Mesolithic

Mesolithic is the term used to summarize the period of prehistory that serves as a transition between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. Meaning Middle Age of the Stone (from the Greek μεσος, mesos = middle; and λίθος, líthos = stone) as opposed to the Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) and Neolithic (New Stone Age), identifying with the latest hunter-gatherer societies. The habits of the Mesolithic cultures were basically nomads, with seasonal winter settlements and summer camps, although in some European coastal regions and in the Near East (where they found sufficient and regular resources) they began to live in a more sedentary manner. This was possible thanks to the expansion of the food aspect, which included a wide variety of foods that the specialized hunters of the Upper Paleolithic did not consume. Related to these dietary changes would be the greater diversification, specialization, and quantity of stone tools, as well as the disappearance of Paleolithic figurative cave painting, replaced by more abstract art.

Terminology Issues

The term Mesolithic was coined by John Lubbock in his work Prehistoric Times, from 1865, when he established the aforementioned division of the Stone Age. For a long time it was seen only as a transition stage, even a decadence, between the other two great periods. But at the beginning of the XX century it was shown that there was a clear cultural continuity, so a new term was coined to define this phase: Epipaleolithic (Above Paleolithic), which was not accepted throughout the scientific world. Currently, in the Anglo-Saxon sphere, both terms are generally used as synonyms, while in the area of French academic influence, a clear difference is usually established between them:

• Mesolytic would be reserved for those hunter-gatherer societies that alone, due to their own internal processes over time, end up becoming farmers.
• Epipaleolithic would apply to those who only change their predatory economy by a producer because of external influences (contacts with already neolitized peoples).

A third tendency would be that of those authors who identify Epipaleolithic with the early Holocene societies of clear Paleolithic tradition and Mesolithic with their successors.

Finally, there are those who propose a third term for this period:

• Epipaleolithic would be suitable for groups that maintained paleolytic strategies but specializing.
• Mesolytic would be awarded to those who initially opted for such a path, but then went into a food production dynamic.
• Subneolithic would apply to the neighboring communities of neolitized societies that were gradually assuming those techniques by acculturation.

Punta ahrensburgiense.

Timeline

The Mesolithic would begin with the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, around 12,000 years ago, and would end with the appearance of productive ways of life, whose chronology varies greatly from one region to another and from one continent to another: while In the Near East, Neolithization began around 9,000 B.C. C., Scandinavia and certain areas of Atlantic Europe did not reach until 4000 BC. c.

In the Near East, the broad-spectrum diet began to be adopted around 12,000 BC. C. with the Natufian groups, heirs of the Kebarians, who present the first signs of urban planning at the Nahal Oren site. The Natufian is a cultural complex that spread throughout the Mediterranean Levant and is characterized by the existence of small villages made up of circular huts with stone plinths that sometimes have attached silos where the wild-collected cereal was kept, although they also served as a burial place. In parallel, the groups of Karim Shair developed in northern Iraq, which also collected vegetables and began to try out the domestication of the goat. There are similar and contemporary processes in Upper Egypt and Nubia.. Around 10,300 B.C. C. these begin to occur in northern India, in the state of Uttar Pradesh. About 9000 B.C. C. in southern China, in the province of Yunnan, as well as in Japan, Mexico, the Peruvian coast and the Mississippi River valley.

Climate and environment

This era was marked by the end of the last glacial period and the progressive establishment of a temperate/warm climate that allowed the increase of forests and biodiversity, although it also caused the flooding of large coastal areas. Changes that necessarily influenced the behavior and material culture of humans at the time.

Retreating ice in Eurasia and North America led to the formation of extensive temporary grasslands that were soon replaced by lush forests. Wide steppe and/or semi-desert strips were created around the tropics. As a consequence of these ecological changes and, above all, of the hunting pressure of Homo sapiens, the Pleistocene megafauna became extinct, although mammals such as reindeer and bison migrated to more northern latitudes. Animals with forest habits and less gregarious prospered, whose hunting was more complex: deer, elk or wild boar.

At the beginning of the Holocene, the Mediterranean Levant presented a varied mosaic of ecosystems made up of coastal plains, a forested fringe, plateau steppes, and deserts. These environments housed a rich fauna and flora that allowed its inhabitants to settle more or less stable in villages maintaining a hunting-gathering economy.

Economy and society

When the animals that formed the basis of the human diet in the Upper Paleolithic disappeared or emigrated, the food spectrum had to be expanded. To hunt forest species, man must have used dogs, the first animal he domesticated, already at the end of the Upper Paleolithic in western Europe. The diet diversified enormously, then including other small mammals and birds such as geese, thrushes, pheasants, pigeons, etc. The collection of fruits and roots spread, and the consumption of snails and shells increased spectacularly, as evidenced by the enormous concheros of the European Atlantic slope and the snail traps of the caves pyrenean. Offshore fishing also began to develop, in the open sea.

