocene period. Since then, he and cance of accelerating cycles of evolutionary feed-
I have collaborated on exploring how cultural niche back, whereby an interwoven complex of cultural
construction theory can begin to help us understand processes to reinforce each other in an irresistible
the ENT (Sterelny, Watkins 2015). runaway dynamic that engineered the mind’s
breathtaking computational power” (Laland 2017.
On the basis of collaborative research, ethnographic 3). He has worked with archaeologist Mike O’Brien,
fieldwork and laboratory experiments, Joe Henrich and together they have written on the beginnings of
argues similarly for the power of the cultural learn- agriculture as a case-study in the context of cultural
ing niche for the safe inter-generational transfer of niche construction theory and gene-culture co-evo-
complex knowledge and diverse skills (Henrich lution, but in neither paper were they considering
2015). He introduces his book, written after twenty specifically the example of our ENT (Laland, O’Brien
years of research, as a waymark of his current un- 2010.315–318; O’Brien, Laland 2012). Laland (2017.
derstanding of the story of human evolution. He 240–241) appreciates that “hunter-gatherers are ef-
summarises the central argument of his book as fectively trapped in a vicious cycle that severely
“about 2 million years ago, we crossed this evolu- constrains their rate of cultural evolution”; hence
tionary Rubicon, at which point cultural evolution the significance of developments that he notes, and
became the primary driver of our species genetic which can be documented in the Epipalaeolithic of
evolution. This interaction between cultural and Southwest Asia, such as reduced mobility, the stor-
genetic evolution generated a process that can be age of food resources, and reduced birth spacing for
described as autocatalytic, meaning that it pro- accelerating population growth as well as increasing
duces the fuel that propels it” (Henrich 2015.57). the opportunities for refining and expanding the
He shows that the cultural accumulation of innova- toolkit. While he discusses in some detail examples
tions is dependent on the existence of very cohesive of gene-culture evolution among herders and culti-
social groups and a cultural niche that provides for vators, such as lactose tolerance and enhanced capa-
the tutoring, acquisition and practice of complex city for digesting starchy cereal-based foodstuffs, he
skills. There is a demographic component in this ad- is much less concerned with the social and cognitive
vanced cultural learning niche: there must be relati- demands of living together in large, permanently co-
vely large numbers of people if there are to be sev- resident communities.
eral wise and experienced practitioners of complex
skills, such as, for example, building a kayak, mak- Transforming the scale of the human cultural
ing a harpoon, and engaging in hunting seals in the niche
Arctic Ocean. The Upper Palaeolithic societies, made
up of small, scattered, forager bands that were the It should by now be apparent that the evolutionary
constituents of larger scale societies, were remark- context within which I wish to set the ENT involves
ably successful; Clive Gamble refers to their ability cultural niche construction theory and the idea of

