Chapter V: A Glance Eastward

The culture of the oldest lake-dwellings appears suddenly in Europe, and its beginnings are exotic in all their essentials. The turbary cattle were quite different from the wild _primigenius_ race of the surrounding regions; and we find no remains of the intermediate forms which should occur if domestication had taken place here. The same is true of the turbary pig. Wild sheep are unknown in northern Europe, and the moufflon of the Mediterranean islands can hardly have been the ancestor of our Swiss flocks, and is very possibly descended from domesticated ancestors which reverted to wild life. Something very similar may be said of our oldest cereals, wheat and barley.

We must evidently turn eastward or southward to find the cradle of the whole culture. Even if it came partly from Italy, it could hardly have developed there. Egypt may have made contributions, but mostly at a later date. We naturally turn first to Asia, the great centre of mammalian evolution, probably the oldest seat of cattle-raising and agriculture, cradle of man and centre of his earliest development. The true Neolithic cultures in northern Europe can hardly be older than about 6000 B. C.; the lake-dwellings are probably far younger. We must first inquire into the location, age, and character of the oldest agriculture in nearer Asia, where great discoveries have been made during the last twenty years.

We naturally turn first to Babylonia. Under the temple of Bel, at Nippur, was an immense platform constructed of sun-dried bricks, most of them stamped with the name of Sargon or of Naram Sin. The date of Sargon seems still uncertain; many historians place it at 2800 B. C.; others, and apparently most archæologists, like Obermaier, still hold to the old date, 3750 B. C.[70] Without any attempt to decide this question, we will hold in this chapter to the older date; and believers in the latter date can subtract 1,000 from our figures for earlier times, though this does not apply to Pumpelly's estimates.

Says Delitzsch[71] of this mound: "In the deepest layers of these remains, or what amounts to the same, back many centuries beyond the fifth millennium, everywhere interesting and valuable remains of human civilization come to light, fragments of vessels of copper, bronze, and clay, a quantity of earthenware so beautifully lacquered in red and black that we might consider them of Greek origin, or at least influenced by Greek art, had they not been found eight metres deep under Naram Sin's pavement." Here we find the Bronze period, or possibly late Copper, before 5000 B. C. A city with a high and complex culture had already arisen. No one believes that the culture could have originated in the rank, almost untamable, primitive jungle of Mesopotamia. Its beginnings must be sought elsewhere and earlier. But the age and character of Babylonian civilization encourage one to seek further in western Asia.

In 1904 Pumpelly[72] made most thorough and careful investigations at Anau, near Askabad in Turkestan, about 300 miles east of the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, and 200 miles west of Merv. The remarkable results of his work are described in two large volumes, and have not received the attention which they deserve. He excavated in two large Kurgans or mounds. The north Kurgan is the older and chiefly concerns us. The Neolithic remains occur in thin compact strata aggregating some forty-five feet in thickness. The earliest settlement was a town covering at least five acres, possibly nearly ten.

At the time of the beginning of the settlement, which Pumpelly estimated as somewhat before 8000 B. C., the inhabitants lived in rectangular houses built of uniform sun-dried bricks. They were skilful potters, though unacquainted with the potter's wheel, making different grades of coarse and fine vessels. These were unglazed, but often painted with a definite series of geometrical patterns. They had the art of spinning, for whorls are found in all strata from the lowest up. They cultivated cereals, for the casts of the chaff of wheat and barley are found in the clay of the thicker pots. At first they had no domestic animals, only the bones of wild forms being found. When ten feet of culture strata had been accumulated the remains of a tame _Bos namadicus_, the Asiatic variety of the _Bos primigenius_, or urus, occurred. That this animal had already been domesticated is inferred from the less compact microscopic structure of the bones modified by artificial conditions. At this time the change of structure, if not complete, was evident. It had been for some time under the new conditions. The turbary pig appears about 7500 B. C.,[73] the turbary sheep about 1500 years later, but preceded by varieties of the great horned mountain sheep. The turbary cattle appear to have been a small variety of the _Bos namadicus_, somewhat dwarfed by drought and hardship.

The camel appears at Anau somewhat after 6000 B. C., and seems to be a means of intercourse and transport far antedating the horse, in a region already showing signs of dessication.

