The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (21 page)

There are several possible explanations for such inbreeding. We have seen a case where one prominent male in a foraging society contributed his genes to 20 percent of his local band. We have also seen that the wives of polygamous hunters were sometimes sisters. Finally, we have seen that the marriage rules of some Australian societies reduced the number of eligible mates to one-eighth of the population. In a small population of foragers, any or all of these processes might have increased the frequency of a genetic anomaly.

The Natufians of Hayonim also decorated themselves with dentalium, and herein lies another story. Some of the dentalium belonged to a species from the Mediterranean Sea, only eight miles to the west. Other dentalium, however, belonged to a species from the Red Sea, some 400 miles to the south. The latter almost certainly reached Galilee as the result of exchanges with other groups. Why would one trade for a shell that one could get by taking an eight-mile walk? The answer is, it was not the intrinsic value of the shell that mattered but the social relations generated by the exchange.

Let us continue our ascent to higher elevations, this time to a stream canyon 25 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Here, at an altitude of 1,000 feet in the mountains of Judea, lay the Cave of Shukbah. Archaeologist Dorothy Garrod found abundant sickles and hearths at Shukbah but surprisingly few grinding stones and storage pits. This raises the possibility that the Natufians stayed at Shukbah only long enough to harvest the available wheat and barley, after which they carried as much grain as possible to more permanent camps at lower elevations.

A good example of a longer-term, lower-elevation camp would be Ain Mallaha in the Jordan River Valley. Here the Natufians lived on the slopes above Lake Huleh, a reed-bordered expanse of fresh water north of the Sea of Galilee. The lake itself lay only 200 feet above sea level, flanked by mountains with cereal grasses and oak, pistachio, and almond trees.

Several generations of archaeologists, including Jean Perrot and François R. Valla, have uncovered a sequence of repeated encampments at Mallaha. The Natufians lived in circular or crescent-shaped huts whose lower halves were sunk below ground. The posts supporting the roof were set into the dry-laid masonry walls that lined the subterranean part of each structure. The huts varied from 13 to 26 feet in diameter. Because so many have been excavated, we can see that some huts were large enough for a nuclear family, while others would have been appropriate only for an individual—perhaps a second wife, a widow, or a widower—and still others were big enough to be bachelors’ huts.

One building discovered by Perrot stood out from the rest. Its outer diameter was roughly 21 feet, and it had a sitting bench more than two feet wide running around the interior. Unlike a typical residence, this structure and its bench were coated with lime plaster. The floor was carefully paved with flagstones. A small fireplace was set against the wall, and a single human skull rested nearby. We believe that this building may be one of our oldest examples of a bachelors’ hut or men’s house.

Was the Natufian men’s house a dormitory for all youths or a ritual house for the initiated few? The building at Mallaha seems too small to have held more than the initiated. The encampment of Wadi Hammeh 27 in Jordan, however, appears to have had a larger Natufian ritual house. This one was 46 feet in diameter and had an apparent bench, ten feet wide, running around the wall. On the sunken circular floor of the building lay a broken monolith, carved with geometric motifs (
Figure 14, bottom
). The Wadi Hammeh structure is twice as large as the lime-plastered building at Mallaha. It is possible, therefore, that both inclusive and exclusive men’s houses were present in the Near East at this time.

In addition to possible men’s houses, multigenerational cemeteries, and exchanges of shell valuables, the Natufians provide us with evidence of feasts at which large quantities of meat were shared. One of the earliest examples comes from Hilazon Tachtit Cave in Lower Galilee.

In the center of the cave, the Natufians created two small subterranean structures and three burial pits. At least three wild cattle and more than 70 tortoises were cooked and eaten at some point in the burial ceremony. This is far more meat than the occupants of a typical Natufian camp would have consumed at a funeral and hints at substantial social networking.

