Monday, December 23, 2024

This Blog, DeconstructingTime, is 12 Years Old

This Blog, DeconstructingTime, 
Is 12 Years Old
by Rick Doble

LEFT: Ancient Egyptian agriculture
RIGHT: The Atomic Bomb, 1945
Who could have imagined that the technology of agriculture, such as in ancient Egypt, would lead to the splitting of the atom thousands of years later?

My blog about time enters its second decade with more than a thousand academic followers.

On December 23, 2012, twelve years ago, I posted my first article in this blog DeconstructingTime. I, Rick Doble, am the sole author.

My blog is about the human experience and the human understanding of time. 

Now "DeconstructingTime" has over 125 in-depth blog-articles (approx. equivalent to 2000 pages).

When I started this blog it was clear to me that we humans had a unique understanding of time and a unique way of measuring time that no other animal on the planet possessed. So my basic question for this blog was, "How did this happen?"

The more I researched this question, the more I realized it must have taken millions of years, involved developing technologies, and happened in stages.

As researchers and archaeologists have learned more, it became clear that our developing technology required forethought, planning, imagination, preparation, and construction of various items such as increasingly sophisticated stone tools. And that all required a sense of time.

In these last twelve years, dozens of new findings and academic papers have supported my ideas. I often quote these in my articles. Here is one recent example. 

This is a quote from an article two weeks ago about the new awareness that anthropologists are beginning to have about the development of a sense of time. The article statement that this tool-making showed "a sophisticated level of foresight and planning" also clearly indicated a sophisticated understanding of time. You cannot plan or have foresight if you don't have a basic sense of time.


---------------------------
A Major Leap Forward in Technology Took Place 900,000 Years Ago
Bytessa Koumoundouros, Sciencealert.Com, 11 December 2024.

" 'The technological behavior observed at El Barranc de la Boella demonstrates significant technological advancements and anticipatory behavior,' write Lombao and team in their paper.
"Analysis revealed that the way the tools were knapped followed a shared sequence, implying the tool crafters were using a common template to achieve consistent results. These ancient humans were also producing larger tools than those seen previously, and tailoring these tools for specific purposes.
"Together these traits indicate "a sophisticated level of foresight and planning."
---------------------------


This means that the way we humans have evolved and our developing sense of time has a lot to do with the technology we developed. So I have emphasized basket weaving because I believe it was possibly the other important technology besides stone tools in our evolution.

I believe the planning and construction of woven fiber items involved a sense of time both in the planning and the construction and may have even been a model for the geometric grid that the Babylonians devised to map the sky. This is a map we still use today.

The problem is that direct evidence of fiber items has decayed. Yet with modern dating and microscopic techniques, we may be able to construct a likely scenario.

My blog has covered the full timeline of human evolution from millions of years ago right up to the present day and then I have also made suggestions about the future.

But my blog articles cover many things such as culture, civilization, language, and academic studies along with technology.

If nothing else, I believe I have asked some good questions that had not been addressed in the past and suggested some answers that can be explored.

In the following blog post are fifteen examples of my best or most popular or most innovative articles that I have published over the years. This sampling of my blog starts with pre-human existence and continues in chronological order up to today.

BTW: I am particularly pleased with the reception I have gotten to my ideas. The blog has recorded almost 200,000 views (more than 197,000) and on the academic site Academia.edu where I repost my articles, I have almost 1200 followers (1190) and my articles are usually ranked in the top 1% - 2% of views.
Link to my academic site and reposts of these blogs:


__________________________________
August 2014
ANIMAL SENSES COMPARED TO THE HUMAN SENSE OF TIME

A unique part of our human brain can 'sense' time.
;
Eyesight is probably the strongest human sense (left) with full color stereoscopic vision and a remarkable ability for edge detection. But other animals such as eagles (middle) have 3.6 times the human visual acuity. Some insects (right) have a compound eye with a fisheye view (180 degrees) of the world that can see objects in focus both near and far at the same time.
(images from commons.wikimedia.org)


_________________________________
October 2019
PALEOLITHIC EVIDENCE FOR AN EARLY WEAVING TECHNOLOGY

Paleolithic Evidence Shows That Pre-Humans Could Have Learned Weaving From Weaverbirds (Ploceidae) 
 Weaverbirds and a finished nest.
Intricate, strong, complex nests that took days to build from natural fibers, may have been a model for early pre-humans. It showed how to make containers with a variety of fibers. Fossil evidence also shows that some pre-humans may have lived in close association with weaverbirds.



