Could a Civilization exist before the neolithic era

[Jürgen]

To paraphrase Sir Pterry, history defines a civilised culture as one which can support historians.

Yes but there's some logic in us defining civilisations as cultures, which have left behind evidence of their existence. As example Denmark we have been a agricultural culture for 6000 years, but the first name we find are around 1500 years old, the first real history (written by our enemies) begins aroun 1200 years ago, we really only begin to have our own history (rather than myths which likely go back to late periode of the West Roman Empire[1]) around 1100 years ago. While we can see they had complex societies for all those 4500 years, we have very little idea how they thought, what their belief was etc. It the same a lot of other non-literate people suffer under, we can only guess who they were.

[1]As example the Uffe (Offa) Hin Spage sage are from Anglish history before their migration to Britain, and as the Angles who stayed in Denmark was assimilated into Danes, that myth was kept alive.

 

[The Professor]

Even in a unstable climate mountains get rain and in the winter snow, the snow melts in the spring and flow down the mountain bringing nutrients with it. There's years where the mountain get less rain, but unless the sun stop shining and the wind stop blowing, mountain ranges like the Anatolian and Iranian will get water, and unless winter and summer becomes random they will melt at the same time of the year. The problem with agriculture the Ice Age was that a lot more of the potential agricultural land was marginal, which made it a easy victim of climatic variation. At the same time a early agricultural packet was much less developed than a modern one, making it far less able to cope. But these things doesn't mean that there didn't exist zones of stability, even today we have zones of stability like the Nile and southern Iraq, whose fertility doesn't depend on annual rain.

I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying mountains won't get snow or rivers won't flood, I'm saying that the amounts and times will be unpredictable beyond the ability to plan well. Agriculture requires things like "winds came strongly east this winter, means the flood shouldn't be more than 2 feet up the valley". There are regular connections with weather and other phenomenon in stable climates that allow predictions, imperfect as they may be; unstable climates become too chaotic for agriculture. This chaos also makes any stable zones more temporary - farming can't persist if it's just a 1 or 2 generational thing.

 

[Jürgen]

I think you're missing my point. I'm not saying mountains won't get snow or rivers won't flood, I'm saying that the amounts and times will be unpredictable beyond the ability to plan well. Agriculture requires things like "winds came strongly east this winter, means the flood shouldn't be more than 2 feet up the valley". There are regular connections with weather and other phenomenon in stable climates that allow predictions, imperfect as they may be; unstable climates become too chaotic for agriculture. This chaos also makes any stable zones more temporary - farming can't persist if it's just a 1 or 2 generational thing.

No I'm not missing your point, I fully get it, I just don't agree with it. A unstable global climate doesn't translate into all regional climate being unstable or random. We don't live on some kind pop Scifi planet, where there's not regional variation, and the Persian Gulf was one of those variation.

 

[Lenwe]

But those were all regular, in a stable climate such things are regular and bad seasons rare. In an unstable climate you don't know what the seasons will be, the wet and dry years are unpredictable so you don't know when the floods are or how big.

Like The coast of Perú that ciclical surfer from The Niño and The Niña Phenom? And they áre really incosistent? Like we have some 10 years of drougth after 5 years of flood and now The coast Will have flood again by who know how long? Well this incosistent don't stop The Moches, Nazcan, Incan, Viru,Chimú and many others in The develop of a truly remarkable civilization.

 

[Alex1guy]

Do you consider the Cave paintings in Southern France evidence of civilization?

Do you consider that the Neanderthal was the first humanoid-like species that buried their dead -instead of the cannibalism of the previous existing species. (The Homo Erectus bones often show evidences of being de-fleshed, cooked, or in the case of one skull boiled until it burst where on it is likely the Homo Erectus ate the contents of the burst skull). The Neanderthal was usually burred with grave goods such as tools, food, red ochre, and fresh flowers. Some have theorized that the Neanderthal might have had the primitive inklings of religion (or the concept of an afterlife). The problem is the idea of Neanderthal religion is still controversial among most scholars in the field of ancient human study. So if Neanderthal religion theory is true - that is a case for "civilization".

I think he's more aiming for small city states or kingdoms similar to maybe Sumeria or Egypt?

Certainly an interesting idea, I'm just here to see what people think.

 

[trurle]

I was wondering, could a civilization or multiple civilizations have developed cities and agriculture before the Neolithic revolution around 10,000 BC but were wiped out and did not leave enough ruins behind?