The Spread of Achievement-Based Villages and Ancestor Ritual

Ten thousand years ago, from the Bay of Haifa to the Tigris River in Iraq, at least three major processes were under way. One process was the emergence of domestic races of wheat and barley, mutant strains that left the cereals with no seed-dispersal system but made them easier for humans to harvest and thresh.

This first process led to a second: the gradual conversion of long-term camps into permanent, multigenerational villages. In the course of this transformation, circular huts were replaced by larger rectangular houses. Some of the latter had their own storage rooms and, if the walls could bear the weight, even a second story.

As life became sedentary, it facilitated a third process: the hunting of herd animals with drive fences and corrals, followed by the penning, imprinting, and raising of their young. Small numbers of goats, sheep, and pigs gradually became residents of the village. Wild cattle were bigger and more dangerous animals, but under domestication even they became smaller and more docile.

During the course of all three processes, ancestor ritual escalated, and men’s houses became increasingly well built and decorated. Some villages seem to have had more than one ritual house, either because each clan built its own (like the Ao Naga) or because the society wanted to keep contradictory parts of its cosmology separate (like the Mountain Ok).

Some of the most spectacular ritual houses are those excavated by Klaus Schmidt at Göbekli Tepe, a site east of the upper Euphrates River in Turkey. Göbekli sits on a high limestone ridge that makes it visible from more than ten miles away. This location was apparently chosen so that huge limestone blocks could be quarried from the ridgetop and hewn into upright posts for the ritual houses.

The earliest ritual houses at Göbekli Tepe, dating to perhaps 10,000 years ago, were round or oval. The lower half of each building was subterranean, with walls of dry-laid stone masonry. A sitting bench ran the entire length of the interior, except for the doorway.

The most distinctive attributes of these buildings were the immense, T-shaped limestone pillars that supported the roof. Usually the two largest pillars were set in the center of the floor, while a ring of slightly smaller pillars was set into the walls (
Figure 15, top
). Many of the pillars were carved in low relief with realistic images of animals; depending on the building, they might feature foxes, lions, cattle, boars, herons, ducks, scorpions, or snakes. Some pillars showed signs of having had earlier images ground off, so that new ones could be carved. One immediately thinks of the carved posts of the Ao Naga men’s house, with its depictions of tigers, hornbills, or elephants.

FIGURE 15.
   Some of the most spectacular men’s houses (or clan houses) in the early Near East can be found in the Euphrates headwaters of Turkey. They made use of dry-laid stone masonry and monolithic stone pillars. Most pillars used at Göbekli Tepe were T-shaped; most pillars at Nevali Çori were straight. Note the flagstone sitting or sleeping benches in the Nevali Çori ritual house.

Once their period of use was over, the villagers deliberately buried these ritual houses with earth and domestic refuse. This act may reflect an unwillingness to leave the village’s most important ritual venues accessible to outsiders.

Roughly 9,500 years ago, the occupants of Göbekli Tepe changed their architecture: they built a ritual house that was rectangular. Nicknamed the Lion Pillar Building, this new structure was partly subterranean. Its floor space was roughly 20 by 17 feet, and because of its thick stone masonry walls, its outer dimensions were greater than 33 feet. The roof had been supported by T-shaped pillars, one of which was carved with the lion that gave the building its name. From this point on, as we shall see, most ritual houses in the Euphrates headwaters would be rectangular.

The remarkable complex of ritual structures at Göbekli Tepe was built by a society with virtually no evidence of domestic plants and animals. The people harvested wild cereals with sickles, collected almonds and pistachios, and hunted gazelle, boar, and wild cattle.

We should consider the possibility that the hilltop ritual complex at Göbekli Tepe was maintained by multiple clans or descent groups, each of which built and decorated its own ritual house. Perhaps each descent group competed with the others to make its ritual house the most elegant. The carvings of animals may relate to a common cosmology or set of origin myths. Instead of curating ancestors’ skeletal parts, the people of Göbekli Tepe carved limestone statues of what may have been mythical ancestors.

