User:Abyssal/Prehistory of Asia
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Introduction
Prehistoric Asia refers to events in Asia during the period of human existence prior to the invention of writing systems or the documentation of recorded history. This includes portions of the Eurasian land mass currently or traditionally considered as the continent of Asia. The continent is commonly described as the region east of the Ural Mountains, the Caucasus Mountains, the Caspian Sea, Black Sea and Red Sea, bounded by the Pacific, Indian, and Arctic Oceans. This article gives an overview of the many regions of Asia during prehistoric times. (Full article...)
Selected general articles
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Image 1The South Asian Stone Age spans the prehistoric age from the earliest use of stone tools in the Paleolithic period to the rise of agriculture, domestication, and pottery in the Neolithic period across present-day India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. The traditional divisions into the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods do not carry precise chronological boundaries; instead, they describe broad phases of technological and cultural development, reflecting assumptions about ways of life based on the tools and artifacts found at various archaeological sites.
The Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) in South Asia began over 1 million years ago, characterized by Acheulean tools at sites like Attirampakkam and Isampur, with Isampur being dated to approximately 1.27 million years ago. The Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) is defined as a transitional phase following the end of the Last Glacial Period, beginning around 10000 BCE. The Neolithic (New Stone Age), starting around 7000 BCE, is associated with the emergence of agriculture and other hallmarks of settled life or sedentism. The earliest South Asian neolithic sites include Mehrgarh in present-day Pakistan dated to 6500 BCE and Koldihwa, in present-day Uttar Pradesh, India, where domesticated rice has been radiocarbon dated to around 7000–6000 BCE (Full article...) -
Image 2The Soanian culture is a prehistoric technological culture from the Siwalik Hills, Pakistan. It is named after the Soan Valley in Pakistan. (Full article...)
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Image 3Neolithic Tibet refers to a prehistoric period in which Neolithic technology was present in Tibet.
Tibet has been inhabited since the Late Paleolithic. Paleolithic inhabitants successfully overcome the extremely harsh climate and environments and made some genetic contribution to the contemporary inhabitants. Excavated microliths on the Tibetan Plateau display mosaic features of both northern Chinese tool culture and the Tibetan Paleoliths During the mid-Holocene, Neolithic immigrants from northern China mixed with the original inhabitants, although a degree of genetic continuity with the Paleolithic settlers still exists. (Full article...) -
Image 4This list of Bronze Age sites in China includes sites dated to either the Chinese Bronze Age, or Shang and Western Zhou according to the dynastic system. It is currently based on China's Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level record. (Full article...)
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Image 5The Halaf culture is a prehistoric period which lasted between about 6100 BC and 5100 BC. The period is a continuous development out of the earlier Pottery Neolithic and is located primarily in the fertile valley of the Khabur River (Nahr al-Khabur), of south-eastern Turkey, Syria, and northern Iraq, although Halaf-influenced material is found throughout Greater Mesopotamia.
While the period is named after the site of Tell Halaf in north Syria, excavated by Max von Oppenheim between 1911 and 1927, the earliest Halaf period material was excavated by John Garstang in 1908 at the site of Sakce Gözü. Small amounts of Halaf material were also excavated in 1913 by Leonard Woolley at Carchemish, on the Turkish/Syrian border. However, the most important site for the Halaf tradition was the site of Tell Arpachiyah, now located in the suburbs of Mosul, Iraq. (Full article...) -
Image 6Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) denotes the first stage of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, in early Levantine and Anatolian Neolithic culture, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 10,800 years ago, that is, 10,000–8800 BCE. Archaeological remains are located in the Levantine and Upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent.
The time period is characterized by tiny circular mud-brick dwellings, the cultivation of crops, the hunting of wild game, and unique burial customs in which bodies were buried below the floors of dwellings. (Full article...) -
Image 7Trialetian is the name for an Upper Paleolithic-Epipaleolithic stone tool industry from the South Caucasus. It is tentatively dated to the period between 16,000 / 13,000 BP and 8,000 BP. (Full article...)
