--- #TODO The earliest phases, sometimes termed 'Pre-Proto-Hassuna' (c. 7000-6700 BCE), reveal the tentative adoption of ceramic containers, still coexisting with stone vessels and White Ware. This wasn't an overnight technological shift but a gradual integration of a new material culture <The Secret of Our Success - Joseph Henrich, on cumulative cultural evolution>. By the 'Proto-Hassuna' (c. 6700-6300 BCE) and 'Archaic Hassuna' (c. 6300-6000 BCE), settlements like Tell Hassuna (تل حسونة) and Tell Shemshara (تل شمشارة) in northern Iraq show established small farming villages. These communities practiced "dry" agriculture, reliant on sufficient rainfall in the piedmont zone. They developed distinctive Hassuna-style pottery (cream slip with reddish linear paint), lived in adobe dwellings often arranged around courtyards, and utilized tools like hand axes, sickles, and grinding stones. The presence of pottery kilns by the Archaic Hassuna phase indicates increasing sophistication in ceramic production. Female figurines and jar burials containing food offerings suggest developing ritual practices and beliefs concerning fertility and an afterlife, reflecting early attempts to structure and give meaning to their world <\The Role of Cult and Feast - Klaus Schmidt. While the north saw earlier widespread settlement, the Ubaid culture, with its initial heartland in Southern Mesopotamia (e.g., Eridu (𒉣𒆠), Tell al-'Ubaid (تل العبيد), Tell el-'Oueili), marks the first extensive and enduring human occupation of the southern alluvial plain. This region, though prone to unpredictable flooding as the transcript notes, offered immense agricultural potential if water could be managed. Building upon the irrigation knowledge likely derived from or contemporary with Samarran developments, Ubaid communities established temple-centered settlements. The characteristic Ubaid pottery—initially sophisticated painted wares that became simpler and more utilitarian over time—spread widely, northwards into former Halaf territories (as seen in the HUT) and southwards along the Persian Gulf coast (H3 in Kuwait, Dosariyah in Saudi Arabia). This expansion suggests not just a diffusion of style, but a robust system of exchange, and possibly the movement of people or the adoption of a successful socio-economic model. The temple, from these early Ubaid foundations, began its trajectory as the central economic, political, and religious institution, accumulating land, organizing labor for canal maintenance and agricultural production, and storing surplus. This accumulation of surplus and the organizational capacity to manage it were foundational to the increasing social complexity and wealth disparities that would characterize later Mesopotamian society The Architect of Riches - Alexander Pierce. ![[Neolithic Çatalhüyük Terracotta Fertility Goddess, 6000 BCE - 5000 BCE.png]] The question asked previously was *"if we can no longer run from conflict, what must we create to live above it?"* *How does a society organize itself—socially, symbolically, and morally—once it becomes anchored to place rather than motion?* this section needs to answer this question, tying into very early transition from the more mystic symbolic traditions (animalistic, fertility, ancestors) to the deification of these concepts and introduction of rain god (baal and others) (in a proto-conceptual sense.) It should explore how (it seems) a lot of these early mythic figures were dedicated to femininity, likely due half to comfort, and half to role of memory, and that men died at rates ~40% per generation. The adoption of agriculture shifted this (slowly) and over next ~2000+ years, we start to see more mare symbols of fertility as well as worship of rain. (proto-Mesopotamian pagan mythology + early calanders? What individual freedoms or autonomies are surrendered, willingly or under duress, in exchange for the perceived benefits of larger, more complex social orders (e.g., security, resource stability)? Family structure becomes patriarchal due to this? ) Samarra culture halaf culture (irrigation, pottery, ceramics, stamps ) Due to societal need of cohesion and these shamanistic figures a sacrificial element, likely symbolic at first, ie sacrifice first wheat to the rain god etc, starts to take hold in the collective. This is likely manageable by these early institutions (shamans and the strong hunters etc), but tenuous as we will see. All it takes is one bad year, [a sudden global cooling](https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/earth-and-atmospheric-sciences/82-kiloyear-event) for crop failure and migration pressures to collapse the fragile surplus networks, and for these [early civilizations](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24976671/) to fall into violence and sacrifice—mass animal and human slaughters. There's a giant underwater river of hot water in the