Spherical mace-heads occur reminding us of those used in Egypt. But no lance-head or arrow-point or other stone weapon was found in the lower levels. We do not know how they killed or captured the larger animals; they may have used the sling or bolero. In the lowest strata we find the bones of young children, but not of adults, buried in a contracted position under the floors of the dwellings. The first objects of copper and lead appear about 6000 B. C., and, open the Æneolithic period. Pumpelly distinguishes a Copper period, here longer and more distinctly marked than in Europe. The turquoise bead found in one of the graves came, in all probability, from the Iranian plateau, as did probably the copper and lead also.

He has shown us that even on the steppe the cultivation of cereals precedes the domestication of sheep and cattle. The nomadic life follows instead of preceding agriculture. The pioneers in this region cultivated the zone of steppe, into which rivers poured from the mountains. When cattle and sheep and goats had multiplied, the herdsmen drove them farther and farther on the rich pasturage of the boundless steppe. Thus nomads gradually appear. There are also different varieties of nomadism. Nomadic tribes were far less active and dangerous neighbors even after the domestication of the camel than when, about 2000 B. C., they had domesticated the horse. The first herdsman may have differed from the latter nomad almost as much as the most pacific sheep-herder of our Western plains differs from the liveliest cowboy.

Pumpelly's time-estimates have been criticised by Doctor H. Schmidt, of Berlin.[74] He makes the rate of growth far more rapid than Pumpelly thought and shortens the periods. In determining length of periods he relies far more on artifacts and less on probable rate of accumulation. The criticisms seem hardly well founded. Pumpelly's estimate of rate of increase was based upon a careful and broad comparison of accumulations in the deserted city, Anau, in Merv, and other localities. They seem conservative, but we must recognize that such estimates are always only approximate. His estimates result in a series of dates generally in close agreement with those of most students of oriental archæology.

In the Third Culture Epoch there was found "copper, with sporadic appearance of low percentage of tin." This describes well the close of the Copper period or the beginning of the Bronze Age, the rest of which is not represented at Anau, the settlement being deserted, probably because of aridity. Pumpelly thinks that the last strata deposited before the desertion comes down to the Bronze Age, and, assuming the latest possible date for the beginning of this period, places it about 2200 B. C. This is almost surely much too late. Obermaier dates the beginning of the Bronze period at 4000 B. C.[75] (If we substitute the later date, 2750 B. C., for Sargon's region, the Bronze period would begin about 3000 B. C., the date accepted by Montelius.[76]) Pumpelly places the beginning of the Copper Epoch at 5000 B. C., again agreeing with Montelius. His estimates seem generally somewhat too conservative, as he doubtless intended they should be; the earliest remains may be considerably older than he thought. Investigations made during the last twenty years seem generally to lead us to believe that the beginnings of Neolithic culture are far older in western Asia than we had supposed, while in middle and northern Europe they are probably somewhat younger than we had thought. In this connection we may well remember that Evans found eight metres of Neolithic remains under the palace at Cnossus, in Crete, and estimated their age at about 14,000 years.

The culture at Anau is very similar in all its essentials to that of the European lake-dwellers, and is much older. The same cereals and the same kinds of domesticated animals appear in both. The brick houses are better and the very fine painted pottery is new and peculiar. These and the art of spinning and the cultivation of cereals were brought hither by the first settlers; their development to this stage must have taken place elsewhere and occupied a long period of time. Sheep could not have been domesticated here, for they and the goats are natives of the mountains, and could not survive wild on the steppe. Neither is the pig a steppe animal, but lives naturally in forest glades and along watercourses. Pumpelly has evidently discovered a very old and interesting station in the spread of this ancient culture, but not its cradle. This was apparently in some mountainous region. The nearest and most likely place to search for it is somewhere on the Iranian plateau, to which the turquoise bead and the later-introduced copper and lead found at Anau also point.

Here at Susa (Shushan), about one hundred miles from the apex of the Persian Gulf, de Morgan excavated in a mound rising about thirty-four metres above the level of the plain and continuing some six metres below the surface, which has been raised that amount since the first settlement was made.[77] The total thickness of the remains is therefore about forty metres. The lowest strata as yet have been only slightly studied. The uppermost ten to fifteen metres cover a period of about 6,000 years. If the lower strata were accumulated at the same rate, the first settlement was begun about 18,000 years ago at a conservative estimate. Montelius, the best authority on European prehistoric chronology, basing his conclusions on de Morgan's discoveries, places the date of the beginning of Neolithic culture in this part of Asia at about 18,000 B. C., or somewhat earlier.[78]

Over twenty metres of these remains are purely Neolithic. There was the usual abundance of flint nuclei, flakes, and utensils. There was obsidian, evidently brought from a distance--de Morgan thinks from Armenia, a thousand miles away. This is not impossible; we shall find that trade or barter was far more extensive at this time than has usually been supposed.

