The First Farmers of the World (including Gobekli Tepe & first towns)

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]The first farmers in the world lived in the Fertile Crescent, a crescent-shaped strip of land so fertile that it allowed hunters to settle down in simple huts.

[00:00:12]Soon they began to collect wild grains with the first sickles. They began to grind seeds with bowls and pestles.

[00:00:21]Store them in the first granaries, and they made the first bread and beer.

[00:00:27]Then around 9,500 BC, the ice age came to an end, creating an even better climate for crop growth.

[00:00:36]Soon they began to build the first towns with houses from more durable materials such as clay bricks or stone.

[00:00:45]Some towns became big enough that some scholars believed that wild undomesticated grains were now cultivated in fields.

[00:00:54]And these early farmers also created some great monuments such as the 8-m tall tower of Jericho and some 200 circular shrines with large 14-ton T-shaped monoliths at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey.

[00:01:11]Around 8,500 BC, grains and animals in domesticated form popped up all over the Fertile Crescent.

[00:01:19]And evidence for this comes from cereal optimized for easy harvest and with more and larger seeds.

[00:01:28]This period also saw a dramatic growth of settlements into megatowns, most notably Çatalhöyük, which reached a population of about 8,000.

[00:01:39]This village contained about 2,000 rectangular houses stacked next to each other in all directions. And with no streets, villagers had to leave their houses through the ceiling using ladders.

[00:01:53]Farming also created the concept of land ownership, which in turn led to an increase in the veneration of ancestors from whom the land was inherited.

[00:02:04]And in line with this, in these early villages, the dead were buried under the floors of the houses. And in Jericho, the skulls were even removed and then covered with plaster and painted to resemble the faces of the living with shells for eyes.

[00:02:22]Only around 7,000 BC was baked clay pottery invented. An extremely cheap and durable method to store, transport, and cook food. One of the most important inventions of the world.

[00:02:37]So, we have a lot to get to. And if this material is valuable to you, then please subscribe and let's start.

[00:02:47]Farming was independently invented in multiple locations.

[00:02:51]The Near East was first around 9,000 BC with the domestication of wheat and legumes. And rough estimates place the invention of farming in Papua New Guinea around 7,000 BC with sugarcane and bananas.

[00:03:06]In Mesoamerica around 7,000 BC with maize.

[00:03:10]In China around 6,000 BC with rice.

[00:03:13]In northern South America around 5,000 BC with potatoes.

[00:03:18]In sub-Saharan Africa around 3,000 BC with sorghum. And in eastern North America around 2,000 BC with sunflower.

[00:03:28]It is quite remarkable that agriculture was independently invented in all these places within the span of just a few thousand years while Homo sapiens have existed for 300,000 years.

[00:03:41]And this timing likely has something to do with the temperature rise after the last glaciation.

[00:03:47]For the first settlements formed shortly after the temperature started to rise and domesticated grain first appeared after the ice age was over.

[00:03:57]There was, by the way, also an earlier interglacial period, but at that time humans had not spread widely over the earth yet.

[00:04:07]The invention of agriculture set off a chain of events that changed almost every aspect of human life, and this is why we often speak of the Neolithic Revolution or the Agricultural Revolution.

[00:04:21]The domestication of plants and animals made it easier for tribes to settle down as they were no longer required to follow game.

[00:04:30]And this made it worthwhile to build permanent houses made of stronger and more durable materials, including clay bricks and stones.

[00:04:39]And it also allowed people to own more possessions since they didn't have to carry them everywhere.

[00:04:45]For the same reason, it also became beneficial to develop pottery which was then used for storing, serving, and cooking food.

[00:04:53]Eventually, humans began to alter their entire landscape to meet their needs.

[00:04:58]They built man-made villages surrounded by man-made farm fields.

[00:05:03]These changes were so pervasive that the world of man suddenly became distinct from the world of nature.

[00:05:11]Farming also created the concept of land ownership which in turn led to an increase in the veneration of ancestors from whom the land was inherited.

[00:05:22]And these ancestors often came to be seen as the guardian of their land.

[00:05:27]Agriculture also generated a considerable food surplus, which in turn enabled the division of labor.

[00:05:34]With no longer everyone involved in food production, it suddenly became possible for people to specialize in a whole array of other jobs. Some made pottery while others built houses or became full-time priests and astronomers.

[00:05:49]Now, let's turn to the archaeological record.

[00:05:53]The earliest villages appear near the end of the last ice age in an area known as the Fertile Crescent.

[00:06:01]And true to its name, this crescent-shaped area from Israel to Syria to Turkey and down to Iraq, curving around the Syrian desert, was filled with wild plants and game, providing enough resources for hunter-gatherers to settle down.

