Age· The columns of time

Neolithic

11.7 ka → 3,275 BCE

The Neolithic is the age of the first farmers and herders, from 11,700 to 5,300 years ago, named after the polished stone of its tools.

Period defined by the adoption of agriculture and stock-raising, whose name, formed on Greek and meaning new stone, refers to polished stone. Over six millennia are established sedentism, marked demographic growth and dependence on a small number of plant species transformed by selection, a dietary regime that remains that of most of the world population.

What the evidence shows

The cultivation and domestication of wild plants begin in the Fertile Crescent from the eleventh millennium before present. Study of the Jordan Valley establishes the local conditions of the phenomenon: its soils consist of Saharan dust transported northwards during the arid phases of the glaciation, and fresh water returned to the neighbouring highlands 12,000 to 11,000 years ago, at the end of the Younger Dryas. The valley's first farming villages, Late Natufian then Pre-Pottery Neolithic, lie at the intersection of fertile soils and water resources. That last designation indicates that farming villages existed before pottery. The reverse order is no more general: in China, the firing of pots precedes any cultivation by ten millennia. The two techniques are therefore independent.

Bounds and conventions

There is no single Neolithic. Agriculture was invented independently in at least a dozen regions, at dates spread over five millennia, before diffusing much later to the others. Radiocarbon dating on dental enamel now places the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of Mehrgarh, in Pakistan, between 5200 and 4900 BCE and not around 8000, three millennia later than the long-accepted estimate.

Regional boundary: the Neolithic begins around 11.7 ka in the Near East, several millennia later elsewhere, and does not occur at all in certain regions.