_________________________________
August 2020
THE INVENTION OF RIGHT-ANGLE CONSTRUCTION 

The Invention of Right-Angle (or Opposing) Construction in the Paleolithic Era
The discovery of right-angle construction was a technological breakthrough that applied to constructions that were both large and small, rigid and flexible, from seagoing ships to small containers.

October 2023
400K YEARS-OLD MAN-MADE RIGHT ANGLE STRUCTURE DISCOVERED

The Oldest Man-Made
Wooden Structure
Found in Zambia
& 
The Ideas of Rick Doble
who predicted the use of right-angle structures
in the Lower Paleolithic three years ago



__________________________________
September 2019
EVIDENCE FOR A BASKET WEAVING TECHNOLOGY IN THE PALEOLITHIC ERA

Woven-Fiber Technology in the Paleolithic Era
This is a photo of an entire Indigenous pre-Incan community in South America
(the Uru or Uros people)
made with woven-fiber technology: the boats, the houses, and the floating island.



__________________________________
October 2018
HOW LANGUAGE BEGAN 
AND THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING OF TIME

Dan Everett's How Language Began & Human Time Keeping

Our understanding of time is reflected in virtually all languages.

February 2017
HOW OUR CONCEPT OF TIME IS EMBEDDED & DERIVED FROM OUR LANGUAGE

Piraha tribe in the Amazon
These are members of the hunter-gatherer Piraha tribe in the Amazon today who live by the Immediacy Of Experience Principle according to Daniel Everett. 
This means their concept of time is anchored in the near-present
and quite different from the concept of time in the modern world. 


__________________________________
June 2024
MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE NEOLITHIC ERA

Incorrect Assumptions And Modern Biases Have Prevented A Full Understanding Of The Neolithic Era and 
How It Has Led Directly To the Modern World



__________________________________
July 2024
NEOLITHIC CONCEPTS OF TIME & NATURE

The Neolithic Mindset
A New Concept Of Time
A New Relation To The Natural Environment

The Neolithic concept of time changed society and it is the one that we live with today.

Diagram of the Newgrange passage and solstice light from the side.
(Irish Art History Section, Professional Development Service for Teachers, P.D.S.T., Ireland)
The extremely precise winter solstice sunrise alignment at Newgrange Ireland, shows that some Neolithic societies were quite sophisticated. While not well understood today, the precision of the Newgrange structure was perhaps more advanced than that of Rome and Greece thousands of years later. But in addition, the Newgrange monument indicated a new concept of time -- long-term annual time that could be measured accurately.



__________________________________
June 2021
MESOPOTAMIAN MISCONCEPTIONS:
Incorrect Assumptions and
Misinterpretation of Sumerian Technology

Woven-fiber technology was a key industry in the first civilizations but has not been recognized. These civilizations could not have functioned without it.

This is a fanciful, but perhaps not inaccurate, painting of a large ship made of reeds at the port of Eridu, considered to be the oldest city of the first civilization in Mesopotamia, about 5000-6000 years ago. The ship as pictured is not unrealistic and was constructed using bundled reeds, a large version of coiled basket weaving techniques.



__________________________________
May 2015
HOW THE DISCREDITED GEOCENTRIC COSMOS WAS A CRITICAL COMPONENT OF THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
OR 
How Ptolemy's Geocentric Astronomy
Helped Build the Modern World


"The Prague astronomical clock [above] was installed in 1410...and is the oldest functioning Astronomical clock in the world." Quoted from:
This clock was built more than 300 years before the Copernican sun-centric idea was accepted. The clock was based on Ptolemy's astronomy in which the Sun and planets go around the Earth. This precise clock mechanism became the basis for the machine age.




__________________________________
March 2021
REPLACE THE TERM 'BASKET WEAVING' WITH THE TERM 'WOVEN-FIBER TECHNOLOGY'

The current name 'Basket Weaving' is hindering research into the origins of basketry in the Paleolithic era



__________________________________
March 2023
A SCIENCE MANIFESTO:
Why Is There No
University Department for
The Study of Time?

Time is the most used noun in the English language and probably other languages, yet there is no academic study of time.

A SCIENCE MANIFESTO:
Why Is There No
University Department for
The Study of Time?

___________________
THE FUTURE
___________________

January 2019
CATHEDRAL THINKING 
Also, this blog provides a broad overview of my ideas.

Read the section on
"Cathedral Thinking" in this blog.