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Image 8
Sangiran is an archaeological excavation site in Java in Indonesia. According to a UNESCO report (1995) "Sangiran is recognized by scientists to be one of the most important sites in the world for studying fossil man, ranking alongside Zhoukoudian (China), Willandra Lakes (Australia), Olduvai Gorge (Tanzania), and Sterkfontein (South Africa), and more fruitful in finds than any of these."
The area comprises about 56 km2 (7 km x 8 km). It is located in Central Java, about 15 kilometers north of Surakarta in the Solo River valley. Administratively, Sangiran area is divided between 2 regencies: Sragen (districts of Gemolong, Kalijambe, and Plupuh) and Karanganyar (district of Gondangrejo). An important feature of the site is the geology of the area. Originally a dome was created millions of years ago through tectonic uplifts. The dome was then eroded exposing beds within the dome which are rich in archeological records. (Full article...) -
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The Bronze Age was a historical period lasting from approximately 3300 to 1200 BC. It was characterized by the use of bronze, the use of writing in some areas, and other features of early urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of the three-age system, between the Stone and Iron Ages. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition.
The Bronze Age is generally considered to have ended with the Late Bronze Age collapse, a time of widespread societal collapse between c. 1200 and 1150 BC. This collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean, including North Africa and Southeast Europe, as well as the Near East, in particular Egypt, eastern Libya, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and the Caucasus. It was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations, and it brought a sharp economic decline to regional powers, most notably ushering in the Greek Dark Ages. (Full article...) -
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The Andronovo culture is a collection of similar local Late Bronze Age cultures that flourished c. 2000–1150 BC, spanning from the southern Urals to the upper Yenisei River in central Siberia. Some researchers have preferred to term it an archaeological complex or archaeological horizon. The slightly older Sintashta culture (c. 2200–1900 BC), formerly included within the Andronovo culture, is now considered separately to Early Andronovo cultures. Andronovo culture's first stage could have begun at the end of the 3rd millennium BC, with cattle grazing, as natural fodder was by no means difficult to find in the pastures close to dwellings.
Most researchers associate the Andronovo horizon with early Indo-Iranian languages, though it may have overlapped the early Uralic-speaking area at its northern fringe and Yeniseian-speaking area to its eastern fringe. Allentoft et al. (2015) concluded from their genetic studies that the Andronovo culture and the preceding Sintashta culture should be partially derived from the Corded Ware culture, given the higher proportion of ancestry matching the earlier farmers of Europe, similar to the admixture found in the genomes of the Corded Ware population. (Full article...) -
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The Uruk period (c. 4000 to 3100 BC; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. The late Uruk period (34th to 32nd centuries) saw the gradual emergence of the cuneiform script and corresponds to the Early Bronze Age; it has also been described as the "Protoliterate period".
It was during this period that pottery painting declined as copper started to become popular, along with cylinder seals. (Full article...) -
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Java Man (Homo erectus erectus, formerly also Anthropopithecus erectus or Pithecanthropus erectus) is an early human fossil discovered in 1891 and 1892 on the island of Java (Indonesia). Estimated to be between 700,000 and 1,490,000 years old, it was, at the time of its discovery, the oldest hominid fossil ever found, and it remains the type specimen for Homo erectus.
Led by Eugène Dubois, the excavation team uncovered a tooth, a skullcap, and a thighbone at Trinil on the banks of the Solo River in East Java. Arguing that the fossils represented the "missing link" between apes and humans, Dubois gave the species the scientific name Anthropopithecus erectus, then later renamed it Pithecanthropus erectus. The fossil aroused much controversy. Within a decade of the discovery almost eighty books or articles had been published on Dubois's finds. Despite Dubois's argument, few accepted that Java Man was a transitional form between apes and humans. Some dismissed the fossils as apes and others as modern humans, whereas many scientists considered Java Man as a primitive side branch of evolution not related to modern humans at all. In the 1930s Dubois made the claim that Pithecanthropus was built like a "giant gibbon", a much misinterpreted attempt by Dubois to prove that it was the "missing link". Eventually, similarities between Java Man and Sinanthropus pekinensis (Peking Man) led Ernst Mayr to rename both Homo erectus in 1950, placing them directly in the human evolutionary tree. (Full article...) -
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Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB) is part of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, a Neolithic culture centered in upper Mesopotamia and the Levant, dating to c. 10,800 – c. 8,500 years ago, that is, 8800–6500 BC. It was typed by British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon during her archaeological excavations at Jericho in the West Bank, territory of Palestine.
