{The Neolithic Period}[8th November 1990]

[Redbook8:96-97][19901108:1030]{The Neolithic Period}[8th November 1990]

19901108.1030

‘The Neolithic period is the earliest phase of agricultural society, before cities and before the widespread use of metal for tools and weapons. After the end of the last Ice Age some 10,000 years ago,* new climatic conditions brought woodland once again into Europe and the tribes of reindeer-hunters who had created the remarkable cave art of France and spain (see “Paleolithic Art”) were no longer able to exist in their accustomed way. Small groups of hunters remained in the woodlands or on the coasts, but after 5000bce they were increasingly absorbed or displaced by the colonizing activity of farmers, spreading with their crops and cultivated grains from a homeland in the Near East, and settling in villages on the more fertile soils. Cutting down the forests for fields and pastures, these people used the new and effective polished-stone axe – hence the archelogists’ terms “Neolithic”, or New Stone Age. This period began c8000BC[E] in Iran,** but only c4000BC[E]*** in the British Isles. It lasted down to 3500BC[E]*** in the Near East, and nearer 2000BC[E]# in Europe.

#*

*c8192bce

[But cf [Redbook8:95][19901107:1007k]{The History of Art[:]}{The Paleolithic Period [continued (12)]}{The 65,536 year question [continued]}[7th November 1990], & fn=#]

**	c8192bce
***		c4096bce
****	c4096bce?ff	|
	C4096 year cycle (+ hang over?)	| ↓
#		c2048bce
		c2048 year cycle (if Europe includes British Isles)

BUT see [[Redbook8:104-105][19901108:1417]{Travelling Cycles}[8th November 1990],] 104-5

#*Encycl[opaedia of] Vis[ual] Art, p12,

‘Neolithic Art’, A. Sherratt

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