An Expanded Hypothesis About the Human-Experience-Of-Time An Expanded Hypothesis That Relates the History of the Human-Experience-Of-Time to Culture, Technology and Belief Systems in Addition to Language

Gaudi's Sagrada Família (Church of the Holy Family) in Barcelona Spain which has taken more than a century to build and will not be completed until 2026.
Gaudi's Sagrada Família (Church of the Holy Family) in Barcelona Spain 
which has taken more than a century to build and will not be completed until 2026.
The architect Antoni Gaudí knew when he planned it that it would never be completed in his lifetime. He died in 1926 and it would not be finished for another hundred years.

September 2023
CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL

A Major Reason Why We Don't Deal With Climate Change.


AFTERWORD

In a sense I am involved with my own personal Cathedral Thinking. I just turned 80 years old. I would love mainstream recognition for my thoughts and research but that is unlikely in my lifetime. Nevertheless, I feel secure that I have asked important questions and suggested plausible answers. I am certain that I have contributed to the continuing dialogue about time which explains many things and also suggests how human societies could cope with the future and climate change in particular. 

The acceptance of some of my ideas could be game changers. For example, the acceptance of a woven-fiber technology that developed as stone tools developed would be one game changer. Proving that the Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange Ireland was more precise and accurate than Greek or Roman such instruments thousands of years later would be another one. Believing the reed industry was a major and critical part of Mesopotamian technology and the rise of civilization would be a third one. But whether any of these finds acceptance in my lifetime is unlikely.






Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, August 10, 2024

Neolithic Concepts of Time & Nature

 THE NEOLITHIC MINDSET
A New Concept Of Time
A New Relation To The Natural Environment

Les Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, Labors Of The Months 
(Circa. 1412 C.E.)
For almost 12,000 years the basic agriculture invented by the Neolithic cultures was practiced throughout the West. Here is an illustration from about 600 years ago. Notice the importance of the time of the month and the Zodiac at the top.

INTRODUCTION

While Neolithic cultures have been given credit for new important technologies such as agriculture and pottery, less has been understood about their new way of looking at the world. In a way, this mindset was more important than the technologies because it unleashed new and different ways of thinking and experimenting. This new point of view completed their cultural shift from their nomadic hunter-gatherer past when they foraged for food and lived in small tribes. With these new ideas and their new technology, they had invented a full and complete culture, which I argue was the beginning of civilization.

While most discussions of the Early Neolithic center on the practice of agriculture, a sedentary lifestyle, and the growth of small villages, there was something additional starting to emerge that was less tangible. A new concept of time was developing and a new way of relating to the natural world was taking place.

Understanding time was necessary because it was important for farmers to know the best times to plant and harvest. A new way of relating to the natural world meant that they could create a manmade environment rather than having to accept the environment that nature gave them. This last way of looking at the world gave them flexibility and also a new kind of freedom. They could invent and engineer all kinds of things that would have been unthinkable when they were living, as they had done for hundreds of thousands of years, in small tribes as nomadic hunter-gatherers. 

So in addition to creating villages, and growing grain, the Neolithic cultures developed a worldview that was very different from that of their ancestors' small tribes who had lived a life of foraging in the wild. This worldview, as I will describe next, was central to the Neolithic way of life. So the Neolithic Revolution was not just about technology and sedentary living but a totally new way of working with the world. 

And because what they had accomplished was so complete and so different, I suggest that this is when civilization began. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
MY DEFINITION OF THE NEOLITHIC ERA:
The first stage of modern human behavior and modern societies which was the beginning of civilization. Large numbers of people lived in permanent houses and villages and developed agriculture instead of living in small tribes as nomadic hunter-gatherers which Homo sapiens had done for hundreds of thousands of years.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Middle to Late Neolithic  = Civilization 1.0
Egypt and Mesopotamia = Civilization 2.0

A NEW WAY OF LIVING WITH TIME

A new concept of time was one of three key elements that led to the success of the Neolithic way of life.
"Meillassoux’s work is fundamental here, for he has suggested that farmers must acquire a different sense of time from hunter gatherers (Meillassoux 1972)." 
"The attraction of Meillassoux’s (1972) work for archaeologists was the way in which it suggested that hunter gatherers and farmers might have possessed a different sense of time and place from one another."
(Bradley, Richard. The Significance Of Monuments) 

Many Stone Age researchers now agree that Neolithic people had a different sense of time from Paleolithic nomadic hunter-gatherers and this was significant. 

But I believe it was much more important than historians and researchers have realized. I think it was one of the three critical changes in the Neolithic era when it broke away from their previous nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life.

These three things were: agriculture, living in permanent houses in villages, and this new sense of time. Furthermore, I see these three things as intertwined. Agriculture, for example, required an understanding of yearly time, i.e., when to prepare the ground, when to plant, when to harvest, and how to store grain so that it lasted a long time and did not spoil.