Here again we find abundant pottery in the lowest strata. It is of a "dark brown pattern painted on a pale ground, partly imitating basketry and textiles, partly rendering plants and animals with childish simplicity.... It resembles in a striking way a few widely scattered series which are all that have been secured hitherto from a very ill-explored area: from a Neolithic site underlying the Hittite castle at Sakye-Giezi, in North Syria, from the surface of early mounds in Cappadocia, and from low levels of the Hittite capital, at Boghaz-Keui; and, more surprising still, from an important site, also Neolithic, at Anau, on the northern edge of the Persian plateau looking over into Turkestan; and at a number of points scattered over the flat lowland on the north side of the Black Sea, and thence into the Balkan Peninsula as far south as Macedonia and Thessaly. These resemblances are general and their value may be overestimated; there are differences in detail, but the general similarity seems to link the peoples over this wide area at the same time in one region of kindred art and culture, if not of blood."[79]

The discoveries at Susa and elsewhere in this region seem to prove that compact settlements of fair size had arisen in western Asia long before the founding of Anau.[80] Such settlements could have been formed only by sedentary peoples practising agriculture, not by mere wandering hunters. Our definite knowledge of the domestic animals of Susa is very small. But, as we have just seen, the peculiar, fine, decorated pottery found in the oldest strata of Susa, Anau, and many other localities scattered over a wide area, is certainly a strong argument for believing that an agriculture in general very similar to that of the oldest strata at Anau was wide-spread over the Iranian plateau, Asia Minor, and elsewhere. Where or when it began we do not know. We can only conjecture as to the place and mode of its beginning. It may not be out of place to mention a very general hypothesis of this sort, and this we will now attempt to frame.

The Bühl moraines, in Lake Lucerne, are estimated as having been deposited between 16,000 and 24,000 B. C., during the Early Magdalenian stage of post-glacial time, which would, therefore, be contemporaneous with the earliest settlement at Susa.[81] The climate of Europe was then somewhat colder and much moister than at present. The ice-cap extended much farther south in middle Europe than in Russia or Siberia. Under these circumstances central Asia probably enjoyed a much moister climate than at present, without extreme cold. The Caspian and Aral Seas occupied a much larger area than at present, and were very likely connected. The Tarim basin may well have been a great lake surrounded by a zone of garden instead of the sandy waste which it is to-day. Conditions of increased moisture would have made the now parched regions of the Iranian plateau an exceedingly rich and favored region. Toward the close of the Post-glacial Epoch the mountains were probably well forested, but alternating dryer times would have brought open glades, with lakes interspersed.

When Europe changed from tundra to forest man became largely a fisherman, more or less settled at some favorable spot, and collecting his vegetable food in all directions. The same may well have been true of life at this early date in Persia. The man hunted or fished, the woman and the children gathered all kinds of animals and plant food, berries and other fruits, acorns and other nuts. One of the richest sources of food must have been the roots, tubers, and other underground stems. If there were any patches of richly seeded grasses or grains on the near-by glade or hill, we may be sure that the woman did not fail to beat off the ripe seed with a stick, and carry it home with her. The primitive family was not dainty or particular in its appetite. The women were the first botanists, the first to notice the nutritive, medicinal, or poisonous qualities of plants, and the first physicians.[82]

When she turned homeward with her load of spoil, some berries, seeds, and small bulbs doubtless fell to the ground and escaped her notice. These grew and flourished in the richer soil around the hut or shelter, for all the garbage could not have accumulated in the hut. Some unusually observing woman noticed this, and protected the plants, or even cultivated them a little with her digging-stick, and pulled out some of the largest smothering weeds. She began to plant a few others, and gradually started a garden. The garden is older than the farm, and hoe and digging-stick vastly older than the plough. This woman had discovered, and almost created, a new world of science and culture which was to revolutionize life.

