The 11th millennium BC spanned the years 11,000 BC to 10,001 BC (c. 13 ka to c. 12 ka or 12,950 BP to 11,951 BP). This millennium is during the ending phase of the Upper Paleolithic or Epipaleolithic period. It is impossible to date events that happened during this millennium, and all dates associated with this millennium are estimates based on geological analysis, anthropological analysis, and radiometric dating.
Animals The ability to sail was not only a Neolithic creation. Franchthi Cave provides indirect evidence of pre-Neolithic (11th Millennium BC) seafaring, as well as the early Holocene Mesolithic colonization of Corsica and other Mediterranean islands. It is possible to investigate the question posed by Cauvin's research in regard to both sides of the Middle Eastern and Çatalhöyük data. The first part focuses on the evidence from the Middle East as a whole and discusses the elements involved in the development of established settlements beginning in the 11th millennium BC.Benz, M., Deckers, K., Rössner, C., Alexandrovskiy, A., Pustovoytov, K., Scheeres, M., Fecher, M., Coşkun, A., Riehl, S., Alt, K. W., & Özkaya, V. (2015). Prelude to village life. Environmental data and building traditions of the Epipalaeolithic settlement at Körtik Tepe, Southeastern Turkey. Paléorient, 41(2), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.3406/paleo.2015.5673Siddiq, A. B., Şahin, F. S., & Özkaya, V. (2021). Local trend of symbolism at the dawn of the Neolithic: The painted bone plaquettes from PPNA Körtiktepe, Southeast Turkey. Archaeological Research in Asia, 26, 100280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2021.100280 The assertion can, however, also be examined in light of the domestication of cattle at Çatalhöyük itself in the 7th millennium BC (c. 9 ka or 8950 BP).
According to zooarchaeological research, the earliest known domestication of animals took place in the Near East during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNB) period, in the middle of the 11th millennium BC. This includes the domestication of goats, which are believed to have been among the earliest livestock animals in the Zagros Mountains of modern-day Iran, close to the Fertile Crescent, considerably later (10,000 years ago). One of the most important resources in dry nations is dung, which is used by traditional societies all over the world for construction, cooking, heating, and decoration. It is widely believed that similar events occurred in the past, particularly following the domestication of herbivores in the 11th millennium BC. There is ample evidence that the heads of bulls—skulls and bucrania—or their horns—are revered as representations of masculine power and authority. The oldest known sanctuary dates back to the early 10th millennium BC and is located in Göbekli Tepe in Southeastern Turkey.Dietrich, O., Heun, M., Notroff, J., Schmidt, K., & Zarnkow, M. (2012). The role of cult and feasting in the emergence of Neolithic communities. New evidence from Göbekli Tepe, south-eastern Turkey. Antiquity, 86(333), 674–695. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00047840
Only archaeozoological research and excavations have revealed the oldest indications of Aegean aquatic environments being used for human purposes, which go all the way back to the Mesolithic (11th millennium BC). These locations are the open-settlement Maroulas on the island of Kythnos, Cave Cyclops on Gioura, and Cave Franchthi in the Argolid. As early as the 9th millennium BC, the Fertile Crescent's sedentary early food-producing societies served as hubs for "experimental" pre-domestic animal management techniques. Furthermore, by the end of the 9th millennium BC, morphologically wild cattle had been brought to Cyprus, serving as a terminus ante quem for pre-domestic cow management. This prompts us to speculate that early sedentary towns from the PPNA and EPPNB, which date to the 10th and early 9th millennium BC, and possibly even the Younger Dryas (11th millennium BC), conducted early cow husbandry in a variety of ways. Geographically, scientists proposed that numerous modern communities in the Jordan Valley, the Mediterranean coast, the upper Euphrates and Tigris valleys, and central Anatolia developed distinct, local management traditions. Among other things, the island of Lemnos has some of the Aegean Sea's earliest hunter-fisherman villages, dating to the 11th millennium BC.
Beginnings of agriculture The Klementowice inventory is a member of the Magdalenian technocomplex, according to a typological examination. The frequency of the basic tool groups (end-scrapers, burins, truncated pieces, backed pieces, perforators, and combined tools) is most closely matched by that in Moravian inventories, which J. K. dated to horizon II of the Magdalenian culture in Central Europe and to the end of the 13th (c. 15 ka or 14,950 BP) to early 11th millennium BC. The presence of arched backed blades may contest the dating of the entire inventory of the Bling Interstadial. It is necessary to reevaluate the circumstances surrounding the formation of sedentary farming communities in Southeast Turkey in light of the discovery of a native Epipalaeolithic tradition. While the construction traditions were distinct, the establishment of sedentary populations during the Younger Dryas period here is similar to that of the Levant during the Natufian. The precise role that the intricate interactions between indigenous advancements and cross-regional cultural interchange played in the surprisingly early flowering of sedentary societies in Upper Mesopotamia in the 11th and 10th millennium BC is still unknown.