Agriculture also required that people lived close by to tend the fields every day. And building a home required an understanding of linear time. A building needed to be imagined and designed for all four seasons, then the materials needed to be gathered, and finally the home needed to be built. This understanding of the step-by-step requirements of processes, which we might call 'process time', would be very important later on with the development of pottery, weaving, and many types of woven-reed items and structures such as boats and houses.

So these three elements were bound together each affecting the other. 

This different sense was a significant break with the Old Stone Age. It was another signal that the Neolithic era was not just a continuation of the Stone Age, but something quite different.

The immediacy of nomadic hunter-gatherers had been replaced with a conception of time that was modern. Time was not only of the moment. Time had a past, existed in the present, and would become something in the future. And this conception of time included an understanding of duration. Imagination also played a part as new homes or new pottery had to be imagined first before they were made.

-------------------
Developing A New Concept Of Time Was A Radical Break With The Past

"It must have required enormous effort
for man to overcome his natural tendency
to live like the animals in a continual present."
(Whitrow, Gerald James. Time in History)
It is very likely that the Paleolithic experience of time was quite different from out modern sense of time; it was immediate and of the moment. For example, we know from contemporary hunter-gatherers that when food is found it is eaten immediately, and saving food for times of scarcity does not happen. 

"Hunter-gatherers have little or no stored food, and no concentrated food sources, like an orchard or a herd of cows: they live off the wild plants and animals they obtain each day." (Diamond, The Worst Mistake...)

But the Neolithic concept of time changed that. Instead of time driving human behavior with its immediate demands of finding food, time could be managed. This required a sense of linear time with a past, present, future, and duration. This meant that agriculture, for example, could be planned. So time became a resource that could be controlled to some extent. 

There were two very different aspects to the Neolithic understanding of time. They needed to develop a new concept of linear time and they needed to create a way to measure time and/or accurately indicate time. 


A NEW CONCEPT OF TIME

Neolithic people needed a new concept of time. The immediate time of mobile hunter-gatherers was gone and was replaced with a yearly understanding of the seasons and how agriculture worked within the seasonal cycle. Once understood this allowed long-term planning within the cycle of a year. 

They also needed a sense of linear time when it came to working with processes. Processes need to be done in a linear fashion and there needs to be a clear idea of the steps involved in the process and the order of those steps. Agriculture was a process but so were many other Neolithic technologies. For example, pottery required many steps as did making linen cloth from flax.

So this sense of time was not just related to day-by-day time or yearly agricultural time; it included an understanding of linear time which allowed the creation, the organization, the planning, and the modification of processes such as making pottery or weaving linen. This planning could be applied to a variety of things which gave humans even more control.

This idea of the Neolithic era developing a different sense of time has been around for at least thirty years but it has not played a major role in our understanding of their culture. I would like to bring it front and center and make it one of the key factors that led to the development of Neolithic villages and their success.

-------------------
The Great Empires Of Mesopotamia And Egypt Continued This Sense Of Time And Developed It Further

When this sense of time was passed down to the great civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, it was developed much further so that cities, for example, could coordinate and organize activities. This allowed urban areas to run smoothly. Mesopotamian cities and ancient Egypt civilizations could not have functioned without this new sense of time. Once time was conceived in this manner, it allowed sophisticated planning, coordination, and the all-important import of food and supplies, in a regular predictable manner, into the cities.

 A fanciful depiction of early civilized life in the Assyrian city of Nimrud ca. 1350 BCE.
From Myths and Legends of Babylonia & Assyria by Lewis Spence, 1910.

This is another example of a Neolithic innovation that was both essential and was not only continued by the great civilizations but developed and refined by them to much a higher degree. Eventually in Babylon, the divisions of time into hours, minutes, and seconds were invented and were passed on to us today.

-------------------
Because Our Sense Of Time Is Similar To The Neolithic Sense Of Time, 
It Is Hard To Understand How Radical This Change Was

We have all grown up with the idea that time has a past, present, future, and duration. We are taught this from the time we are born and again when we are in school. It is something we assume. 

But it is very likely that our early ancestors' experience of time was quite different; it was more immediate and more of the moment like the animals we had evolved from. For example, there is a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazon, the Piraha, that thinks and speaks of time only in terms of a couple of days.

A Piraha community. The Pirahas are hunter-gatherers who live in the Amazon.

See my article about language and time.

The idea of a long-term sense of time was another innovation of the Neolithic cultures. This sense of time was essential for agriculture. However, this major Neolithic innovation has gone largely unrecognized.


