Neolithic Culture Big difference between Neo and Paleolithic culture is the development of agriculture This development made it possible to support and establish villages Water was very important to agriculture so people set down along major rivers Tigris and Euphrates Indus Garges Nile Yellow Why did these people want to settle down It could have been by choice or forced due to climate changes The establishment of villages gave people more time as duties could be spread out amongst the people This gave them more time to express themselves in artistic forms The first major Neolithic settlement Actually has two settlement periods First from 8 000 to 7 300 BC and then from 7 000 to Jericho 6 000 BC The first settlement Built a defensive wall around the village though to protect from the wilderness or from other humans is unknown Had a round housing foundation made of stone from there they used clay and mud to build houses The second settlement structure overall cleanliness or both Created houses that were rectangular in shape which was a more stable Coated the walls and floors with plaster may have been for decoration Has evidence of burying the deceased under the floors of their homes Heads were usually separated from their bodies faces were recreated Perhaps thought that heads were the most important part of the human with plaster and the best part to preserve Catalhoyuk atalh y k The most extensive Neolithic settlement and one of the best preserved Existed from 7 400 to 5 700 BC This settlement has no defensive wall instead the tightly packed houses may have served as a defense of their own The entrances to these houses were on the roof and most human traffic happened on the rooftops The houses have multiple rooms and were very likely delegated for different uses The walls and floors were coated with plaster much like the second Jericho settlement The walls were sometimes decorated with plaster in forms of sculptures and paintings this was typically in buildings not used for living purposes Some of these decorations may have meaning but remain undecipherable There were occasionally windows in the buildings but not always Many of the homes had a kiln like area typically near the opening to allow smoke to get out The cooking areas were typically on the ceiling Once a house was occupied and the occupants die out such as a family line the house was sealed off and never used again There is evidence that the dead were buried underneath the floors here as well some burial sites had their heads removed others with their heads still attached Representations of bird like headless creatures may give insight into burial practices and beliefs The settlement was shaped in a fork mound and spanned about 30 acres At the height of the settlement Catalhoyuk is thought to have housed 10 000 people The nearby volcano played an important role in Catalhoyuk as it provided obsidian to the community The Volcano and Cityscape mural found in one of the houses thought to be the first landscape painting ever Artists in Catalhoyuk used a hierarchical scale in their works wherein the most important figures were made larger than the rest This was a common theme in many ancient works The bull appeared to be very important to the people of this settlement as many representations of the animals appear on the site This includes Bucraniums actual bull skulls that were plastered over Transition from Stone Age to Bronze Age Civilization mainly continued along the great river valleys as they were the areas where agriculture could sustain larger groups Eventually the development of metallurgy the ability to extract natural metals in order to make a new metal around 4 000 BC marks the beginning of the Bronze Age Also the Bronze Age marks the first development of writing in the form of cuneiform tablets around 3 500 BC bringing the world from prehistory to history