17
 Trevor Watkins

cumulative culture, in which the authors mentioned that organisms bring about in their own selective
in the previous paragraphs are leading figures. After environments (Laland et al. 2001; Odling-Smee et
Gordon Childe’s ‘oasis theory’ attributed the begin- al. 2003). Niche construction is defined as “the pro-
nings of farming to a supposed desiccation of much cess whereby organisms, through their metabolism,
of Southwest Asia following the end of the Ice Age, their activities and their choices, modify their own
the standard account was established in the 1960s and/or each other’s niches” (Odling-Smee et al.
by processualist archaeologists who sought to deve- 2003.419; see also Laland, Sterelny 2006). Many
lop an evolutionary-ecological framework, in which species of animals manufacture nests or burrows,
human populations responded to environmental spiders build webs, and so on: humans modify their
pressures, turning to farming either because of in- environments by cultural means in ways that mean
creasing population pressure on finite wild resour- that the niche becomes the effective evolutionary
ces, or because of climatic effects (prompted by the environment in which their descendants grow up
discovery of the sudden Younger Dryas phase in the and learn how to live, and to which they are geneti-
final millennium of the Pleistocene), or because the cally adapted.
stability of the warmer, moister, early Holocene cli-
mate made agriculture practicable. These are all va- Humans have throughout the evolution of the ge-
riants of a view of cultural evolution as adaptations nus Homo employed cultural means to modify the
that are responses to environmental pressures. But human niche in many ways, whether through the
evolutionary theory has moved on. control of fire, through cooking their food, or mak-
ing clothing that has enabled them to live in clima-
By contrast with the mid-twentieth century’s so- tically harsh environment. Granted that niche con-
called modern synthesis or neo-evolutionary theory, struction theory grew up among biological scien-
recent evolutionary developments are referred to as tists, it is not surprising that the aspect of cultural
the forming of an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ niche construction that has received much attention
in which niche construction plays an important role is the role of the domestication of plants and ani-
(Laland et al. 2015). The publication by the evolu- mals and the effects of that culturally modified niche
tionary biologist Richard Dawkins of his notion of on the domesticates themselves, as well as the rec-
the extended phenotype signified the beginning of iprocal influences on humans, such as the transfer
a major development of evolutionary theory (Daw- of diseases from domesticated animals to humans,
kins 1978; 1982). As examples of the extended phe- or changes in the digestive system in response to
notype, Dawkins cited the capacity of animals to mo- changes in diet (Perry et al. 2007; Smith 2016; Ze-
dify their environment, such as the protective house der 2012; 2016; Zeder et al. 2006). But, as Henrich
formed by the caddis, or the behaviour of beavers (2015), Laland (2017), Sterelny (2011) and others
in building dams and lodges. He also discussed how make clear, the human cultural niche is also con-
organisms of one species may manipulate organisms structed to facilitate social learning, the transmission
of another species, such as the manipulation by the of cultural knowledge and skills, and the apparently
cuckoo chick of the host birds that feed it. At very unique human capacity for cumulative culture. Mi-
much the same time, several scientists began to use chael Tomasello (1999.80) has remarked the capa-
the term co-evolution, and in particular gene-culture city of human cultures to accumulate changes over
coevolution (e.g., Lumsden, Wilson 1981; Durham generations, resulting in complex, culturally trans-
1991), or ‘dual inheritance theory’ (Cavalli-Sforza, mitted knowledge and behaviours that no single
Feldman 1981; Boyd, Richerson 1985). The most human individual could invent on their own. Hen-
frequently cited example of human gene-culture co- rich (2004; 2015) argues persuasively that the capa-
evolution is lactase persistence among some human city to sustain a cultural package across generations,
farming and pastoralist groups that depend on milk to learn information and techniques from others,
in their diet (e.g., Gerbault et al. 2011). and to refine and grow the cultural package over ge-
nerations (cumulative cultural evolution) began at
The extended evolutionary synthesis mentioned the beginning of the genus Homo. While cultural ac-
above refers to these various ideas concerning the cumulation may have been almost imperceptibly
extended phenotype and gene-culture coevolution, slow for much of human evolution, it has become
but the group of leading thinkers who authored that more and more rapid, making human minds and
article (Laland et al. 2015) are agreed that niche lives radically different from those of other animals
construction theory is the most significant advance. (Heyes 2012; 2018).
Niche construction places emphasis on the changes