AN ACCURATE WAY OF INDICATING TIME

In addition to a new understanding of time, Neolithic people needed an accurate way to gauge seasonal time, since planting and harvesting depended on that. While we are still learning about their methods, we can say for certain that there were a number of structures that could indicate with some accuracy the time of the winter solstice. 

It has been confirmed by scientists that the Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland could indicate the time around the day of the winter solstice within a day or two. The winter solstice is very difficult to ascertain and now, scholars agree, that Newgrange was thousands of years ahead of its time. 


TOP: Diagram of Newgrange passage and solstice light from the side.
BOTTOM: Overhead diagram of Newgrange passage and solstice light.
(Irish Art History Section)




"Goseck circle, Germany 4900 - 4700 BC." 
(Antonsen, Kenny & Jimmy. Old Europe)

Many of the newly discovered 'circular enclosures' (above) in Northern Europe could also indicate the time around the winter solstice but probably with less accuracy than Newgrange.


A yearly Neolithic solar clock on the island of Malta.
"Schematic Angles in the Mnajdra Solar Temple in Malta."


On the island of Malta, a kind of yearly sun clock indicated the time of year.
“In the case of Neolithic astronomy, we are dealing not with the prehistory of science, but with science in prehistory.”
(McClellan, James E. III, Dorn, Harold. Science and Technology in World History)

-------------------
Evidence

While we do not have written records of their ideas and methods of timekeeping, we do have another kind of evidence. We have many monuments that were designed to indicate time and also evidence of extended Neolithic processes that would have required an understanding of time to implement. 


ANOTHER RADICAL NEOLITHIC IDEA:
A New Sense Of The Human Place In The World

Another important change in thought and attitude was a shift in the human relation to nature, an attitude that continues to this day.

A crucial drama of humanity was being played out in Neolithic villages. A new way of living was taking place along with an advancing technology, a new concept of time, and a new attitude toward the world. 

Human creatures were separating themselves from nature where they had lived for millions of years, and were creating their own space with its own rules. They were engineering their environment rather than accepting what nature offered -- unlike the rest of the animals. So it was not only a new way to live but a separation from their past and the natural world.

There is clear and unambiguous evidence that this way of thinking had occurred. 
In Genesis of the Judeo-Christian Old Testament, in the creation story the Lord says:
26 Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground."
27 God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them, saying: "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth."
I believe the above passage is indicative of the Neolithic way of thinking. Neolithic people had come to believe they were above the animals and were separate from nature. So the Neolithic way of life was, in a sense, rejecting millions of years of survival based on nomadic hunting-and-gathering in the natural world, in favor of a totally new way of life that they invented.

The Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks
While people believed they were superior to the animals,
they also wanted to live in harmony with the animal kingdom.

The above passage from Genesis is not the only evidence we have for these ideas. In Mesopotamia, the Warka Vase depicted the same idea in a hierarchy that placed humans near the top and above the animals and plants.

The Warka Vase
LEFT: Full photo of the vase
RIGHT: Detailed photo of each level.
"Warka vase, a slim alabaster vessel carved [with these images]...from bottom to top with: water, date palms, barley, and wheat, alternating rams and ewes, and men carrying baskets of foodstuffs to the goddess Inanna accepting the offerings."
The votive Vase of Warka, from Warka (ancient Uruk), Iraq. Jemdet Nasr period, 3000-2900 BCE. The Iraq Museum, Baghdad. 

The vase offers a complete view of the Sumerian view of the world. On the bottom are water and plants, next up are animals, then people, and finally the gods. Not unlike the story of Genesis, it placed humans above the animals but below the gods. 

In both narratives, it was clear that humans were superior to the animals and to nature.

Although the story of Genesis is probably older, it was not written down until about 1400 BCE. However, when Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, Adam was forced to farm which suggests a Neolithic time period for the story originally.
Two translations of this passage:
New Living Translation (NLT) So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. 
The King James Version (KJV) Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.
Adam tilling the ground after his expulsion from Eden.
Detail from "The Story of Adam and Eve." Boucicaut Master (French, active about 1390 - 1430). Google Art Project.

-------------------
Examples of Humans Taking Control

We cannot know if this concept was articulated in the Neolithic era or only put into words and images later. But in any case, the Neolithic way of life did exhibit a definite break from the nomadic hunter-gatherer past when they had lived with nature. For example, the Neolithic domestication of plants and animals showed clearly that humans could and would take control of some plants and animals for their needs.



"The majority of the crops and vegetables of today were domesticated
from their wild progenitors within the past 12,000 years."
(Alseekh, Saleh et al. Domestication of Crop Metabolomes)

Smart Neolithic farmers "domesticated" their plants so that over time the plants produced much greater yields. Also, when possible, they chose aberrant strains of grains that kept their seeds on the stem rather than the normal natural way in which seeds fell off the stem and were blown with the wind. This made harvesting and processing grains much easier.