Rice growing wild in large fields under suitable conditions is still gathered by all savages. This grain needed no preparation except boiling, while wheat and barley must be crushed or ground between stones, probably used at first for grinding dry nuts. Peas and beans, many vetches, and other members of this family so characteristic of the dryer uplands, were gathered very early, and may have been cultivated before wheat. Melons and many of the gourds always must have been eaten. We shall notice later that the zone of Persia and Asia Minor lay on the boundary line between two great botanical provinces, a northern and a southern, and furnished a very wide range of plants for this earliest experiment station.[83] A great variety of plants were tested sooner or later, and only a few of the very best and most capable of improvement have been retained to our day. On the steppe at a later date wheat and barley were most profitable, and most widely cultivated. But even here hoe-culture was for a long time the only mode. It still exists in Africa, Asia, and Japan; and was the only mode of culture known in America at the time of its discovery. Hoe-culture was at first, and has generally remained, woman's work; ploughing with cattle was a man's job. This had far-reaching results to which we must return in a later chapter.

But we must not think that the Iranian plateau, with its great zone of piedmont steppe stretching eastward and westward along its northern border across the continent of Asia, was the only place where agriculture could start and reach a high degree of development in ancient times. Its possibility lay in the habit of the woman of collecting the vegetable food and smaller animals, while the men hunted and fished. Useful food plants furnishing large amounts of food are to be found in all continents, and differ markedly in different soils and climatic zones. Hence even the beginnings of agriculture were probably not confined to any one region, but were wide-spread, manifold, and independent. The Chinese migrating eastward and southeastward down the great river valleys from eastern Turkestan may have carried with them the cultivation of wheat, or adopted it independently. The rice culture of China may have been borrowed from India or independently evolved. India and the Malay Archipelago and Africa have every one its own agriculture, of whose origin and early development we know nothing.

But western Asia, or more precisely the Iranian plateau, had another piedmont region beside the zone stretching along its northern border. This second piedmont zone of grass-land, or oasis, as Breasted has pointed out, bends in the form of a horseshoe along the western slope of the Iranian plateau, then northward and westward around the headwaters of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and southward through Syria.[84] Here it dries out in the great Syrian and Arabian deserts. But these also, as well as the Arabian plateau stretching along the Red Sea, may have been well watered and inhabitable in early post-glacial time. The Arabian plateau and its piedmont zone in those days may well have been an independent centre of agricultural development, which gave place to the nomadism so characteristic of the Semitic peoples only at a later date. Of the early history of Arabia we are still completely ignorant. But in the twilight of history we see those Semites coming into the Mesopotamian valley from the west while the Sumerians entered from the east. Those two streams of migration, mingling, founded the great Babylonian Empire, to which all oriental peoples looked up with an awe and reverence, as well as fear, which we can scarcely appreciate. Evidently, and this is the fact of chief importance to us, parts of the nearer east were highly civilized before anything better than savagery had developed in northern Europe.

But far older than these cities of the Mesopotamian river valleys is the culture of the forests, glades, lakes, and riversides of the plateaus. Evidence seems steadily to accumulate that here we are to seek for the beginnings of agriculture and the domestication of animals which were slowly to change the face of the earth and the life and character of man.

Hoe-tillage of the ground is evidently far older than cattle-raising or nomadic life. It had been brought to Anau before 8000 B. C., and had probably already been practised at Susa and elsewhere thousands of years earlier. But we cannot help asking whether other plants may not have been cultivated long before cereals. Roots and tubers are much more conspicuous than the smaller grains. These underground storehouses of nutriment adapted to give the plant a quick and sure start, during a short spring period of growth and flowering, are abundant everywhere. They still form the staple crop in many parts of the world. We remember the potatoes, sweet potatoes, yams, the cassava, and a host of others. In our northern regions we still cultivate beets, turnips, and carrots, though now becoming more and more food for cattle. These plants also are less closely limited to the steppes and plateaus. They occur all through the mountain or shore regions, and for this reason would have been likely to attract the attention of "collectors."

Primitive woman had no plough, only the digging-stick, the agricultural implement of the Australians. Later they learned to make a hoe, sometimes out of a tine of deer's horn, sometimes of stone or other material, something half-way between a hoe and a pick. With such an implement a fair amount of soil could be broken up and well stirred. When domestic animals were introduced into Africa the plough followed only in the eastern regions; all through the rest of Africa the old hoe-culture held its own. Europeans introduced the plough into America. As a means of breaking up the ground the plough is infinitely superior; for tillage and cultivation the hoe is far more useful. When wheat has once been sown it cares for itself; further cultivation is unnecessary--it is the lazy man's crop. Perhaps that, with a touch of the spur of necessity, persuaded the male to undertake ploughing. When the plough was invented many vegetables formerly cultivated probably became less profitable or attractive, and were given up. A revolution took place in agriculture. Probably the plough was at first dragged by women. It is impossible to say just when it was invented. It was used during the Bronze period, for it is represented in rock-carvings of that age. Some stone ploughshares may be Neolithic.