18
 The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal transformation of human history

The interplay between population numbers, social terlinked developments led to further, equally dra-
organisation, physical resources and cultural pack- matic developments: in particular, the rapid coloni-
age are characteristics of human cultural niche con- sation of new territories within Southwest Asia and
struction. For humans, cultural niche construction far beyond, the rapid diversification of cultural adap-
creates not only an ecological but also a cultural in- tations and the increasingly rapid rate of further so-
heritance. I think that it is helpful to see the Epi- cial, cultural and economic innovations, so that, only
palaeolithic-Neolithic transformation as a dramatic two or three millennia after the Neolithic, we can ob-
quickening of the transformation of population num- serve the emergence of urban societies, at the cen-
bers, social organisation and cultural package that tres of hierarchically organised landscapes, writing
make up the human cultural niche. Compared to the and accounting systems, kings, armies, merchants etc.
graphs produced by Dunbar and by Stout and Cha-
minade (Figs. 1 and 2), we are now concentrating We can get a proxy handle on population by means
our attention on the acceleration of evolutionary of occupation sites and settlements. Anna Belfer-Co-
change within the relatively recent history of Homo hen and Nigel Goring-Morris (2011.Tab. 1) brought
sapiens. These changes took place over such a short together the data on the number of sites in different
time-scale, and, in the context of hominin evolution, parts of southwest Asia between the beginning of
so recently, that no significant evolution within the the Upper Palaeolithic (around 50 000 years ago)
human brain has played a part. Rather, we are in and the late Neolithic (around 8000 years ago) (Fig.
the realm of rapid cultural innovation and accumu- 3). While they have collected data for different re-
lation at work in the context of social evolution. The gions within Southwest Asia, the best data come
changes in society, in culture, and in the economic from the southern Levant, where there has been
basis of society that characterise the Epipalaeolithic- most work over at least a century. To take account
Neolithic, by contrast with the preceding millennia of the different durations of the cultural periods,
of the Palaeolithic period, represent a rapid trans- numbers of sites were normalised relative to the du-
formation away from the world of Palaeolithic mo- ration of each period. Their graph shows an appa-
bile foraging into a new world. I would characterise rently steady increase, period by period, in the num-
what emerged as: the first large-scale societies, form- ber of sites for the south Levant. If one changes the
ed on the back of a demographic explosion, and sup- bar-chart to a graph in which the x-axis is scaled to
ported by labour-intensive, delayed return subsis- the shorter and shorter archaeological sub-periods
tence strategies that over time developed into effi- of the Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic, their straight
cient farming economies, accompanied and facilitat- line becomes an accelerating upward curve in the
ed by the extensive diversification and expansion of number of sites, implying a crescendo of increasing-
complex material and non-material culture. These in- ly dense population.

This curve underplays actual

population growth, because
over the ENT, sites became
larger, were occupied more
permanently, and were more
intensively built up with in-
creasingly complex buildings.
From the data he collected on
the size of Neolithic settle-
ment sites in the southern Le-
vant, Ian Kuijt (2000) show-
ed that the number and the
average size of settlements in-
creased across the sub-periods
of the pre-pottery Neolithic;
the largest settlements for
Fig. 3. Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen assembled data on the number of each period increased in size
occupation and settlement sites from different regions within southwest exponentially. He also show-
Asia. The data from the Mediterranean woodland zone of the southern ed that the density of build-
Levant shows a steady increase in settlements period by period. ings on settlement sites chang-

