Location of As¸ıklı Höyük on the Melendiz River in western Cappadocia (Central Anatolia), Turkey. Credit: (c) PNAS
Posted on 04/30/2014 5:04:50 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A team of researchers with members from several countries has found evidence of the birth of pre-ceramic Neolithic populations in a region of what is now Turkey. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes how excavations of various levels at Aşıklı Höyük, reveal the history of the people that lived there...
Aşıklı Höyük is the earliest known preceramic Neolithic mound site in Central Anatolia. The oldest Levels, 4 and 5, spanning 8,200 to approximately 9,000 cal B.C., associate with round-house architecture and arguably represent the birth of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the region. Results from upper Level 4, reported here, indicate a broad meat diet that consisted of diverse wild ungulate and small animal species. The meat diet shifted gradually over just a few centuries to an exceptional emphasis on caprines (mainly sheep). Age-sex distributions of the caprines in upper Level 4 indicate selective manipulation by humans by or before 8,200 cal B.C. Primary dung accumulations between the structures demonstrate that ruminants were held captive inside the settlement at this time. Taken together, the zooarchaeological and geoarchaeological evidence demonstrate an emergent process of caprine management that was highly experimental in nature and oriented to quick returns. Stabling was one of the early mechanisms of caprine population isolation, a precondition to domestication.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Location of As¸ıklı Höyük on the Melendiz River in western Cappadocia (Central Anatolia), Turkey. Credit: (c) PNAS
Is that where that ice cream comes from?
LOL!
I would prefer that they, meaning the researchers, not jump to conclusions without COMPLETE analysis.
Eight-thousand years ago was when the Persian Gulf flooded with sea-water, and many people were migrating (because of glaciers melting) and seas everywhere rising with the resultant floods inundating the coastlines. Suvivors would follow river valleys up and away from the sea, and the new settlements would be radically different from what the refugees would have known previously.
Asikli Hoyuk is interesting, but it should be viewed in a larger context and NOT assumed to be a place were animal husbandry started. Instead, it just might be a place where refugees from an obliterated civilization, or many civilizations, finally found a place to settle.
I don’t know about the ice cream, but the Melendiz mountains must be where Senator Melendez of N.J. comes from.
No, I think it where the Melendiz brothers were from—the ones that killed their parents.
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