The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture

by Jacques Cauvin , Translated by Trevor Watkins

• ISBN13: 9780521651356
• ISBN10: 0521651352
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-10-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This innovative study analyzes the great cultural and economic changes occurring in the Near East between 10,000 and 7,000 BC as Palaeolithic societies of hunter-gatherers gave way to village communities of Neolithic food-producers. Challenging the orthodox, materialist interpretations, and drawing on French theories of mentalities, Jacques Cauvin argues that the Neolithic revolution must be understood as an intellectual transformation, revealing itself above all in symbolic activities. He describes the emergence of the first agricultural villages, pastoralism and nomadism, and the diffusion of Neolithic ideas and practice to the region's periphery.

Table of Contents

List of plates	vii
List of figures	viii
Translator's note	xi
Foreword to the second French edition	xiii
Foreword to the English edition	xiv
Preface	xv
Chronological table	xvii
Introduction	1	(8)
Part I THE ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE	9	(64)
Natural environment and human cultures on the eve of the Neolithic	11	(4)
The first pre-agricultural villages: the Natufian	15	(7)
The Revolution in Symbols and the origins of Neolithic religion	22	(12)
The first farmers: the socio-cultural context	34	(17)
The first farmers: strategies of subsistence	51	(11)
Agriculture, population, society: an assessment	62	(5)
The Neolithic Revolution: a transformation of the mind	67	(6)
Part II THE BEGINNINGS OF NEOLITHIC DIFFUSION	73	(62)
A geographical and chronological framework for the first stages of diffusion	75	(3)
The birth of a culture in the northern Levant and the neolithisation of Anatolia	78	(18)
Diffusion into the central and southern Levant	96	(9)
The evidence of symbolism in the southern Levant	105	(16)
The dynamics of a dominant culture	121	(14)
Part III THE GREAT EXODUS	135	(86)
The problem of diffusion in the Neolithic	137	(6)
The completion of the neolithic process in the `Levantine nucleus'	143	(11)
The arrival of farmers on the Mediterranean littoral and in Cyprus	154	(17)
The sedentary peoples push east: the eastern Jezirah and the Syrian desert	171	(18)
Pastoral nomadism	189	(10)
Hypotheses for the spread of the Neolithic	199	(22)
Conclusion	207	(5)
Postcript	212	(9)
Notes	221	(18)
Bibliography	239	(16)
Index	255