19
 Trevor Watkins

ed dramatically through the aceramic

Neolithic At the end of the Epipalaeo-
lithic period, roofed structures were
scattered, and there was more open
space than roofed space; in the final
sub-phase of the Pre-Pottery Neoli-
thic, there was limited open space
between buildings, and settlements
consisted of approx. 75–85% roofed
space. Without attempting to assess
how many buildings were domestic
residences, or estimating the size of
social unit occupying each house, it
is clear that over the Epipalaeolithic
and Pre-Pottery Neolithic, there was
a massive acceleration in the growth
of population, with larger and larger
numbers of people living together in
increasingly densely built-up settle-
ments in an increasingly densely in- Fig. 4. Using the data for occupation and settlement sties in the Me-
habited landscape. Related to this diterranean woodland zone from Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen
process of increasing numbers of (2011), the graph plots the numbers against the time-scale of short-
er and shorter archaeological periods, starting from the Upper Pa-
people living together in larger set- laeolithic.
tlements, there were progressive de-
velopments in the intensification of subsistence stra- An essential component in the expansion of social
tegies. The rate of cultural innovation and change group size was the expansion and intensification of
increased through the 10 000 years of the Epipalaeo- networks of sharing and exchange in which the new,
lithic period (the late Epipalaeolithic Natufian is large, permanent communities invested (Watkins
more diverse and elaborated than early Epipalaeoli- 2008; in press). Windows on the working of the ex-
thic cultural packages), but increased much faster tensive regional and supra-regional networks are of-
through the shorter 4000 years of the Neolithic (no- fered through the medium of a variety of goods and
tably in the elaboration of symbolic material culture materials, but the classic case is the distribution of
and practices). central and east Anatolian obsidian. We have had
the general outline of the distribution of obsidian
The costs and benefits of cumulative culture in since the 1960s (Renfrew, Dixon 1968; 1976; Ren-
the ENT frew et al. 1966), but now we know a good deal
more, and it is very interesting. We know that the
The benefits of expanding social group size, living connections that made up this extensive network
in stable, permanent settlements, and increasing and were already in existence in the Epipalaeolithic pe-
intensifying the networking of sharing and exchange riod (e.g., Richter et al. 2011), and the steady cre-
were the potential of a richer, more diverse cultural scendo in the amount of obsidian and the range of
package, greater capacity for innovation, stability other materials in the network can be charted. But
and resilience. The costs were considerable: the de- recent work by a Spanish group takes us much fur-
mand for various forms of additional labour (tend- ther (Ibañez et al. 2015; Ortega et al. 2014). Orte-
ing crops, management of domestic animals, the ga, Ibañez and colleagues have simulated exchange
creation and maintenance of public buildings, ter- networks, and shown that simple ‘down-the-line’
racing of the settlement site); the additional risks trading of obsidian based on the assumption that
(risks of disease, risks through dependence on a pro- each group kept some of the obsidian that they re-
gressively narrower spectrum of resources, crop fail- ceived, and exchanged some with partners down the
ure, animal disease); the demands of cooperation line does not work; ‘down-the-line’ exchange through
and trust within a large community where any indi- a network of settlements that extended more than
vidual knows personally only a small proportion of 800km from the sources would require that each
their fellow-citizens, and the need to submit to cost- group kept only a tiny amount, exchanging onwards
ly rules and norms of behaviour. almost all of the obsidian received (Ortega et al.