These last two Neolithic techniques show that Neolithic people had a different mindset than earlier nomadic hunter-gatherers. Neolithic farmers felt that they could 'engineer' nature with their skills, rather than accepting only what nature offered, as they had done when they lived in the wild. This is a clear example of the new way that Neolithic people were thinking.
"Domestication is the process by which farmers select for desirable traits by breeding successive generations of a plant or animal. Over time, a domestic species becomes different from its wild relative.
"Neolithic farmers selected for crops that harvested easily. Wild wheat, for instance, falls to the ground and shatters when it is ripe. Early humans bred for wheat that stayed on the stem for easier harvesting."
-------------------
The Neolithic Era Took Command

While animals had to adapt to the environment as they found it, humans were now attempting to create their own environment that was secure and comfortable.

For the first time in the history of hominins, humans engineered a full environment that was friendly to them. Villages, houses, roads, and fields along with the daily routine of tending the crops and making bread meant that these Neolithic humans had created a space that they could manage. Instead of hunting and gathering, these societies did not have to survive based on what they could forage. 

This way of looking at the world continues to this day in our air-conditioned homes with central heat, our all-weather roads, our all-weather automobiles, and a freezer full of food. 

But don't take my word for it. Here is a summary from a comprehensive study of the Neolithic.
"The Neolithic Revolution was ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth."
(Weisdorf, Jacob L. From Foraging To Farming: Explaining The Neolithic Revolution.)
How and why it happened is still not clear. It is part of a heated ongoing debate. Yet we can be certain of one thing: it did happen and we are who we are and live as we do because it did happen.


DIFFERENT KINDS OF TIME
Long-Term Linear Time, Process Time, And Cyclical Time

Neolithic time marked the beginning of our modern concept of time, of long-term linear time, and time that is conceptualized as something that can be controlled. Time could now be planned or managed or used as a resource. Time did not just flow uncontrollably, it could be harnessed and used to human advantage. See my full article about this.

It is important to understand historically how this way of thinking took hold because these ideas have had serious consequences. For example, our ability to engineer our modern environment has led to the climate change crisis.   

It is my view that these Neolithic cultures saw 'big time' or cosmological time as cyclical. Sunrise to sunset, the phases of the moon, winter, spring, summer, fall, birth, and death were all cyclical. But within those cycles, humans could work with long-term linear time.

It is also my opinion that the spiral symbol(s) that appeared throughout the Neolithic era were an expression of that sense of cosmological time.

The famous Tri-Spiral in the chamber at Newgrange.

TOP: The large stone at the entrance to Newgrange
BOTTOM: A drawing of the large stone showing the spiral engravings.
(Coffey, George. Drawings of Newgrange)

For Neolithic people, there would have been many examples of long-term linear time within cyclical time. The seasons occurred in the same order every year. In early spring seeds were planted which then sprouted and grew through the summer and then were harvested in the fall. Agriculture was a process that had to be done in sequence. This was both a linear progression and also a cycle that repeated itself year after year. Preparing the soil, planting, and harvesting had to be done in the correct order and at the right times to ensure a bountiful harvest.

Once Neolithic cultures grasped how this linear time functioned within cyclical time, it opened the door to an understanding of processes in general. 

The spiral was a common symbol used throughout the Neolithic. This pottery is from Romania.
"Ceramics. 5th millennium BC. Cucuteni, (Romania). Museum of Prehistory and Early History, Berlin."


-------------------
Process Time

It appears that Neolithic people had mastered an understanding of processes, what I have called 'process time'. This is linear time that is an integral part of a process.

We know from the continual development of stone tools for millions of years that early hominins could learn, teach and develop processes that became increasingly more complicated. Neolithic people added to that understanding and developed a sophisticated sense of 'process time' which they used to develop and refine several technologies such as pottery and weaving.

Google Word Definition
Process:
-- a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end --

This short definition says it well. A process requires a series of actions under certain conditions in a sequence that must be learned and then executed. And at the same time, the practitioner must have a clear idea of the end result. This, among other things, requires a sense of time and procedure. It also requires planning. In addition, knowledge of a process must be taught to the next generation if the use of the process is to continue.


POTTERY

A good example of this is pottery. It took a long time to develop the right process for making pottery, probably several thousand years, but they eventually figured it out.