[00:06:18]The earliest settlements formed in Israel and Syria, the western part of the Fertile Crescent, while the first civilization of the world, the Sumerian civilization, finally developed in the eastern end.

[00:06:33]During the last ice age, before 9700 BC, much of the Middle East was cold and dry, but the Mediterranean coast was much wetter and also thickly forested.

[00:06:46]In some places, the amount of game, such as wild boar, deer, gazelle, and ibex, was so large that those hunters could leave their nomadic life behind.

[00:06:57]Instead, they formed permanent or semi-permanent settlements. Although the first settlements contained just a few circular houses.

[00:07:06]Unfortunately, many early sites are now underwater because of the 130-m rise in sea level since the ice age. For instance, Atlit Yam in Israel is about 400 m offshore and also 10 m beneath the surface. But luckily, enough sites are found on land.

[00:07:27]Besides hunting, these hunter-gatherers of the Fertile Crescent also gathered wild cereals.

[00:07:34]The oldest evidence of the consumption of wild cereal comes from Ohalo II in Israel from around 21,000 BC, which was during the last glacial maximum, which happened between 24 and 18,000 BC.

[00:07:50]Here, at least six oval huts were found, as well as burials in shallow pits.

[00:07:57]A very simple settlement.

[00:07:59]Remains indicate that they were hunters, but remains were also found of wild wheat, barley, oats, lentils, peas, pistachio nuts, grapes, and olives.

[00:08:10]And a blade was found which showed a gloss consistent with the cutting of cereals.

[00:08:17]And there were basalt bowls and pestles, with the bowls containing remains of wild barley starch.

[00:08:25]So, clear evidence of the grinding of wild barley this far back.

[00:08:32]Another crucial early site is Ain Mallaha, also in Israel, where we find small circular huts with stone foundations, together with stone mortars and pestles, dating to 20,000 years ago. And here we also find a stone sickle blade. So, clearly the toolkit for farming has already appeared.

[00:08:54]Around this time, wheat was also used to produce the earliest bread, with the oldest evidence coming from the site Shubayqa 1 from Jordan and dated to 12,000 BC.

[00:09:07]To figure out when those cereals were first domesticated, archaeologists have to distinguish wild from domesticated crops. For instance, wild cereals drop their seeds when ripe, but this is unhelpful if humans want to collect these seeds. So, domesticated cereals are selected to retain their seeds.

[00:09:28]Also, wild cereals have a tough casing, which is tough to remove. And as a result, domesticated cereal lack these.

[00:09:37]For the harvest, it is also beneficial for seeds to ripen about the same time.

[00:09:42]And of course, humans have also selected for cereal with larger grains and also with a larger number of grains.

[00:09:50]Here for instance, you can see the difference between wild and domesticated Einkorn and Emmer.

[00:09:57]The temperature started to rise worldwide around 15,000 BC and around 12,000 BC in the Fertile Crescent. We see the formation of more and larger settlements.

[00:10:09]The hunter-gatherers associated with these settlements are called the Natufians.

[00:10:13]And as in Ohalo II, they were still hunting, but their grain collection intensified during this period.

[00:10:21]Grinding stones and pestles are now in common use, and we also find food storage pits, pits for roasting plant foods, and we even find the remnants of a sickle made from a goat horn with grooves in which sharp pieces of flint had been laid end to end.

[00:10:40]The earliest examples of Natufian sites are Mureybet in Syria, where remains of wild barley and legumes appear in roasting pits dated to 10,500 BC, and in Abu Hureyra in Syria, where Einkorn wheat and rye were found around the same time.

[00:10:59]Settlements at the time were still very simple, often consisting of just a few round huts housing perhaps a total of up to 100 people.

[00:11:09]In Ain Mallaha for instance, an estimated 50 circular huts were found with sunken stone-lined floors.

[00:11:18]These huts were arranged in a circle around an open area that contained pits used for storage and human burial.

[00:11:27]And in Abu Hureyra, shallow round pits seem to mark the location of simple huts.

[00:11:34]A A series of large circular structures at the Drah site from 9,300 BC in Jordan show rooms with wooden floors raised above the ground in which wild barley was stored.

[00:11:47]And it was raised above the ground to allow for air circulation and also to protect from rodents.

[00:11:56]The temperature dropped again during the Younger Dryas between 10,800 and 9,700 BC, but somehow the settlements keep growing even during this cold period. Quickly after the Younger Dryas, the climate became wetter, warmer, and also very stable.

[00:12:15]And this triggered the start of the Neolithic with much more advanced agricultural settlements.

[00:12:22]After 9,500 BC, a new phase began known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic abbreviated as PPN.

[00:12:32]And as the name suggests, these communities did not yet develop pottery, although they did have stone bowls as mentioned before.