Very likely. Early agricultural societies tended to form in small pockets with marginally dry climate, where plant species are few and the evolution pressure from the weeds is weak compared to the selection pressure exerted by humans. Because you are asking for period before 10000 B.C., the climate changed a lot compared to modern era. In particular, Sahara desert experienced hundreds of wet years as wind pattern were changing due deglaciation.
https://www.livescience.com/4180-sahara-desert-lush-populated.html


Also, coastline has moved much inland due raising sea levels (60-80 meters) since end of Ice Age. Therefore, most ancient cities are likely sunk offshore.

Therefore, if you want to find most ancient agricultural city, you should search on seafloor off shore of modern deserts which extend to (nearly) sea coasts. Not necessary Sahara..may be Kalahari desert fringing sea-bottom is better candidate.

 

[The Professor]

No I'm not missing your point, I fully get it, I just don't agree with it. A unstable global climate doesn't translate into all regional climate being unstable or random. We don't live on some kind pop Scifi planet, where there's not regional variation, and the Persian Gulf was one of those variation.

Then please explain why all detectable long term agriculture has been since the climate stabilised.

 

[Umbral]

No I'm not missing your point, I fully get it, I just don't agree with it. A unstable global climate doesn't translate into all regional climate being unstable or random. We don't live on some kind pop Scifi planet, where there's not regional variation, and the Persian Gulf was one of those variation.

We don't know that. Now, I would be unsurprised if it turned out that the Persian Gulf Valley, the Ur-Schatt valley was the first agricultural centre on earth and Göbekli Tepe was an outlying settlement. I'd be thrilled but unsurprised.

However, we don't know that the Ur-Schatt valley was that stable. Present scientific opinion seem to be that it was very well protected from the hyper-aridity cycles of the Arabian peninsula. That does not mean that it was isolated from other climate fluctuations. For example, it was a fairly flat river delta with a huge lake close to what today is the coast of Iran. In a year with heavy rains the lake could very easily have flooded large parts of the delta, displacing human peoples. Which would have interesting consequences for the development of cultures there.

I think it probable that it was stable enough though. What is interesting is that the population there seems to have been highly isolationist, similar to the Romanian ice-age refugee, but very different from the Siberians.

 

[mosodake]

Interestingly, they have done genetic analysis of wheat comparing various strains to find the wild common ancestor. Turns out it converges on an area less than a days walk from Göbekli Tepe, and a convergence time of 12 000 years.

Yup. And grapes show a period of decreasing genetic diversity (one of the hallmarks of selection and domestication) for 22,000 years prior to domestication. With both wheat and grapes, and other crops, this likely means that humans were doing mild selection and cultivation long before the establishment of agricultural communities. I wouldn't call it full-on agriculture though, at least in the beginning. They probably weren't consciously planting fields and propagating things for the most part.

Very likely. Early agricultural societies tended to form in small pockets with marginally dry climate, where plant species are few and the evolution pressure from the weeds is weak compared to the selection pressure exerted by humans. Because you are asking for period before 10000 B.C., the climate changed a lot compared to modern era. In particular, Sahara desert experienced hundreds of wet years as wind pattern were changing due deglaciation.
https://www.livescience.com/4180-sahara-desert-lush-populated.html


Also, coastline has moved much inland due raising sea levels (60-80 meters) since end of Ice Age. Therefore, most ancient cities are likely sunk offshore.

Therefore, if you want to find most ancient agricultural city, you should search on seafloor off shore of modern deserts which extend to (nearly) sea coasts. Not necessary Sahara..may be Kalahari desert fringing sea-bottom is better candidate.

Except for this to be true, this hypothetical ancient agricultural city would have had to leave no traces in the genetic history of crops in the area. I.e., whatever they grew would have had to have gone completely extinct with them. Which seems unlikely, given that agriculture is generally rapidly adopted by neighboring communities, trade should have enabled the spread of whatever they grew into surrounding areas, and wild relatives of the crop would have interbred and maintained some of that genetic legacy. The history of domestication for wheat ends roughly 10-12,000 years ago and all modern wheat varieties can be traced back to the same wild population in Turkey, which means that there wasn't any genetic input from a different site of domestication. The story is less clear with rice, but there's a lot of evidence for either a single domestication event or two independent events, roughly 9-13,000 years ago.