Barley first appeared in the Anatolian Peninsula between the 8th and 7th millennium BC. Traces of its cultivation can be found in Europe between the 6th and 5th millennium BC, and evidence of its wild forms dates to between the 12th and 11th millennium BC. Over the next few centuries, barley spread throughout a significant portion of Europe. The most prevalent architectural features in lower Kurdistan are mudbrick walls and facades, which are also seen in the most researched archeological sites, such as Chermo (7th millennium BC) and Béstan Súr (11th millennium BC). These climatic and material traits have persisted and are now crucial components of regionally viable adaptation.
They have characterized archaeological tools from the Natuian period to the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period, from the 11th to the late 8th millennium BC, using these experimental measures in a number of Near Eastern sites. According to scientific research, the Middle Euphrates was most likely the site of wild cereal cultivation in the 11th millennium BC. Several stages of this change can be identified when considering gloss texture analysis in conjunction with the existing archaeobotanical data. In Hayonim Terrace (12th millennium BC), unripe harvesting predominates, which suggests that wild grains in natural stands are being exploited. It is possible that human societies were already taking advantage of partially managed cereal fields that permitted the harvesting of plants in a semi-ripe stage, in addition to harvesting natural stands, based on the discovery of semi-ripe and unripe cereal cutting in the Middle Euphrates during the 11th millennium BC.
Several stages of this change can be identified by combining the existing archaeobotanical data with gloss texture analysis. The prevalence of immature harvesting in Hayonim Terrace (12th millennium BC) suggests that wild grains were being used in their natural stands. The finding of semi-ripe and unripe cereal cutting in the Middle Euphrates during the 11th millennium BC implies that human societies may have begun to utilize early managed cereal fields, which permitted the harvesting of semi-ripe plants, in addition to natural stands. Harvesting near-ripe semi-green wild grains at the 23,000 year old Ohalo II site using the traditional qualitative usewear approach fits well with the evidence for the site's earliest known cereal cultivation, the authors say. The comparison of the archaeological and experimental gloss, however, does not support the identification of this activity because no trials on harvesting grown wild grains were included in the study's reference collection.
Furthermore, it is impossible to determine the exact type of plant that was harvested from the archeological artifacts because of the poor development of the use-wear polish. At Ohalo II, wild cereal extraction is well-documented. However, other well-known ethnographical methods of collection, including as hand plucking, beating, and uprooting, could have been employed instead of sickle harvesting. Sickles are an indicator of the intensification of cereal exploitation that, as far as we currently know, started during the Natufian period, when glossed tools are relatively common in archaeological sites, and allow for the quick collection of cereals in the field (given close spacing of the stems and fairly similar stage of maturity).
Pottery Since diagnostic artifacts from the Jōmon period of Japanese prehistory contain pottery and polished stone tools, this period, which spans from the 11th millennium BC to roughly 300 BC (c. 2.3 ka or 2,250 BP), has been regarded as the Neolithic in the tradition of North-eastern Asian archaeology. With the use of shellfish, fish, nuts, and roots, the subsistence pattern can instead be thought of in more generic terms as Mesolithic.
Other cultural developments
Near East
There are several later masseboth that exist today, mostly Nabatean ones. This bulk reveals that masseboth initially arrived in the desert during the 11th millennium BC, became increasingly common starting in the 6th millennium BC (c. 8 ka or 7,950 BP), and maintained their dominance there until the early Islamic period. They typically outnumbered people from the rest of the Near East by a significant margin. However, despite being well-established in the desert for many millennia, masseboth did not become widespread in the fertile zone until the early 2nd millennium BC. The Körtiktepe people principally obtained obsidian from numerous outcrops on the Bingöl and Nemrut Dağ massifs around the late 11th–early 10th millennium BC. The information also points to a minor difference in the way these materials were transported, with Bingöl B (calc-alkaline) materials arriving at the site as part-worked cobbles and/or prefabricated cores, and Bingöl A and Nemrut Dağ peralkaline obsidian coming as cortical nodules.
Körtiktepe and Gusir Höyük, two other very early Neolithic Anatolian sites in the Tigris basin, may offer helpful analogies for some of the behaviors at Direkli. The earliest levels at Körtiktepe date to the late 11th millennium BC (10,400–10,200 cal BC, through the transition to the Holocene),Emra, S., Benz, M., Siddiq, A. B., & Özkaya, V. (2022). Adaptions in subsistence strategy to environment changes across the Younger Dryas—Early Holocene boundary at Körtiktepe, Southeastern Turkey. The Holocene, 32(5), 390–413. https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836221074030Siddiq, A. B., Şahin, F. S., & Özkaya, V. (2021). Local trend of symbolism at the dawn of the Neolithic: The painted bone plaquettes from PPNA Körtiktepe, Southeastern Turkey. Archaeological Research in Asia, 26, 100280. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ara.2021.100280 and Güsir is also likely to be equally early based on similarities to Körtik. Both of these sites date to the Epipalaeolithic/very early Neolithic. The number and variety of Körtiktepe's ornaments are noteworthy; some were mass-produced in the tens or hundreds of thousands and frequently included the funeral assemblage at the site.Özkaya, V., & Siddiq, A. B. (2023). Körtiktepe in the origin and development of the Neolithic in Upper Mesopotamia. In T. Richter & H. Darabi, The Epipalaeolithic and Neolithic in the Eastern Fertile Crescent (1st ed., pp. 138–168). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003335504-11