Like the earlier PPNA people, the PPNB culture developed from the Mesolithic Natufian culture. However, it shows evidence of having more northerly origins, possibly indicating an influx from the region of northeastern Anatolia. (Full article...) -
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Peking Man (Homo erectus pekinensis) is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited the Zhoukoudian cave site in modern northern China during the Chibanian. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudian cave has since then become the most productive H. erectus site in the world. Peking Man was instrumental in the foundation of Chinese anthropology, and fostered an important dialogue between Western and Eastern science for decades to come. The fossils became the centre of anthropological discussion, and were classified as a direct human ancestor, propping up the Out of Asia hypothesis that humans evolved in Asia.
Peking Man also played a vital role in the restructuring of the Chinese identity following the Chinese Communist Revolution, and was intensively communicated to working class and peasant communities to introduce them to Marxism and science. Early models of Peking Man society strongly leaned towards communist or nationalist ideals, leading to discussions on primitive communism and polygenism. This produced a strong schism between Western and Eastern interpretations, especially as the West adopted the Out of Africa hypothesis by late 1967, and Peking Man's role in human evolution diminished as merely an offshoot of the human line. Though Out of Africa is now the consensus, Peking Man interbreeding with human ancestors is frequently discussed especially in Chinese circles. (Full article...) -
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Natufian culture (/nəˈtuːfiən/) is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Neolithic prehistoric Levant in Western Asia, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction of agriculture. Natufian communities may be the ancestors of the builders of the first Neolithic settlements of the region, which may have been the earliest in the world. Some evidence suggests deliberate cultivation of cereals, specifically rye, by the Natufian culture at Tell Abu Hureyra, the site of earliest evidence of agriculture in the world. The world's oldest known evidence of the production of bread-like foodstuff has been found at Shubayqa 1, a 14,400-year-old site in Jordan's northeastern desert, 4,000 years before the emergence of agriculture in Southwest Asia. In addition, the oldest known evidence of possible beer-brewing, dating to approximately 13,000 BP, was found in Raqefet Cave on Mount Carmel, although the beer-related residues may simply be a result of a spontaneous fermentation.
Generally, though, Natufians exploited wild cereals and hunted animals, notably gazelles. Archaeogenetic analysis has revealed derivation of later (Neolithic to Bronze Age) Levantines primarily from Natufians, besides substantial admixture from Chalcholithic Anatolians. (Full article...) -
Image 16'Ubeidiya (Arabic: العبيدية, romanized: `Ubaydiyya; Hebrew: עובידיה), some 3 km south of the Sea of Galilee, in the Jordan Rift Valley, Israel, is an archaeological site of the early Pleistocene, c. 1.5 million years ago, preserving traces of one of the earliest migrations of Homo erectus out of Africa, with (as of 2014) only the site of Dmanisi in Georgia being older. The site yielded hand axes of the Acheulean type, but very few human remains. The animal remains include a hippopotamus' femur bone, and an immensely large pair of horns belonging to a species of extinct bovid.
The site was discovered in 1959 and was first excavated between 1960 and 1974. (Full article...) -
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Ohalo II is an archaeological site in Northern Israel, near Kinneret, on the southwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. It is one of the best preserved hunter-gatherer archaeological sites of the Last Glacial Maximum, radiocarbon dated to around 23,000 BP (calibrated). It is at the junction of the Upper Paleolithic and the Epipaleolithic, and has been attributed to both periods. The site is significant for two findings which are the world's oldest: the earliest brushwood dwellings and evidence for the earliest small-scale plant cultivation, some 11,000 years before the onset of agriculture. The numerous fruit and cereal grain remains preserved in anaerobic conditions under silt and water are also exceedingly rare due to their general quick decomposition. (Full article...) -
Image 18The categorisation of the past into discrete, quantified named blocks of time is called periodization. This is a list of such named time periods as defined in various fields of study.
