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The Mesolithic saw the retreating Ice Age. As such the environment was going through huge changes, which stimulated new types of adaptive growth dependent upon geography. The residents of the forests developed more sophisticated ways of hunting and gathering. The inhabitants of the grassy plains began domesticating animals for herding in order to have a more constant food source in the face of shrinking forests. A third group of people, the proto farmer began rudimentary farming on arable land that was eventually going to allow the development of the farming culture. Hence the Mesolithic saw the development of different cultural styles based upon geographical differentiation.
From their origination about 2.5 million years ago, people were just like any other predatory animal, hunting, fishing or gathering their food. Then from about 11,000 to 8000 BC some of these early people began gathering wild grains, which they stored in caves. Between 8300 and 6500 BC the residents of the Near East began growing crops by throwing out seeds and waiting for them to grow. These were the proto-farmers of the Mesolithic Period. Dogs had already been tamed to assist in the hunting by the Hunter Gatherer societies. This would be an advanced Hunter society. About 9000 BC there is evidence of sheep being domesticated in the Near East. During this period goats and cattle were also domesticated. There is no evidence of nomadic cultural development but their domestication of the wild herds of the steppes could have easily preceded the domestication of animals by the farming communities and certainly was going on during the Mesolithic. These were the beginnings of the pastoral cultures.
The founding of the first farming cultures based upon tilling the soil signaled the end of the Mesolithic. About 6500 BC in the Near East and Europe the land was tilled and harvested. Rice cultivation began separately in Southeast Asia between 6800-4000 BC. (GrolierÕs Multimedia 1997 Agriculture, history of.) While the end of the Mesolithic did not mean the end of the Pastoral or Hunting cultures, it did mean the establishment of a brand new type of culture that was more settled than any that had gone on before.
In setting a context for the Middle Stone Age, the Mesolithic, let us look back again to a difference between man and the other predators. While the other predators succeeded through speed, strength, and size, Early Stone Age humans succeeded by using the exterior elements of his environment, by modifying them to serve their purposes, by cultivating the stone and wood that they found around. Hence humans first tamed the materials of nature.
A second step was to tame the animals of nature. This step was beyond the structural capabilities of the earlier subspecies of human, but seems to be a universal of the modern human. All over the world, in many varied cultures, homo sapiens sapiens has tamed and bred animals in many different ways. To look for a diffusion pattern is to be somewhat ethnocentric.
Although the Mesolithic was a time of intermediate progress between the Hunter Gatherer and the Farmer lithic technology, (this is its identifiable archaeology) it also represents the age when animals were first domesticated. Because of the universality of domestication and the lack of traceable evidence, we can only suggest that different cultures domesticated animals in their own unique way without the need for diffusion. Some worked with wandering herds, while others raised wild animals from birth. Some animals were raised as a food source, while others were domesticated to help with the work. Basically the issue of who domesticated animals first is not an appropriate question in this context.
Each of these different cultural types tamed animals during the Mesolithic and began differentiation. While we traditionally characterize the Paleolithic by the Hunter-gatherer society, and the Neolithic by the settled Farmer societies, in this paper we will characterize the Mesolithic by the Herder societies, mainly because it was a major cultural type without a Stone Age. In this context each of these terms are used more as mnemonic devices than as descriptive terms. The taming of dogs for the Hunter cultures only extended their technology; the taming of animals for farming was only a precursor to the tilled farming of the Neolithic; the taming of the herds for the shepherds, however, established the pastoral culture.
For archaeologists the Mesolithic refers to the time period that contained the middle Stone Age technology. Wisely they only talk about what they can see. But all they can see are stone tools. Hence the Mesolithic is characterized by technologies that are transitional technologies between the Hunter Gatherer and the Farmer cultures. Archaeology is plagued by the fact that all conclusions are based upon what is found thousands of years after the fact. What is found is based upon what survives. The Paleolithic is characterized by flint. While the settled agri-cultures of the Neolithic left many durable remains in their settled communities, painted pottery, early structures, and the like, the early pastoralists of the Mesolithic pre-agricultural times left no pottery or settlements, hence their culture is very hard to trace.
Although these pastoral cultures have had a huge impact on the development of civilization, their beginnings are only reflected by their impact on the more settled agri-cultures.
ÒIt is very easy when depending on archaeological evidence to over-stress the role of settled and urban peoples and under-estimate that of peoples less productive of material debris and bric-ˆ-brac. Yet it is vital to remember that, just as the Fertile Crescent was backed and on the east flanked by mountains, so it enclosed in its wide arc a vast zone of arid land passing on the south into desert. Although this was incapable of supporting settled communities it was well adapted to nomadic or semi-nomadic life with a strong bias to pastoral economy. Yet it remained marginal over large areas even for pastoralists. When pressure on grazing exerted by variations in rainfall weighed too heavily the nomads had an obvious way out of their difficulties in pillaging, infiltrating or even dominating their richer neighbors settled on productive ground. Since the nomads were fitted by selection to withstand hardship and adapted by their economy to be mobile, it is no surprise that they were able to play a role in history disproportionate to their numbers or wealth. In the archaeological record they made themselves felt indirectly through dislocating the ordered progress of more settled societies, whether as hill-men from the Zagros or as nomads from the Syrian desert moving east into the Euphrates basin or west and south into the Nile Valley.Ó (Clark, p 113-4)
It is likely that the early inhabitants of the grassland steppes of Central Asia first domesticated the wandering herds of sheep that had evolved there. It is a fact that Hunter cultures would follow herds of animals around in order to have constant supply of food. It is but a small step to lead these animals rather than following them. It is suspected that the most aggressive males would be culled from the flock; they would not be allowed to breed. Thus, over the generations, the flock would become less and less aggressive. This step towards domestication would be undocumented because there are no pens to contain them or barns to contain their food. This is just one way in which these herding communities might have domesticated animals.
The traditional explanation is that farmers domesticated animals and then the herder cultures split off for some reason. While acknowledging the possibility, we prefer the theory of separate geographical differentiation.
These herding societies were based in the Great Arid Zone of Eurasiafrica, which included Central Asia and Northern Africa. By necessity they were nomadic, always searching for new pastures for their herds. Indeed the word nomad is derived from the Greek Ôto pastureÕ. (GrolierÕs Multimedia 1997: Nomads) These pastoralists who began in Mesolithic times have controlled the Great Arid Band between Africa and Siberia for thousands of years. The land there is unsuitable to farming. Pastoralism was a cultural adaptation specific to the grassland steppes of Central Asia. Pastoralism is not a universal cultural response.