Studying European Neolithic agriculture in the light of the methods of savage and barbarous peoples, or even of our pioneer ancestors, we imagine them living on the border of the forests which furnished food and wood for buildings and implements. The first step was to burn and clear a place where the undergrowth was not too heavy, and to break up the soil with pick or hoe. Here the patch of grain was sowed. The soil fertilized by the ashes gave him a fair crop, but became exhausted after a few years of cultivation, and he was compelled to break up a new field. Some investigators have thought that the lake-dwellers used the manure from their cattle on their fields, but in most parts of Europe cultivation of the soil was probably crude and superficial. On the chalk downs of England, chief places of settlement by Neolithic peoples in this region, we find terraces and narrow strips which may have been prepared at this time, though their age is very uncertain. They often are of a size and form not well adapted to plough-culture. They have a look of permanent occupation. These may well have been fertilized. The evidence is very uncertain. When the loess soil was of fair depth cultivation may have gone on for many years without fertilizers of any sort.

The primitive plough was hardly more than a pointed stout branch or stub of a tree, whose longer fork was fastened to the yoke. It made a furrow triangular in cross-section, broad at the top and narrowing to an edge at the bottom. It did not "turn" a strip, and between two furrows a long ridge was left unbroken. Even in Roman times cross-ploughing was common or usual. Even this rude culture needed the strength of cattle to draw the plough. The plough is associated in our minds with oxen, and the first man who made his cow, instead of his wife, draw the plough was a great benefactor.

Even the domestication of cattle was less easy than it seems at first sight. Wild animals rarely reproduce in captivity. Pumpelly thinks that the way toward the domestication of our larger cattle may have been paved by a long period of drought driving them from the steppe into the better-watered oases, and thus into association with man. But this could hardly have been true of the mountain sheep and goats, on which man may well have experimented before he attempted the more difficult task of domesticating the larger, more powerful, and less manageable _Bos namadicus_. How did man hit upon the plan of castrating the bull and thus changing this intractable, ugly beast into the docile and patient ox? There seems to be a good amount of plausibility in Hehn's brilliant suggestion that this may have come about in connection with some ancient systems of religious rites and beliefs.[85] There is nothing impossible or very improbable in this view. But the very brilliancy of the conjecture and the clearness with which it is expressed, and the wealth of learning used to support it, warns us against too ready acceptance. We can only confess our complete ignorance and wait for future discoveries as patiently as we can.

At present nearly all our knowledge of what was going on in this dim and remote past must be gained by a study of savages still holding the customs of the past in a somewhat or greatly modified form and spirit. Certain very general inferences may be made without great danger. But to frame clear and exact conceptions of life in these remote ages from these sources would demand a union of the boldest genius with the most wary caution. All these peoples have changed greatly during past millennia both for better and worse, usually probably in the latter direction. Customs have all been modified by changed conditions, surroundings, and inferences. It is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between what is really primitive and what is degenerate, perhaps of comparatively recent origin. The problem bristles with tantalizing questions, which tempt us to spin fascinating hypotheses all the more dangerous because of their attractiveness and apparent simplicity. Our great need is new facts and discoveries, and a clearer knowledge and understanding of old ones.

We may well connect and condense the chief results of our study in this chapter. It seems to be clear that a culture essentially similar to that of the European lake dwellers existed at Anau, in the piedmont zone, a little north or northeast of the Iranian plateau, with which it had trade relations. The oldest turbary forms of domesticated animals appear here at least 1,500 years before the founding of the Swiss lake dwellings. They were mostly introduced from some mountain region, the nearest probable source being the Iranian plateau, but their first domestication may have taken place equally well elsewhere in western or central Asia, or even in Arabia. Susa shows similar remains extending back into a far more remote past; and the similarity or kinship of the pottery in the oldest strata at Susa and Anau and elsewhere leads us to believe that a culture similar in other respects also was widely distributed at this time. We can hardly doubt that agriculture was practised by the founders of all these settlements.

We can only frame conjectures as to the origin of agriculture. It seems to have been introduced by the women of hunting and fishing tribes. The first agricultural implement was probably the digging-stick, which was followed by the hoe. Hoe-culture is still common in Asia and Africa. Finally, during the first part of the Bronze period, or perhaps somewhat earlier, the plough drawn by cattle and guided by a man superseded the hoe as a means of breaking up the soil for the culture of grain.