LEFT: Cucuteni (a Neolithic Culture) kiln reconstruction 
Art Museum, Piatra Neamt, Romania. The invention of the kiln was as important as the invention of pottery. It allowed high sustained temperatures which later would be modified for the smelting of metals.
RIGHT: A Neolithic (Ubaid) pottery jar in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Dated to about 4500-4000 BCE, it is from Southern Iraq in the Late Ubaid period. 

"Pottery art is a complex and time-consuming process that presupposes a knowledge of all its stages: choice of suitable clay, removal of impurities (manually or by sieving) and clay preparation...and firing at a temperature up to 850-900 Celsius (1562-1652 Fahrenheit)"
(Hellenic Foundation, Neolithic Pottery)

Based on detailed information from the visual-arts-cork.com pottery timeline, virtually all pottery/ceramics fundamentals had been invented in the Neolithic, including tourneys/tournettes which were early potter's wheels (4700 BCE). 
(Visual-Arts-Cork, Pottery Timeline)

Pottery from the Neolithic Ubaid period in the British Museum
Unlike other types of plastic art, pottery was invented then lost, then reinvented then lost again, before finally becoming established around the world during the Neolithic period (c.8000-2000 BCE).
Visual-Arts-Cork. "Pottery Timeline (c.26,000 BCE - 1900)." Encyclopedia Of Art. 
The invention of pottery kilns and their ability to reach high sustained temperatures that had been achieved in the Neolithic era became the foundation for metallurgy which would not have been possible without it. So Neolithic skills also created a critical part of the later metal technology of copper, bronze, and iron over the next several thousand years.

-------------------
More About Process Time

There were many other items and skills that required 'process time' thinking such as making boats out of reeds, for example, or cloth from flax, or houses from reeds, or a wide variety of baskets.

The remarkable quality and sophistication of many late Neolithic technologies means that they had a full understanding of process time.


CONCLUSION
The Domestication of Time

Developing a sense of linear time was critical for the control that Neolithic societies needed. Illusive time was now something that could be managed to some degree. Agriculture required this sense of time on a yearly and monthly basis. And understanding time was also critical to refining the various processes that they worked with, such as pottery. 

They had taken control not only by engineering a new manmade environment but by 'domesticating' time itself.

By the middle of the Neolithic era, the different societies had mastered the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, and shelter. In addition, they had a worldview that they were comfortable with and a new sense of their place and time on this Earth.

I believe this was the start of civilization.


___________________________________
AFTERWORD


WEAVING, TEXTILES AND CLOTHING


Linum usitatissimum (Flax)
One of the founder plants, flax was/is used for fiber, food, fodder, and oil. It was used to make linen, linseed oil, and a variety of other products.

-------------------
Weaving Fabric
The famous Anni Albers of the Bauhaus School had this to say.
"During the 4,500 years or, in some estimates, even 8,000 years that we believe mankind has been weaving, the process itself has been unaffected by the various devices that contributed to greater speed of execution. We still deal in weaving, as at the time of its beginning, with a rigid set of parallel threads in tension and a mobile one that transverses it at right-angles."
This basic insight about right-angles has never been overshadowed. Anni Albers went on to say, "And weaving, even the most elaborate, can be done, given time, with a minimum of equipment...Fabrics of great accuracy have been executed without much mechanical aid."
(Albers, On Weaving)

LEFT: Reconstruction of a Neolithic loom around the time that Otzi, the Neolithic frozen 'ice man' natural mummy, was alive (ca. 3300 BCE), 
RIGHT: Clothing woven by this loom, archeoParc in Schnals, South Tyrol, Italy.
(archeoParc Val Senales - Ötzi Museum) 

"The warp-weighted loom uses a system of holding the warp threads parallel under tension by tying them in small bunches to weights made of stone, pottery or metal. From the beginning of Western history until the Middle Ages, the main weaving tool was this type of loom. LOOM WEIGHTS HAVE BEEN FOUND IN CATALHOYUK, AN ANCIENT CITY IN ANATOLIA THAT DATES TO 7000 BCE, [ED: My emphasis] and use of the warp-weighted loom persists to the present day in part of Norway. Although its particular form has varied through the ages and by locality, its essential parts remained the same.
The loom consists of two vertical uprights, a horizontal warp beam, a shed rod, a heddle rod, and weights. The warp threads are tied to the horizontal beam at the top and hang down vertically towards the ground. The weights, in this case, made of clay, are then attached to the ends of the warp threads, which are then grouped together and tied so that the spun threads don't untwist.
The warp-weighted loom greatly increased weaving efficiency and allowed weavers to create huge, magnificent works and tapestries."
(Smith College, Museum of Ancient Inventions)

 