20
 The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal transformation of human history

2016.14). Instead, they found that a ‘small-world phase of its life, there was a massive subterranean
network’, in which some participants accessed ‘dis- construction at the centre of the cluster of buildings.
tant links’, exchanging with partners up to 120km It was 7m in diameter and dug 2m deep into the
from home in the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic and up ground. At the end of its life, after being recon-
to 180km in the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic, worked structed or remodelled at least twice, the wooden
much better. The best fit to the archaeological dis- roof support posts were pulled out, and the roof
tribution map for the later pre-Pottery Neolithic is a timbers were set on fire, causing them to collapse
form of ‘optimised distant link’ networking, in which onto the floor of the cell-like chambers, where the
certain communities emerge as significant distribu- remains of wheat, barley and lentils were carbo-
tion centres specifically for obsidian, and these dis- nised. We may infer that the cells had served as a
tribution centres obtain their obsidian directly from storage facility for the community. Around the com-
other centres that were nearer the Anatolian sources. munal storage building were several communal
The researchers also observe that the largest amounts kitchen buildings equipped with multiple grinding
of obsidian relative to flint in the later Pre-Pottery stones. The houses of the community were smaller,
Neolithic occur at the largest settlements in the simpler buildings that clustered around a central
southern Levant (Ortega et al. 2016.12–13, espe- communal area. Although the community was larg-
cially Table 3). er than a typical mobile forager band, and although
they were engaged in the cultivation of crops, the
What Ortega and his colleagues are pointing to is community seems to have continued the sharing ethic
something that has been known since the middle of of hunter-gatherer societies. Indeed, their communal
the twentieth century, but, so far as I am aware, has food storage was monumentalised in this massive
not been the subject of serious study. They have pro- central building. What happened in the open area,
duced diagrams that illustrate the emergence in with its carefully arranged beaten earth platforms,
the Levant in the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic of a so- we do not know. But, as part of the symbolic rituals
phisticated network in which there are distribution that accompanied the ‘death’ of the building, and
centres that correspond to a map of known settle- before the remains of the structure were set on fire,
ments in which the relative size of settlements is a detached human head was placed in a socket va-
indicated. By the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic, there cated by a roof support post, and the decapitated
was a wide spectrum of settlement site size. The Spa- body of a young woman was thrown onto the floor
nish group is proposing that there were increasingly from the trapdoor in the roof that was the main ac-
complex and hierarchical systems of supra-regional cess to the building. This massive subterranean build-
interaction and exchange of symbolically important ing was one of a series of similar structures at Jerf
materials, genes (through exchange of marriage part- el Ahmar, but the later versions were simpler in in-
ners), and the pooling of ideas, innovations and ex- ternal plan; there was a large, circular floor, and a
perience. If it were not dated to the later Pre-Pottery stone-built ‘bench’ around the foot of the wall. Like
Neolithic, the hierarchy of settlements by size and the building just described, it seems that each build-
by importance as distribution centres could be mis- ing in the series was deliberately and carefully de-
taken for a map of a Bronze Age urban settlement constructed and obliterated at the end of its life.
and economy.
Jerf el Ahmar was not unique. Similar large, circular,
Something else was new in the Neolithic, emerging subterranean buildings were found at the nearby
out of Epipalaeolithic prototypes: monumental com- contemporary settlement of Tell ‘Abr 3 (Yartah
munity architecture. The way of life in new, large, 2016), and a massive mud-brick built circular, sub-
permanently co-resident communities that developed terranean structure with three internal buttresses
through the late Epipalaeolithic and began to flour- was partly excavated at a third early Pre-Pottery Neo-
ish in the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic required strong- lithic settlement in the Euphrates valley at Dja’de;
er and materialised modes of cooperation and shar- the mud plaster on the inner faces of the wall and
ing. Because of its recent publication, Jerf el Ahmar buttresses were decorated with panels consisting of
offers the best example (Stordeur 2015; Stordeur et intricate geometric designs executed in red, black
al. 2000). This small settlement site beside the Eu- and white paint (Coqueugniot 2014). Across the up-
phrates in north Syria was never occupied after the per parts of both the Euphrates (Çayönü) and the
early Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Danielle Stordeur was Tigris basins (Hallan Çemi, Hasankeyf Höyük, Gusir
therefore able to expose most of the settlement over Höyük) early Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlements also
the several centuries of its existence. In an early had communal buildings, some of them on a monu-