[00:12:40]PPN, Pre-Pottery Neolithic, was further subdivided in PPNA and PPNB. With PPNA roughly between 9,500 and 8,500 BC and PPNB between 8,500 and 7,000 BC, although these dates depend a bit on the specific site.

[00:13:02]Let's start with PPNA.

[00:13:04]It saw the formation of the first proper towns, although food remains in these towns show that they still ate only wild plants and animals, no domestication yet.

[00:13:16]Many scholars do guess that wild pre-domesticated grains were cultivated at this point, meaning that those wild grains were sowed in fields.

[00:13:26]And this is believed because some PPNA sites just seem too large for just gathering.

[00:13:32]During PPNA, granaries from wild grains also became more common.

[00:13:38]Sometimes, again, raised above ground and in some cases now also sealed from rodents using mud and plaster.

[00:13:46]Settlement size also grew significantly at the time with some sites reaching 3 hectares. Among them, PPNA Jericho consisted of circular houses built of sun-dried mud bricks.

[00:14:01]Surprisingly early, PPNA also saw the formation of impressive monumental buildings hinting at social complexity and leadership, which would be required for its construction.

[00:14:13]Jericho was the largest town at the time.

[00:14:16]It was inhabited around 9,000 BC by hunter-gatherers.

[00:14:21]And a thousand years later, the town reached a population of perhaps 3,000 inhabitants.

[00:14:27]Around 8,000 BC, the 3-hectare town of PPNA Jericho was surrounded by a rock-cut ditch and also stone defensive wall, which was generally 4 m high and nearly 7 m in some places.

[00:14:43]And they also constructed a stone tower 10 m in diameter and 8 m in surviving height with a staircase of 28 steps inside leading to its top.

[00:14:56]A very impressive structure for this time.

[00:15:00]An even more remarkable site is Göbekli Tepe from Turkey, which began around 9,500 BC at the start of PPNA and just after the ending of the Younger Dryas, which ended 9,700 BC.

[00:15:16]Here circular structures were built up to 20 m in diameter with in the middle, limestone T-shaped pillars up to 5.5 m high and 14.5 tons in weight.

[00:15:30]And as you can see, they can easily be called monuments.

[00:15:34]20 of those rings have been identified so far, but shockingly, ground-penetrating radar shows a total of between 100 and 200 of them are still underground. And similar structures occur at Nevali Çori and also at Karahan Tepe.

[00:15:51]And these sites, by the way, also show remarkable sculptures, including what I think is the first realistic facial sculpture.

[00:15:59]Yet, despite the sophistication, only wild animals such as gazelle, wild sheep, wild boar, and red deer, and also wild cereals were found at the site, as expected in PPNA.

[00:16:13]And excavators also recovered an astonishing 10,000 grinding stones, probably used to produce porridge from those wild grains.

[00:16:22]It seems that this site was purely a ceremonial ritual site, as no houses are found. And villages in the region have an estimated population of only 150 people, suggesting that multiple villages must have collaborated to build this site.

[00:16:40]PPNB started around 8,500 BC, and it shows clear evidence of domesticated grains, including einkorn and emmer wheat, barley, lentils, peas, chickpeas, and also broad beans. And also domesticated animals around the same time, including cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs.

[00:17:02]So, it went very quickly all of a sudden.

[00:17:05]This seems to be a good point to discuss the earliest evidence of domestication.

[00:17:11]At Netiv Hagdud and also Gilgal in Israel, in levels dating to 9,000 BC, researchers have discovered barley kernels that have been identified as early domesticated versions of that cereal.

[00:17:26]And in line with barley's wider spread compared to the other cereals, we also see early signs of domestication around the same time, all the way in the eastern part of the Fertile Crescent in Ganj Dareh in Iran.

[00:17:41]At Aswad in Syria and Cayonu in Turkey, domesticated einkorn and emmer wheats have been dated to before 8,000 BC.

[00:17:50]And again in Ganj Dareh in Iran, we also have early evidence of goat domestication around 8,200 BC.

[00:18:00]In Asikli Hoyuk in central Turkey, we have evidence of the domestication of sheep. Here at 8,400 BC, they moved from hunting to an almost exclusive reliance on sheep at 8,200 BC.

[00:18:15]And by the way, these sheep cannot be distinguished at the time from wild sheep. Yet excavators found large deposits of animal dung at the site, indicating that these sheep were stable.

[00:18:27]The domestication of cattle dates to 8,500 BC in Jarmo in Syria and also again in Cayonu in southeastern Turkey.

[00:18:37]Do mind by the way that new data keeps coming in. So, this list is provisional, but it's just to give you an idea of the current evidence.

[00:18:47]What we do know is that around 7,500 BC, domesticated cereals account for about 50% of all plant food intake.