We have no doubt that quarrying huge T-shaped pillars and lowering them into place brought great renown to the leaders who organized the labor. One still-unfinished T-shaped pillar, left in the ridgetop quarry, weighed an estimated 50 tons. This is heavier than any stone monument erected by the Angami Naga or the Olmec of Mexico, although it did not have to be hauled as far.

Now let us move a short distance to Nevali Çori, another site in the upper Euphrates drainage of Turkey. Nevali Çori was roughly contemporaneous with the Lion Pillar Building at Göbekli Tepe and had several ritual buildings that remind us even more of Naga men’s houses.

Nevali Çori was founded on the slope overlooking a stream in the rolling foothills of the Taurus Mountains, 1,600 feet above sea level. There its inhabitants supported themselves on wheat in the early stages of domestication. The limestone bedrock provided a ready source of stone blocks for construction.

The people of Nevali Çori both saved skulls like the Natufians and carved limestone statues like the people of Göbekli Tepe. Some of the statues depict human skulls, while others show people with their arms folded on their chests. Still other statues were of animals, and there were even statues that combined human and animal attributes. One shows two humans dancing with an unidentified animal, perhaps a scene from a mythological era such as the Alcheringa of the Australian Aborigines.

Archaeologist Harald Hauptmann discovered two rectangular ritual houses of dry-laid stone masonry at Nevali Çori. Each was semi-subterranean, its lime-plastered floor reached by descending stone steps. The earlier of these buildings, called Structure II, measured 45 feet on a side. Its floor area, however, had been reduced by the addition of sitting or sleeping benches. The roof would have been supported by limestone pillars, two of which were set up in the center of the floor and the rest of which ran along the periphery.

The later ritual house, Structure III, was 44 feet on a side. It had very clear sitting or sleeping benches covered with flagstones, flanking the entire floor except for the area of the stone steps. As at Göbekli Tepe, the roof would have been supported by limestone pillars (
Figure 15, bottom
).

If Structure III was for initiates only, its benches could have accommodated 40 to 50 sitting men. If, on the other hand, it was a Naga-style dormitory, it could have accommodated perhaps 15 sleeping youths. We do not know which was the case.

The streams passing Göbekli Tepe and Nevali Çori carry water to the Euphrates. That river flows south out of its Turkish headwaters and enters its Great Bend in northern Syria. On a bluff overlooking the Euphrates, some 990 feet above sea level, lay the archaeological site of Abu Hureyra. Here excavations by Andrew M. T. Moore revealed the slow transformation of a two-acre encampment of circular huts into a 28-acre village of large, rectangular houses.

The first occupants of Abu Hureyra, who lived there 10,000 years ago, harvested wild rye, barley, and two species of wild wheat. They stalked herd animals with bow and arrow, relying most heavily on gazelle. The unit of residence was the extended family, but instead of sharing one large building, they lived in clusters of five to seven small, circular houses grouped around an open area.

Over the next 2,000 years Abu Hureyra became a village of rectangular houses. By this time Abu Hureyra’s economy was based on domestic wheat, domestic barley, wild rye, lentils, field peas, faba beans, and flax or linseed, from whose fibers linen could be woven. The villagers harvested the bulbs of sedges and rushes and collected pistachios and wild caper fruits. They kept early domestic sheep and goats and harvested wild clover and alfalfa, perhaps as fodder for their flocks.

One building, partly exposed by Moore, was a likely ritual venue. Its full dimensions are unknown, but its walls were up to four mud-bricks wide (twice the width of a typical house wall) and its corners were aimed at the cardinal points. Basically rectangular, it had a crescent-shaped room at one end that resembled the apse of a church (
Figure 16, above
). This apsidal space appears to have been a charnel room, that is, a place where remains of the dead were kept. A large pit inside the apse contained the skeletons of 25 to 30 individuals—men, women, adolescents, and children—many with their skulls missing. Elsewhere in the room were additional burials and isolated skulls. This building, constructed 8,000 years ago, evidently served a purpose similar to the “ancestor houses” of New Guinea.