21
 Trevor Watkins

mental scale (Atakuman 2014; Kornienko 2009). In rich et al. 2012; 2017; Notroff et al. 2015; Pöllath
the southern Levant, the site of WF16 in southern et al. 2017).
Jordan had a very large, circular, semi-subterranean
structure of complex design, around which were There are sculpted T-shape monoliths at a number
small circular buildings that have been interpreted of sites around Göbekli Tepe in southeast Turkey,
as communal storage facilities for cereals and/or but most sites remain unexcavated or undated. The
pulses (Finlayson et al. 2011a; 2011b; Mithen et al. somewhat later settlement site of Nevalı Çori, to the
2011). northwest of Göbekli Tepe, possessed a rectangular,
semi-subterranean structure that was originally po-
The most dramatic example of monumental archi- pulated by a pair of T-shaped sculpted monoliths in
tecture and sculpture is the site of Göbekli Tepe, on the centre of its stone-paved floor, surrounded by a
a bare limestone mountain ridge near the city of Urfa series of smaller monoliths set into a stone bench
in southeast Turkey (Schmidt 2010; 2011). The now around the walls (Hauptmann 1993; 2011). The
famous large, circular, subterranean enclosures of building is quite unlike the houses of the settlement,
the earlier phase at the site date to the early Pre-Pot- and it seems to be a communal building. Nevalı Çori
tery Neolithic, contemporary with settlements like and its communal building is dated to the early part
Jerf el Ahmar that have similarly monumental com- of the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Similar rectangular
munal buildings. Göbekli Tepe seems to have func- semi-subterranean buildings with a pair of T-shaped
tioned as a ‘central place’ – the excavator, the late monoliths have been found at Göbekli Tepe, where
Klaus Schmidt, compared it to the neutral ceremo- they post-date the massive circular enclosures of the
nial meeting place of an ancient Greek amphictyony. earlier Pre-Pottery Neolithic.
This was the socio-cultural ‘central place’, where peo-
ple from many communities in the region demon- Subterranean or semi-subterranean communal build-
strated the reality of their super-community. A series ings on a monumental scale, T-shaped monoliths,
of huge, circular enclosures – up to 30m in diame- and some of the motifs that are sculpted on the Gö-
ter – are embedded into the main mound, and each bekli Tepe monoliths have been found at other sites
is populated by a pair of centrally placed T-shaped in northernmost Syria and southeast Turkey. But
monoliths and ten or twelve somewhat smaller there is another class of object that has now been
monoliths around the perimeter wall. Some of the recognised at several settlements in the region. The
T-shaped monoliths are explicitly anthropomorphic. first to be published were found at Jerf el Ahmar;
The central pair of monoliths in Enclosure D, the they are small stone plaques, flat on both surfaces,
tallest monoliths so far discovered at 5.5m tall, have of a size that would fit easily in the palm of the hand.
human arms and hands. In common with several In one way they are like a class of stones, that are
other monoliths, this pair wear a collar with a pen- flat on one surface, with a groove running the length
dant at the throat. Each also wears a decorated belt of the longer axis. Some of these grooved stones are
with an elaborate buckle, from which hangs the skin decorated on the upper surface; they are characte-
of a fox. Like all the other T-monoliths, the head is a ristic of the end of the Epi-palaeolithic and the be-
completely faceless, rectilinear block. ginning of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic. But the plaques
are different. They have motifs incised on both faces.
Many of the T-monoliths have wild animals (mostly Some of these motifs are repeated on plaques from
dangerous species and males), large birds, or rep- different sites, and some of the motifs, like the wrig-
tiles, insects, scorpions or spiders carved in raised gling snake with the triangular head, are frequently
relief. There are also many other, smaller stone seen on monoliths at Göbekli Tepe. We now have
sculptures, many of them consisting of schematised examples of these small stone plaques from a num-
human heads. Many questions about this unique ber of early Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement sites in
site are still to be resolved, although the dating to north Syria and southeast Turkey. It seems that the
the early Pre-Pottery Neolithic and the beginning of motifs are signs that are elements in a ‘semasiogra-
the later Pre-Pottery Neolithic is now clear (Dietrich phic’ (or ideographic) sign system.
et al. 2013, but many more radiocarbon dates are
close to publication). We also now know that there Scripts in pre-Columban Mesoamerica and the Andes
are indications of large-scale feasting (for what must were semasiographic (as opposed to glottographic);
have been a large-scale work-force) on the meat of the proto-cuneiform accounting tablets of late fourth
wild cattle and gazelle, accompanied by beer, and ri- millennium BC southern Mesopotamia, referring to
tuals that involved the treatment of the dead (Diet- quantities and commodities, were similarly semasio-