[00:18:57]And by 6,500 BC, this became around 100%.

[00:19:03]Fruits such as figs, grapes, olives, and dates were domesticated later between 6,500 and 3,500 BC.

[00:19:13]And the chicken does not originate here.

[00:19:16]It was originally domesticated in Southeast Asia and was then introduced to India, the Near East, and Europe much later.

[00:19:25]During PPNB, we also see an uptick in art including figurines of human females emphasizing sexuality and fertility.

[00:19:35]It is possible that the uptick of these figures during the Neolithic is because fertility was now not just associated with birth, but also with the fertility of the soil. So, possibly this figure was Mother Earth.

[00:19:50]In a number of these early villages, the dead were also buried under the floors of the houses. And this practice was particularly common in Jericho. Here, skulls of the dead were removed from the bodies, then covered with plaster and painted to resemble the faces of the living with shells as eyes.

[00:20:10]Quite creepy, in fact.

[00:20:12]We also have several skulls placed in clear arrangement under the floor.

[00:20:17]In one instance, skulls were placed in a circle looking inward. And in another, they were placed looking in the same direction in three rows of three.

[00:20:27]PPNB also saw a dramatic increase in the size of settlements forming megatowns up to 16 hectares in size, much larger than the PPNA settlements.

[00:20:40]Classical examples are the late PPNB megatowns at Abu Hureyra, at Ain Ghazal, and especially Çatalhöyük.

[00:20:49]One major development at this time was a shift from circular dwellings to rectangular ones. The upside being that they can be joined together without loss of space. We see this transition, for instance, at Jericho, Göbekli Tepe, and also at Cayönü.

[00:21:06]Çatalhöyük, dating to 7000 BC, had a population of 8000 people at its peak.

[00:21:13]Yet despite its size, it had no public architecture, such as temples, palaces, or governmental buildings.

[00:21:21]In this, it is quite the exception.

[00:21:23]The town contained about 2000 interconnected rectangular homes with houses stacked next to each other in all directions, and there were no streets, so villagers had to leave their house through the ceiling using ladders.

[00:21:37]Most rooms were about the same size, about 24 square meters, and this is remarkable since large communities, as I said before, usually require strong social hierarchy, and usually this is visible with elites having bigger houses and being buried more lavishly.

[00:21:56]It is not clear why this is not the case in Çatal Höyük.

[00:22:00]Many rooms also had extensive decorations, including plastered bull heads, and also beautiful murals.

[00:22:08]One of these murals show vultures next to decapitated human figures.

[00:22:13]And this mural depict what might be a hunt, although the characters on the left are looking in the other direction, and one figure is carrying a drum, and two of them might be headless.

[00:22:25]Some have wondered if these headless figures had something to do with the plastered severed skulls, which were also found in this village.

[00:22:34]PPNB also saw the development of two-story houses, for instance, at Basta and Basta in Jordan, where walls had a height of over 4 m.

[00:22:45]Baked clay pottery was added to the Neolithic around 7000 BC, with these pots used for storage, cooking, and easy transport of liquids.

[00:22:56]Clay pots are also relatively easy to make, and clay is widely available, so its invention was a true game-changer.

[00:23:05]Pots could also be used to process milk into yogurt, butter, and cheese, making them more easily digestible for the lactose-intolerant population at the time.

[00:23:15]In fact, tolerance for milk only developed in the pastoralist communities around 3000 BC.

[00:23:22]Pottery, of course, also required an advanced use of fire, leading eventually to the development of copper metallurgy.

[00:23:31]Already in Grey Feline in Anatolia, from between 8300 and 7600 BC, we see beads, chisels, and awls made of heated malachite, a green mineral containing copper.

[00:23:46]And the first copper smelting occurred around 5000 BC.

[00:23:50]It is also important, by the way, to note here that in China, pottery developed much earlier, even around 18,000 BC, and in Japan around 10,500 BC, clearly during the Paleolithic, before the Neolithic, since agriculture developed much later in these areas.

[00:24:12]And thus, unfolded the history of the first farmers of the Fertile Crescent.

[00:24:17]In the next lecture, we'll discuss how the farmers of the Near East embarked on a great migration into Europe. And on their way, they left behind 35,000 megaliths, from Göbeklitepe in Turkey, all the way to Stonehenge in Great Britain, with some monuments clearly aligned with the changing orbit of the sun throughout the year, which causes the seasons and thereby the harvest cycle.

[00:24:44]But that's is for the next time. For now, I hope you were inspired. And if you want to know more about the Neolithic or any other topic from world history, then read my book In Search of the The You can read it completely for free on worldhistorybook.com or you can buy a physical copy on Amazon. And of course, subscribe.

[00:25:05]Thank you so much for watching.

[00:25:08]Bye-bye.