A Sense of Community

For nearly 200,000 years, our nomadic ancestors journeyed from Africa across Europe and Asia, and eventually into the New World. But things began to change about 10,000 years ago. People living in the Near East began to plant crops, domesticate animals, and slowly shift towards permanent settlements.

Yet many questions remain about how the transition from hunter-gatherer to a more settled lifestyle took place.  Chief among them is the origins and purpose of early permanent dwellings. To some archaeologists, the appearance of stone and mud dwellings, beginning about 11,000 years ago, signifies a fundamental shift in the organization of society. No longer living the nomadic (and communal) lifestyle, these early farmers may have put increasing importance on family and private life, building literal walls that divided one family from another.

But others remain unconvinced. In last week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British archaeologists excavating dwellings from an ancient settlement in southern Jordan found that community, rather than privacy, may still have been a dominant force in the formation of early human societies.

The archaeological team, led by Bill Finalyson of the Council for British Research in the Levant, has spent the past three years excavating an early Neolithic settlement called WF16. These structures, dating from about 11,600 to 10,200 years ago, are typical for the period: low, circular structures made of earth and mud.

Many experts have argued that these structures represent the first dwellings, or family homes. But Finlayson and his team see little evidence for this theory at WF16. For example, one structure identified as O75 is nearly ten times larger than the surrounding structures, and contains wide benches similar to an amphitheatre. Upon further examination, the research team found that many earthen structures at WF16 weren’t dwellings at all: instead, they served a communal, ritualistic, or otherwise “special” purpose.

The team’s hypothesis questions the conventional wisdom that early permanent structures are synonymous with homes. In fact, the excavations at WF16 indicate that the emergence of farming, and a transition from nomadic to settled lifestyle, relied heavily on community and ritual; the large amphitheatre-shaped structure highlights the ritualistic nature involved in grinding crops.

The researchers further argue that the distinction between family and community, between public and private, may not have existed in ways we understand today. Rather, life at WF16 some 11,000 years ago was a communal, shared experience; one that focused on working together to lay the groundwork for agriculture—and ultimately, survival.

Anne Holden, a docent at the California Academy of Sciences, is a PhD trained genetic anthropologist and science writer living in San Francisco.

Image credit: David Oliver, WF16 Project