The Aftermath of the Levantine Neolithic Revolution in the Light of Ecological and Ethnographic Evidence

Abstract

At the end of the 7th millennium the southern Levant witnessed the sudden abandonment of most of its previously thriving PPNB villages. While this phenomenon has long been attributed to external factors such as climatic change and invasions, it is suggested here that the early Neolithic economic system of village-based mixed farming was at least a contributing factor in this development. The brittle environments of most of the sites were not able to withstand the ecological pressure which human early agricultural and pastoral activities entailed : Continuous cultivation of the same crops led to loss of soil fertility and accelerated erosion, sedentary animal husbandry resulted in a degeneration of natural pasture. Ethnographic evidence is presented that early domesticated animals, especially goats, may have interfered with cultivation and required some degree of mobility for their well-being. This gradual loss of agricultural productivity could be alleviated to a certain extent by an expansion of the site catchment area, but after a critical radius and population size had been exceeded, the dilemma could only be resolved by a dispersal of the inhabitants into smaller and economically specialized groups.