Microlites (trapecios) and mesolicitic arrow from the Tværmose Turbera (Denmark).

Sledges were made, first pulled by men and later by dogs, and canoes made from skins or tree bark. From the birch bark they extracted a product used as glue. Although caves were never completely abandoned in Europe, huts made of logs and branches were also built on the banks of the rivers, in which they lived in the open air, and of which few traces remain, but in whose locations objects of carved stone; such places are known as "flint workshops." In coastal places rich in fish and shellfish, the first large permanent settlements were established.

The lithic industry shows a clear tendency to manufacture small tools adapted to new situations and uses, very specialized, microliths. These were used to collect molluscs and to open them, as arrowheads, as scrapers, burins, etc. The most abundant weapons were bows, made of wood and animal tendons, with arrows that incorporated microliths of various geometric shapes at their tips: triangles, trapezoids, etc. Arrows made entirely of bone, horn or wood were also used.

In the Near East there was an increase in population density, which clearly began to become more sedentary. In what is known as the Natufian culture, the great changes of the Neolithic were already anticipated. They were highly specialized hunter-gatherers hunting gazelle and gathering wild grain, which they stored in silos located at base camps that were occupied year-round. These were made up of agglomerations of circular dwellings, semi-excavated into the ground, with only one room and probably built with logs and branches. They used large stone mills and mortars (some of them decorated on their edges), bone sickles and knives decorated with animal figures, and they buried their dead in necropolises near the towns (in caves) or under the ground of houses. In the grave goods of these burials, social differences begin to be appreciated that may be related to an incipient social hierarchy and inequality, non-existent up to now, but which tended to increase in the following periods.

Art

At the end of the Upper Paleolithic, its splendid artistic manifestations also disappeared with it, while new ones appeared, inevitably influenced by changing climatic factors and new socio-economic habits. The problem with this new postpaleolithic art is that it is very difficult to date and researchers disagree about its periodization. Some believe that representations such as those of Levantine naturalist art are already from the early Neolithic, others that it is earlier. In any case, art did not disappear and we continue to find it in rock shelters (parietal art) and in personal objects (movable art).

Lepenski Vir Sculpture.

Art became conceptual and rationalist, based on the geometric and the abstract. The Azilian culture of the Cantabrian coast and the French Pyrenees has provided us with abundant boulders decorated with series of bands, dots, branches, etc., of an abstract nature, and to which a magical/symbolic meaning is given. The Natufian culture stands out, among other things, for its characteristic representations of animals in hand mortars, sickle handles or knives, that is, for its furniture art.

In the Spanish Levante, human groups left paintings that show an evolution of rock art towards more schematic models, which represented movement. On the walls of the rock shelters, these men painted complex scenes of hunting, dance, and magical rites. The figures are made with black or reddish pigments, and are highly stylized. Despite this, characters can be identified as sorcerers/shamans, thanks to the headdresses that cover their heads, the canes they carry and the ornaments that hang from their knees and arms; Men with feathers and bracelets on their arms and ankles can also be seen, while women wear long skirts. There is a lot of movement (as in contrast to Paleolithic art) and fights between groups appear relatively frequently, with archery battles even reaching hand-to-hand.

In Sierra Morena (Andalusia) highly schematized anthropomorphic and theriomorphic figures (especially of mountain goats and deer) have been found, together with signs of the type of circles, points, suns, undulations. Other important representations have been discovered in Alpera (Albacete), Cogul (Lérida), Barranco de los Gascones (Teruel), Villar del Humo (Cuenca) or Barranco de Gazulla (Castellón).

The "Mesolithic Revolution"

For certain authors the Neolithic revolution really began to take shape during the Mesolithic. For B. Hayden and A. Testart, during this period, groups of hunter-gatherers specialized in a few types of abundant and secure resources appeared, which could be stored for a good part of the year, which allowed them to increase their demography and become sedentary. The accumulation of goods would have caused the first social inequalities and the appearance of hierarchies, headed by those who would have been in charge of managing the surplus. This is how the chiefdoms would have emerged, always linked in their decision-making to the shamans. For Testart, the intensive gathering and hunting of a few species would have gradually led to a series of technical improvements that artificially selected those, leading naturally to their subsequent domestication. For all these reasons, both consider that the true revolution occurred in the Mesolithic, when the economic and social bases that were developed later, during the Neolithic, were established.