22
 The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal transformation of human history

graphic. The philosopher and historian of science manipulation, and (further) thought. Andy Clark, a
Peter Damerow, who had worked with Hans Nissen leading philosopher interested in the philosophy of
and Robert Englund on the proto-cuneiform tablets mind, talks of language as a kind of self-constructed
(Nissen et al. 1990; 1993), analysed how such se- cognitive niche (Clark 2006.370). He argues that
masiographic systems can function effectively for a words materialise thoughts that “create structures
community that shares the ‘cognitive frame’ within that are themselves proper objects of perception,
which the signs function: “A body of knowledge manipulation, and (further) thought.” The eminent
shared between the partners in a communication psychologist Steven Pinker, who has worked on lan-
process provides cognitive frames that are trig- guage, cognition and mind, similarly talks of the cog-
gered by the communication process, instantiated nitive niche (Pinker 2010). He argues that the dis-
by the given incomplete information, and finally tinctive feature of the cultural niche of Homo sapi-
complemented by default assumptions about the ens is the way that human intelligence, sociality, and
subject which are retrieved from memory as an ef- language have co-evolved. Here we are not concern-
fect of the assimilation of this subject to the frame” ed with human language per se; I refer to these dis-
(Damerow 1999.3). I believe that we can say that tinguished scholars for their views on the co-evo-
there were regional networks of communities in the lution of human cognition within the human cultur-
early Pre-Pottery Neolithic whose shared ‘cognitive al niche, in support of the way that I wish to unfold
frames’ made their groups of carved signs meaning- the accelerating cumulative cultural evolutionary
ful, just as groups of mathematicians or theoretical process through the ENT (Watkins 2016). I want to
physicists share the ‘cognitive frame’ that enables emphasise that there was not only a complex gene-
them to have a meaningful discussion around a culture co-evolutionary process within the human
blackboard covered in signs and symbols. cultural niche (through the cultivation and domesti-
cation of plants and herding of animals, with reci-
The cognitive-cultural niche and the shared procal effects on the biology of human populations),
community identity but also a cultural-cognitive evolutionary develop-
ment.
I seek to argue that these related modes of material
symbolism constituted a significant development of Clark and Pinker do not differentiate between spo-
the cultural-cognitive niche, because they facilitated ken and written language, as Merlin Donald empha-
the storing and sharing of ideas and knowledge, di- tically does (Donald 1991; 1993; 2001). Donald la-
recting and constraining the cognition of those who bels as ‘theoretic culture’ the third stage in his ac-
belonged to the community that shared them. While count of the evolution of human culture and cogni-
the ability to create meaningful images was, of course, tion. Although he was thinking primarily – as a good
not new, the complex structuring of images, sculp- academic should – in terms of written texts as the
tures, and architectural settings, and the emerging prime form of ‘external symbolic storage’, a medium
evidence of how the elements were created, moved, for the storage and transmission of all kinds of
and reshaped, plus the evidence of the formalised knowledge, he discusses the capacity of art and ar-
activities at the site represent a major development chitecture to serve as shared external symbolic sto-
in the formation of highly affective cognitive niches. rage, and sees the beginning of the emergence of ex-
ternal symbolic storage systems in Upper Palaeo-
What we see, at least from the beginning of the early lithic art. In describing the power of systems of ‘ex-
Pre-Pottery Neolithic, is a new capacity to form and ternal symbolic storage’, Donald, who began as a
sustain permanent communities, both at the level neuro-scientist before concentrating on psychology,
of the individual settlement, and at higher levels as remarks that the overwhelming influence of sym-
regional and even supra-regional communities. The bolic culture in its various forms deeply affects the
formation of this new kind of symbolic cultural niche continual development of our brains and minds to
involved developments in cognition: the cultural ni- such an extent that cultural changes can actually re-
che interacted with cognition. The idea of a cogni- model the operational structure of the cognitive sys-
tive niche is not new and is certainly not my in- tem. What Donald says refers to the capacity of hu-
vention. Two distinguished philosopher-psycholo- mans to make something like a Byzantine period
gists have written about the cognitive niche. In both church, full of mosaics and frescoes, that frames the
cases, they were excited by the way that language movements, gestures, words, and the very feeling
materialises thought in words, creating structures and thinking of those involved in the liturgy. It is a
that are themselves proper objects of perception, co-evolutionary feedback loop between symbolic

