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A NEW WAY OF LIFE: FARMERS CATTLE-RAISERS IN THE NEOLITHIC
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TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS
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In this new period, prehistoric societies experienced an important transformation in their way of life. The adoption of agriculature and animal domestication as an estrategy to obtain food meant an important economic change and also the introduction of technological innovations, among which ceramics and polished stone tools can be highlighted.
Societies became sedentaries and lived near their agriculture lands, increasing in this way their social structures complexity. They also adopted new religious ideas. So, the way that finally led to urban socities was started.
The area in which the first crops were developed is the one that nowadays comprises Israel, Palestina, Jordania, Siria, East Turkey and Irak; which due to their shape similar to half a moon are usually called the waxing fertile.
A long process that started 12.000 years ago and finished 8.000 years ago was necessary in order to implement in the waxing fertile everything considered to be the own neolithic way of life. Nearly 1.000 years after, the new culture had spread throughout the whole Mediterranean and Central Europe. How did this spreading process take place? It seems that massive movements of population did not happen, but we can really speak about influences and contacts and a certain mobility of human groups and, therefore, of the existance of a navigation of a certain importance.
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 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS:
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LAND AGRICULTURE
This process started in Near East, the place where barley and wheat grew naturally in a wild state. Establishing a date for the begining of this process is difficult, but it can be said that 12.000 years ago there is a initial phase in which agriculture developed very slowly until 8.000 years ago. In this process, humankind initially became aware of vegetative processes, in order to go afterwards to sporadic and experimental agriculture. Bit by bit seeds were selected, which provoked changes in species.
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ANIMAL DOMESTICATION
It is in Near East where the first evidences of animal domestication have been found. Two periods can be distinguished: the first one, characterized by the capture and taming of animals, fundamentally oriented to meat use. And, the second one, in which humans started to carry out breeding. This caused a “symbiosis” between human groups and some animal species.
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CERAMICS
The use of ceramic becomes widespread in Near East 8.000 years ago, from the discovery of clay plastic qualities, which allow its modelling in different ways.
The creation of ceramic containers allowed new possibilities for food storage, transportation and preparation.
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STONE POLISHING
In the Neolithic, together with tools obtained from silex plates, some new tools appear, such as axes and adzes obtained by the polishing of some very hard stones, such as diorite, basalt or porphyry. These new tools were used in agricultural works and in woods felling to obtain new agriculture land.
Also made of polished stone are punches and chisels to work on wood and some ornament objects such as pendants, necklace beads and bracelets.
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ART AND RELIGION
In the Neolithic a change in artistic expression takes place that reflects a new religious mentality in regard to the believes system of the previous hunting and harvesting societies of the Paleolithic.
In ceramic vases ornamentation, in some bony objects and in cave paintings, anthropomophic figures and symbolic motives related to human believings appear next to hunting scenes and fightings of groups of hunters, among other representations.
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