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this patriarchal, hierarchical organization of society. Although polytheistic, a male warrior-
deity stands at the apex of all the ancient Near Eastern religions of the Bronze Age.
Despite the transformative nature of the Secondary Products Revolution, one aspect of
Neolithic traditions that shows evidence of continuity with those of the highly stratified,
patriarchal societies of the Bronze Age is the strong identification of women with plants. In
addition, date palm cultivation led to the first intimations of plant sexuality.Notes- With the exception of the island of Cyprus, which had been settled by pre- ceramic agricul-
turalists from the Levant around 8500 bce, the first Neolithic settlers in Europe all possessed
ceramic technology. Starting around 7500 bce, a pre- ceramic version of agriculture also diffused
southeast to the Kachi Plain near the Indus Valley in modern- day Pakistan, where Mehrgarh,
an extensive Neolithic town five times larger than Çatalhüyük was founded around 7000 bce. - Peninsula at the southern end of the mainland connected via the Isthmus of Corinth.
- Bellwood, Peter (2005), First Farmers. Blackwell.
- As noted in Chapter 3, the first signs of cat domestication in Cyprus are evident 1,500 years
later, around 7500 bce. - Renfrew, Colin (1987), Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo- European Origins.
Cambridge University Press; Bellwood, First Farmers; Bouckaert, R. et al. (2012), Mapping the
origins and expansion of the Indo- European language family. Science 337:957– 960. - Renfrew, Colin (2003), Time depth, convergence theory, and innovation in proto- Indo-
European: “Old Europe” as a PIE Linguistic Area. In A. Bammesberger and T. Vennemann,
eds., Languages in Prehistoric Europe. Universitätsverlag Winter GmBH, pp. 17– 48; Bellwood,
First Farmers. - Coward et al. (2008) were able to trace several possible routes for the dispersal of the founder
crops by analyzing European archaeobotanical assemblages using phylogenetic techniques. - Analysis of mitochondrial DNA has shown that shortly after the introduction of the pig
into Europe from the Near East, Europeans breeds began to appear and soon replaced the Near
Eastern domesticates. See Larsen, G., et al. (2007), Ancient DNA, pig domestication, and the
spread of the Neolithic into Europe. PNAS 104:15276– 15281. - Diamond, J. (1999), Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. W.W. Norton &
Company, pp. 176– 191. - The Balkan Peninsula, the area south of the Balkan Mountains, includes Serbia,
Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Greece. - Cavalli- Sforza, L. L., and F. Cavalli- Sforza (1995), The Great Human Diasporas: The
History of Diversity and Evolution. Translated by S. Thorne, Addison- Wesley. - Bellwood, P. (2014), First Migrants: Ancient Migration in Global Perspective. John Wiley
& Sons. - Richards, M. (2003), The Neolithic invasion of Europe. Annual Review of Anthropology
32:135– 162. - Bellwood, First Farmers.
- But see Haak, W. et al. (2015), Massive migration from the steppe was a source for Indo-
European languages in Europe. Nature 522:207– 211, for an alternative theory.