Atlantic that flows from the equator to the North Atlantic called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Its surface emerges near Greenland and Iceland, and when it surfaces, it heats the atmosphere. This current system explains why Europe has such a mild climate, being remarkably warmer, compared to North America at similar latitudes, allowing for agriculture and diverse ecosystems: - Cairo, Egypt is roughly at the same latitude as Austin, Texas - Rome, Italy is about as far north as New York City (yet much warmer) - Berlin is at about the same latitude as Winnipeg, Canada - Stockholm is roughly aligned with Anchorage, Alaska Around (c. 6,250 BCE,) a glacier known as the Laurentian Ice Sheet—roughly the size of a large country, covering approximately 20% of the United States and 20% of Canada—sat on what is today the Great Lakes region. However, in just ~8 years, the sheet melted—all that fresh water suddenly had to go somewhere, and it literally cut a straight line to the Atlantic Ocean—what is now known as the St. Lawrence River. ```mermaid --- config: xyChart: width: 1500 height: 600 showDataLabel: true xAxis: titlePadding: 15 labelPadding: 5 yAxis: titlePadding: 25 labelPadding: 5 themeVariables: xyChart: backgroundColor: 'transparent' titleColor: '#F4631E' xAxisLabelColor: '#F4631E' xAxisTitleColor: '#ff4500' xAxisTickColor: '#FFB200' # Black xAxisLineColor: '#FFB200' # Black yAxisLabelColor: '#F4631E' yAxisTitleColor: '#ff4500' yAxisTickColor: '#FFB200' # Black yAxisLineColor: '#FFB200' # Black plotColorPalette: '#FEBA17, #FEBA174D' --- xychart-beta title "Greenland Temperature Reconstruction (6500–6000 BCE)" x-axis "Years BCE" [6500, 6480, 6460, 6440, 6420, 6400, 6380, 6360, 6340, 6320, 6300, 6280, 6260, 6240, 6220, 6200, 6180, 6160, 6140, 6120, 6100, 6080, 6060, 6040, 6020, 6000] y-axis "Temperature Anomaly (°C)" line [2.67, 1.75, 2.07, 2.53, 2.22, 2.72, 3.28, 2.26, 1.80, 2.31, 2.45, 2.27, 2.25, 1.63, 1.18, 1.64, 1.52, 1.92, 2.04, 1.99, 1.76, 2.57, 2.31, 1.83, 1.40, 1.53] bar [2.67, 1.75, 2.07, 2.53, 2.22, 2.72, 3.28, 2.26, 1.80, 2.31, 2.45, 2.27, 2.25, 1.63, 1.18, 1.64, 1.52, 1.92, 2.04, 1.99, 1.76, 2.57, 2.31, 1.83, 1.40, 1.53] ``` *[Greenland Ice Sheet Holocene d18O, Temperature Reconstruction Data - Accessed 2025](https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/paleo-search/study/11148)* When all that cold water from the catastrophic Laurentian ice sheet melt dumped into the North Atlantic, it shut off the hot water current and froze Europe, [dropping global temperatures (1–3°C)](https://doi.org/10.1038/nature08355). Massive ice sheets formed over Scandinavia and Britain, and the populations living there had to flee south. The cooling climate **devastated ecosystems in Northern Europe**, making hunting and gathering increasingly difficult. Populations from the north **migrated southward**, particularly into the **Fertile Crescent** — modern-day Iraq and Syria. This **influx of refugees** put **tremendous pressure** on local resources and societies, many of which were still primarily **hunter-gatherer**. In response to the **surging population** and **decreasing availability of wild resources**, hunter gatherer groups in Mesopotamia and the Levant were **forced to adopt agriculture** to support denser communities. The climate crisis **accelerated the transition** — from low-dependency foraging societies to **semi-permanent farming cultures**. Within several centuries, agriculture became **dominant** in the region. - critique the **“agriculture = progress” myth**, arguing: - It led to **malnutrition** (due to monocultures) - **Tooth loss** (from stone-ground bread) - **Increased disease** (due to sedentism and density) - **Warfare and property conflict** (over land and stored food) This likely led to an even harsher and extreme societal basis. Excess men we're enslaved, or when times got though, the most uncooperative of them, again due to societal selection pressures, were killed or exiled. Before this era, the groups in the steppes would've been more hunter-gatherer than a real "force," with these communities often facilitating long distance trade between more settled communities, selecting for risk-tolerance, immediate action, and strong kin-group loyalty. However, the dramatic changes, both culturally and environmentally, seeded these traits into extremism in the sense of necessity. These Steppe societies organized around blood ties and tribal confederacies rather than urban households. Nomads organized by extended kin-clans, scattering seasonally across grasslands and yurt-based mobility were their “domestic” order. Proto-war bands. Early human communities had extremely high rates of violence, with 15-40% of males dying from warfare in each generation. Pre-state societies experienced significantly higher murder and revenge killing rates. (Reference: _War in Human Civilization_ by Azar Gat)