23
 Trevor Watkins

material culture – whether carved and built in stone, been to ensure that there are sufficient numbers in
or inscribed on clay tablets – and the cognitive capa- the population, with effective interconnectedness:
cities of those who are members of that community. the larger and more complex the body of cultural
knowledge, ideas, and behaviours, the greater the
Conclusion scale of population that is required to support it,
and the greater the need for intensive sociality and
Over a few thousand years – a very brief period on social interaction within that population. Robert
the evolutionary timescale – mobile foraging groups Boyd offers the same conclusion: that the facility for
living in rich and favourable environments found cultural accumulation depends on the size and inter-
ways to create larger and more cohesive communi- connectedness of populations (Boyd 2018.53–58),
ties, transcending by cultural means the biological based on the analysis of ethnographic evidence (e.g.,
limits of their inherited brains. We can chart the in- Kline, Boyd 2010) and on laboratory simulations
creasing population density, see something of the (Derex, Boyd 2015; 2016). Further, the experimen-
increasing size of the co-resident social group, and tal work and simulations of Maxime Derex and Boyd
recognise the increasing scale, intensity and cultural- show that large populations made up of partially
cognitive modes of their networked super-commu- connected groups work best, which is surely what
nities. But what we know of the mechanisms that su- we see in the regional and supra-regional networks
stained human social networks is still rudimentary; of sharing exchange of the early Neolithic.
we can see the expansion of Upper Palaeolithic net-
works of exchange, and recent fieldwork is showing In the course of the Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic trans-
us sites that were occupied seasonally, where people formation, small-scale, mobile forager band society,
built permanent structures. From the early Epipalaeo- a cultural niche that had been highly successful in
lithic, there was a new kind of occupation site in the its own terms (it had supported a massive expansion
form of huge aggregation sites, where large numbers of population and the spread of Homo sapiens
of people with somewhat different cultural traditions around the diverse environments of Africa, Eurasia
gathered for seemingly lengthy stays (Jones et al. and Sahul), was transformed to become a dynamic
2016; Maher 2017; Maher et al. 2012). Networks of new kind of niche, based on the first large-scale, per-
inter-personal and inter-group relationships were ex- manently co-resident communities that operated with-
panded, but could not be expanded without the fur- in sophisticated networks that constituted socio-cul-
ther development of the symbolic cultural means to tural super-communities (what Gordon Childe had
sustain large-scale communities. Around the end of termed ‘cultural groups’, or ‘cultures’). Within these
the Epipalaeolithic and through the early Pre-Pottery regional super-communities, people shared prized
Neolithic, permanent, sedentary communities began materials, technical know-how, cultural innovations,
to operate within sophisticated networks that consti- styles, tastes, ideas/stories/beliefs/images/symbols.
tuted super-communities, sharing prized materials, People were no longer bound by ‘horizontal’ ties be-
technical know-how, cultural innovations, styles, ta- tween individuals (family, kin, neighbours, those
stes, and acknowledging that they shared stories and who shared the same settlement, those they knew
beliefs about the world expressed in symbols and or encountered every day), but were also invested
images. Most significantly, these communities and in vertically nested, complex identities. From this
super-communities were constructed as vertically pivotal moment, the pace and scale of social, eco-
nested, complex identities, something that we can nomic and cultural evolution increased in an ever
recognise as being fundamental to our own, contem- steeper curve.
porary experience of complex, nested identities.

There is a rapidly growing body of literature that

puts forward evidence that larger social groups are
better able both to sustain a complex cultural heri-
tage, to innovate and incorporate innovations, and
to withstand competition. I accept the central thesis
of Joe Henrich’s (2015.57) recently published book
on the human facility for cumulative culture: “cultu-
ral evolution became the primary driver of our spe-
cies’ genetic evolution”. Henrich argues that the key
features of human cultural and social evolution have

24
 The Epipalaeolithic-Neolithic as the pivotal transformation of human history

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