12,000-10,000 years ago, underwent a profound psychological change, essentially a religious revolution, and that this preceded domestication of animals and plants. (This argument is reminiscent of Merlin Donald's, that the first use of language was for myth, not more 'practical' purposes.) This religious revolution, Cauvin says, is essentially the change from animal or spirit worship to the worship of something that is essentially what we recognise today. That is to say, the human female goddess, flanked by her male partner (the bull), is worshipped as a supreme being. He points to carvings of this period in which the 'faithful' have their arms raised, as if in prayer or supplication. For the first time, he says, there is 'an entirely new relationship of subordination between god and man'.22 From now on, says Cauvin, there is a divine force, with the gods 'above' and everyday humanity 'below'. The bull, he says, symbolises not only the male principle but also the untameability of nature, the cosmic forces unleashed in storms, for example. Batons of polished stone are common throughout the Mureybetian culture, which Cauvin says are phallic symbols. Moreover, Cauvin discerns in the Middle East a clear-cut evolution. 'The first bucrania of the Khiamian or Mureybetian remained buried within the thickness of the walls of buildings, not visible therefore to their occupants. Perhaps they only metaphorically wanted to ensure the resistance of the building to all forms of destruction by appealing to this new symbolism for an initial consecration [i.e., when the houses were built]. The time had not yet come for direct confrontation with the animal.'23 After that, however, bovine symbolism diffused throughout the Levant and Anatolia and at 'Ain Ghazal we see the first explicit allusions, around 8000 BC, to the bull-fighting act, in which man himself features.24 Man's virility is being celebrated here, says Cauvin, and it is this concern with virility that links the agricultural revolution and the religious revolution: they were both attempts to satisfy 'the desire for domination over the animal kingdom'.25 This, he argues, was a psychological change, a change in 'mentality' rather than an economic change, as has been the conventional wisdom. On this reading, the all-important innovation in ideas is not so much the domestication of plants and animals, but the cultivation of wild species of cereals that grew in abundance in the Levant and allowed sedentism to occur. It was sedentism which allowed the interval between births to be reduced, boosting population, as a result of which villages grew, social organisation became more complicated and, perhaps, a new concept of religion was invented, which in some ways reflected the village situation, where leaders and subordinates would have emerged. Once these changes were set in train, domesticated plants at least would have developed almost unconsciously as people 'selected' wild cereals which were amenable to this new lifestyle. These early cultures, with the newly-domesticated plants and animals, are generally known as Neolithic and this practice spread steadily, first throughout the fertile crescent, then further, to Anatolia and then Europe in the west, and to Iran and the Caucasus in the east, gradually, as we shall see, extending across all of the Old World. In addition to farming and religion, however, a third idea was included in this spread: the rectangular house. Foundations showing different variations have been found, in Anatolia, at Nevali Cori in Iran, and in the southern Levant, but the evolution of circular houses into rectangular ones with rectangular rooms appears to be a response to the consequences of domestication and farming. There was now more need for storage space, for larger families and, possibly, for defence (with sedentism the number of material possessions grows and there is more to envy/steal). Rectangular rooms and houses fit together more efficiently, are easier to vary in size, allow more 'interior' rooms, and make more use of shared walls.26 We have here then not so much a renaissance as a naissance, a highly innovative time-relatively short- when three of our most basic ideas were laid down: agriculture, religion, the rectangular house. The mix of abstract and practical down-to-earth ideas would not have been recognised by early humans. Religion would have suffused the other two ideas as each activity spilled over into the other. When Jericho was excavated by the British archaeologist Dorothy Garrod in the 1930s she made three discoveries of interest in the context of this chapter. First, the settlement consisted of about seventy
buildings, housing perhaps as many as a thousand people: Jericho was a 'town'. Second, she found a tower, eight metres high, nine metres in diameter at the base, with an internal staircase of twenty-two steps. Such architecture was unprecedented-it would have needed a hundred men working for a hundred days to build such an edifice.27 Garrod's third discovery, unearthed at Terrace B, was a good example of a Natufian baking/cooking unit. 'This terrace seems to be provided with all the equipment required for the processes: the pavement, partly preserved, would be suitable for hand-threshing and husking; the cup basins and the numerous stone mortars would be suitable for the grinding or milling of the grain; the one larger basin would serve for mixing the ground grits or rough "flour" with water; and all this was found not far from ovens.'28 There was no clay. All tools and personal accessories of the Natufians were produced by the meticulous grinding of stone on stone, or stone on bone.29 The first use of clay in the Middle East is documented at Jericho (ninth millennium BC), at Jarmo (eighth) and at Hacilar (seventh), where it was found mixed with straw and chaff and husks-in effect the by-products of threshing-used to bind bricks. At both Jericho and Jarmo depressions were discovered in the clay floors.30 'Whether used as basins for household activities, or as bins, oras ovens with "boiling stones", the main interestlies in the fact that these immovable receptacles are located together with the ovens and hearths in the courtyards, the working spaces of the houses. We may now conclude...that some accidental firing, due to the proximity of the various acts of preparing-cooking-baking the ground wheat or barley in the immovable basins and the oven, was the cause of the transformation of the mud clay into pottery.'31 Johan Goudsblom speculates as to whether the preservation of fire became a specialisation in early villages, giving the specialists a particular power.32 Among archaeologists there has been some debate that the earliest forms of pottery have never been found, because what has been found is too good, too well made to represent 'fumbling beginnings'.33 So perhaps pottery was invented there earlier, even much earlier. This would fit with the fact that the very first pottery was made in Japan, as part of the Jomon culture, as early as 14500 BC, among people who were full-time hunter-gatherers.34 The Jomon Japanese were extremely creative, with very sophisticated hand-axes, and they also invented lacquer. However, no one knows exactly why Jomon pottery was invented or what it was used for (it has even been suggested that large numbers were smashed, in some form of ceremony). The full development of pottery, as one of the 'cultures of fire', is better illustrated through its development in the Middle East. At the early Neolithic site of Catal Huyuk in Turkey (seventh millennium BC), two types of oven were found built next to one another. 'One is the normal vaulted type of baking oven. The second is different in that it has a fire chamber divided into two compartments by a half brick some 15cm high below the main chamber. The front part of these ovens and kilns, which evidently protruded into the room, was destroyed, and was evidently removed to take out whatever was baked in them, whether pots or bread. With the next firing/baking, the front part would be covered over again, which is of course easily done in mud.'35 It appears from shards found at Jarmo, Jericho and Catal Huyuk that pots were made from coils of clay laid in rings and then smoothed over. Dung and grasses were the fuel used, rather than wood.36 At a village like Teleilat al Ghassul, near the northern edge of the Dead Sea, in Jordan, we see both stone tools and early pottery, as this important transition occurs. Frederic Matson found during his excavations at Tepe Sarab, near Kermanshah in western Iran (a site roughly contemporaneous with Jarmo), that there were but three principal diameters of the vessels. Does this suggest three functions? He found that, once invented, the technology of pottery quickly improved. For example, methods were found to lower the porosity of the clay, using burnishing or more intensive firing and, sometimes, the impregnation of organic materials. Vessels that were too porous lost water too quickly; but vessels needed to be a little porous so that some water evaporated, helping to cool what remained.37 Some early pots were left plain, but decoration soon appeared. Red slip was the first type of decoration used, together with incising, using the fingers. 'The discovery that the brown earth will fire to a bright red colour might have come from camp fires.'38 The most common pot shapes at the earliest sites are