Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Head of statue, Jericho, from c. 9000 years ago. Displayed at the Rockefeller Archeological Museum in Jerusalem.

Cultural tendencies of this period differ from that of the earlier Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) period in that people living during this period began to depend more heavily upon domesticated animals to supplement their earlier mixed agrarian and hunter-gatherer diet. In addition, the flint tool kit of the period is new and quite disparate from that of the earlier period. One of its major elements is the naviform core. This is the first period in which architectural styles of the southern Levant became primarily rectilinear; earlier typical dwellings were circular, elliptical and occasionally even octagonal. Pyrotechnology, the expanding capability to control fire, was highly developed in this period. During this period, one of the main features of houses is a thick layer of white clay plaster flooring, highly polished and made of lime produced from limestone.

Plastered skulls in situ at Yiftahel

It is believed that the use of clay plaster for floor and wall coverings during PPNB led to the discovery of pottery.[2] The earliest proto-pottery was White Ware vessels, made from lime and gray ash, built up around baskets before firing, for several centuries around 7000 BC at sites such as Tell Neba'a Faour (Beqaa Valley).[3] Sites from this period found in the Levant utilizing rectangular floor plans and plastered floor techniques were found at Ain Ghazal, Yiftahel (western Galilee), and Abu Hureyra (Upper Euphrates).[2] The period is dated to between c. 10,700 and c. 8,000 BP or 7000–6000 BC.

Plastered human skulls were reconstructed human skulls that were made in the ancient Levant between 9000 and 6000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They represent some of the oldest forms of art in the Middle East and demonstrate that the prehistoric population took great care in burying their ancestors below their homes. The skulls denote some of the earliest sculptural examples of portraiture in the history of art.[4]

Jericho

Tell Aswad

Neba'a Faour

'Ain Ghazal

Yiftahel

Tell Abu Hureyra

Tell Ramad

Tell Ghoraifé

Tell Judaidah

Tell Tayinat

Alalakh

Clickable map of the modern-day eastern Mediterranean showing important sites that were occupied in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Reconstitution of housing in Aşıklı Höyük, modern Turkey

Danielle Stordeur's recent work at Tell Aswad, a large agricultural village between Mount Hermon and Damascus could not validate Henri de Contenson's earlier suggestion of a PPNA Aswadian culture. Instead, they found evidence of a fully established PPNB culture at 8700 BC at Aswad, pushing back the period's generally accepted start date by 1,200 years. Similar sites to Tell Aswad in the Damascus Basin of the same age were found at Tell Ramad and Tell Ghoraifé. How a PPNB culture could spring up in this location, practicing domesticated farming from 8700 BC has been the subject of speculation. Whether it created its own culture or imported traditions from the North East or Southern Levant has been considered an important question for a site that poses a problem for the scientific community.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]

Work at the site of 'Ain Ghazal in Jordan has indicated a later Pre-Pottery Neolithic C period, which existed between 8,200 and 7,900 BP. Juris Zarins has proposed that a Circum Arabian Nomadic Pastoral Complex developed in the period from the climatic crisis of 6200 BC, partly as a result of an increasing emphasis in PPNB cultures upon animal domesticates, and a fusion with Harifian hunter gatherers in Southern Palestine, with affiliate connections with the cultures of Fayyum and the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Cultures practicing this lifestyle spread down the Red Sea shoreline and moved east from Syria into southern Iraq.[13]

The culture disappeared during the 8.2 kiloyear event, a term that climatologists have adopted for a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present, or c. 6200 BC, and which lasted for the next two to four centuries. In the following Munhatta and Yarmukian post-pottery Neolithic cultures that succeeded it, rapid cultural development continues, although PPNB culture continued in the Amuq valley, where it influenced the later development of the Ghassulian culture.

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  ʿAin Ghazal statues: closeup of one of the bicephalous statues, c. 6500 BC.
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  Ain Ghazal statue on show in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
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  Louvre Ain Ghazal statue, frontal

Around 8000 BC, before the invention of pottery, several early settlements became experts in crafting beautiful and highly sophisticated containers from stone, using materials such as alabaster or granite, and employing sand to shape and polish. Artisans used the veins in the material to maximum visual effect. Such objects have been found in abundance on the upper Euphrates river, in what is today eastern Syria, especially at the site of Bouqras.[14] These form the early stages of the development of the Art of Mesopotamia.

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  Jar in calcite alabaster, Syria, late 8th millennium BC.
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  Footed bowl in granite, Syria, end of 8th millennium BC.
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  Green aragonite tripod vase Mid-Euphrates 6000 BC Louvre Museum AO 28386
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  Calcite tripod vase, mid-Euphrates, probably from Tell Buqras, 6000 BC, Louvre Museum AO 31551
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  Alabaster pot with handles, Buqras region, 6500 BC Louvre Museum AO 28519
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  Alabaster pot Mid-Euphrates region, 6500 BC, Louvre Museum
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  Alabaster pot, Mid-Euphrates region, 6500 BC, Louvre Museum
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  Bead with human form. 8th millennium BC.

Yarmukian figurines, Yarmukian culture (5500–5000 BC), Pre-Pottery Neolithic B

Female statuette, 8th millennium BC, Syria

Pre-Pottery Neolithic B fossils that were analysed for ancient DNA were found to carry the Y-DNA (paternal) haplogroups E1b1b (2/7; ~29%), CT (2/7; ~29%), E(xE2,E1a,E1b1a1a1c2c3b1,E1b1b1b1a1,E1b1b1b2b) (1/7; ~14%), T(xT1a1,T1a2a) (1/7; ~14%), and H2 (1/7; ~14%). The CT clade was also observed in a Pre-Pottery Neolithic C specimen (1/1; 100%).[15] Maternally, the rare basal haplogroup N* has been found among skeletal remains belonging to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B,[16] as have the mtDNA clades L3[16] and K.[17]

DNA analysis has also confirmed ancestral ties between the Pre-Pottery Neolithic culture bearers and the makers of the Epipaleolithic Iberomaurusian culture of North Africa,[18] the Mesolithic Natufian culture of the Levant, the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture of East Africa,[19] the Early Neolithic Cardium culture of Morocco,[20] and the Ancient Egyptian culture of the Nile Valley,[21] with fossils associated with these early cultures all sharing a common genomic component.[20]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B.

• Holocene climatic optimum
• Levantine archaeology#Ceramics analysis
• Prehistory of the Levant
• Upper Mesopotamia#Prehistory

Media related to Pre-Pottery Neolithic B at Wikimedia Commons