 -------------------
Making Linen

Filax had to be carefully planted and harvested, next, there were complicated procedures to extract fiber from the flax plant, then the fiber had to be spun into thread and finally woven on a Neolithic loom. The last step was to cut and sew the cloth to make a garment.
5,000 Years Of Making Linen: The History Of Neolithic Flax Processing
"Archaeobotanists Ursula Maier and Helmut Schlichtherle reported evidence of the technological development of making cloth from the flax plant (called linen). [ED: during the Neolithic]
"Making cloth from flax is not a straightforward process.
"Flax is a bast fiber plant--meaning the fiber is collected from the inner bark of the plant--which must undergo a complex set of processes to separate the fiber from the woodier outer parts.
"They report that evidence for Alpine lake house [Neolithic] flax fiber production includes tools (spindles, spindle whorls, hatchets), finished products (nets, textiles, fabrics, even shoes, and hats)...They discovered, amazingly enough, that flax production techniques at these ancient sites were not dissimilar from that used everywhere in the world through the early 20th century."
(Hirst, 5,000 Years of Making Linen)
Click on the next link to see detailed descriptions of the 12 steps that are typically involved in the process of making linen from flax. 


THE NEOLITHIC LEGACY 
TO THE FIRST GREAT CIVILIZATIONS

I have made the point that the great civilizations could not have emerged without the foundation of advanced Neolithic technology. For this reason I believe that civilization started in the Middle Neolithic. Here are two examples of basic Neolithic technologies that were crucial for the rise of the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. 

While often overlooked, both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians depended on huge numbers of woven-fiber sacks for holding and transporting grain. Weaving was perfected in the Neolithic era and made the manufacture of sacks available.


LEFT: Picture from the Sumerian Standard of Ur.
of a person carrying a sack, circa 2600 BCE.
RIGHT: Picture of an Egyptian carrying a sack
from Tombe d'Oumsou, circa 1450 BCE.
Ancient Egyptian model of a granary with scribes.
This model was found in a tomb and shows men delivering grain in woven sacks which is being recorded by scribes.



Building a temple with the best quality fired bricks. The Neolithic domesticated donkeys and the Neolithic double-sided pannier baskets were essential for the construction of buildings in Mesopotamia.

_________________________________
FOOTNOTES

Albers, Anni. On Weaving: New Expanded Edition. Princeton University Press, Oct 24, 2017, page 4.

Alseekh, Saleh et al. Domestication of Crop Metabolomes: Desired and Unintended Consequences. Trends in Plant Science, Volume 26, Issue 6, 2021, Pages 650-661, ISSN 1360-1385.

Antonsen, Kenny & Jimmy. Old Europe - First Civilization 7000-3000 BC. In Danish.

archeoParc Val Senales - Ötzi Museum
Museum based on the Neolithic frozen natural mummy Ötzi, also called The Iceman, who lived between 3350 and 3105 BC in Europe.

Bradley, Richard. The Significance Of Monuments: On the shaping of human experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe. Routledge, 1998.

Coffey, George. Drawings of Newgrange from the late 1800s. Published in: The Dolmens of Ireland,, by William Copeland Borlase. Published by the University of Michigan Library (January 1, 1897).

Diamond, Jared, UCLA School of Medicine. "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" Discover Magazine, May 1987, pp. 64—66.

Hirst, K. Kris. "5,000 Years of Making Linen: The History of Neolithic Flax Processing." Thoughtco.com, May 20, 2019. https://www.thoughtco.com/making-linen-history-neolithic-flax-processing-171347

Irish Art History Section, Professional Development Service for Teachers, P.D.S.T., Ireland.

McClellan, James E. III, Dorn, Harold. Science and Technology in World History: An Introduction, Edition 2.
Johns Hopkins University Press; 2nd edition (April 14, 2006).

Smith College, Museum of Ancient Inventions.
The Warp-Weighted Loom, Worldwide, 7000 BCE
by Kristy Beauchesne, Sun Eoh and Kate McClosky.
Museum of Ancient Inventions
The Virtual Museum of Ancient Inventions 
Smith College, History of Science

Visual-Arts-Cork. "Pottery Timeline (c.26,000 BCE - 1900)." Encyclopedia Of Art. http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/pottery-timeline.htm

Weisdorf, Jacob L. (September 2005). "From Foraging To Farming: Explaining The Neolithic Revolution" (PDF). Journal of Economic Surveys. 19 (4): 561–586. doi:10.1111/j.0950-0804.2005.00259.x. S2CID 42777045. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 July 2018. Retrieved 12 June 2023.

Whitrow, Gerald James. Time in History: Views of Time from Prehistory to the Present Day. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press. 1988, page 22.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)