These can be divided broadly into prehistorical periods and historical periods (when written records began to be kept). (Full article...) -
Image 19Xiaochangliang (simplified Chinese: 小长梁; traditional Chinese: 小長梁; pinyin: Xiǎochángliáng) is the site of some of the earliest paleolithic remains in East Asia, located in the Nihewan (泥河灣) Basin in Yangyuan County, Hebei, China, most famous for the stone tools discovered there. (Full article...)
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Image 20The prehistory of Anatolia stretches from the Paleolithic era through to the appearance of classical civilisation in the middle of the 1st millennium BC. It is generally regarded as being divided into three ages reflecting the dominant materials used for the making of domestic implements and weapons: Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. The term Copper Age (Chalcolithic) is used to denote the period straddling the stone and Bronze Ages.
Anatolia (Turkish: Anadolu), also known by the Latin name of Asia Minor, is considered to be the westernmost extent of Western Asia. Geographically it encompasses the central uplands of modern Turkey, from the coastal plain of the Aegean Sea east to the western edge of the Armenian Highlands and from the narrow coast of the Black Sea south to the Taurus mountains and Mediterranean Sea coast. (Full article...) -
Image 21
The Dmanisi hominins,' Dmanisi people, or Dmanisi man were a population of Early Pleistocene hominins whose fossils have been recovered at Dmanisi, Georgia. The fossils and stone tools recovered at Dmanisi range in age from 1.85 to 1.77 million years old,' making the Dmanisi hominins the earliest well-dated hominin fossils in Eurasia and the best preserved fossils of early Homo from a single site so early in time, though earlier fossils and artifacts have been found in Asia. Though their precise classification is controversial and disputed, the Dmanisi fossils are highly significant within research on early hominin migrations out of Africa. The Dmanisi hominins are known from over a hundred postcranial fossils and five famous well-preserved skulls, referred to as Dmanisi Skulls 1–5.
The taxonomic status of the Dmanisi hominins is somewhat unclear due to their small brain size, primitive skeletal architecture, and the range of variation exhibited between the skulls. Their initial description classified them as Homo (erectus?) ergaster (an otherwise African taxon), or potentially an early offshoot of later Asian H. erectus. The discovery of a massive jaw, D2600, in 2000 led researchers to hypothesize that more than one hominin taxon had been present at the site and in 2002, the jaw was designated as the type specimen of the new species Homo georgicus. Later analyses by the Dmanisi research team have concluded that all the skulls likely represent the same taxon with significant age-related and sexual dimorphism, though this is not a universally held view. In 2006, the team favoured subsuming the taxon under Homo erectus as H. erectus georgicus or H. e. ergaster georgicus. The nomenclature is still debated. (Full article...) -
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The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunting and gathering to one of agriculture and settlement, making an increasingly large population possible. These settled communities permitted humans to observe and experiment with plants, learning how they grew and developed. This new knowledge led to the domestication of plants into crops.
Archaeological data indicates that the domestication of various types of plants and animals happened in separate locations worldwide, starting in the geological epoch of the Holocene 11,700 years ago, after the end of the last Ice Age. It was humankind's first historically verifiable transition to agriculture. The Neolithic Revolution greatly narrowed the diversity of foods available, resulting in a decrease in the quality of human nutrition compared with that obtained previously from foraging, but because food production became more efficient, it released humans to invest their efforts in other activities and was thus "ultimately necessary to the rise of modern civilization by creating the foundation for the later process of industrialization and sustained economic growth". (Full article...) -
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Chaldea (/kælˈdiːə/) was a small country that existed between the late 10th or early 9th and mid-6th centuries BC, after which the country and its people were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population of Babylonia. Semitic-speaking, it was located in the marshy land of the far southeastern corner of Mesopotamia and briefly came to rule Babylon. The Hebrew Bible uses the term כשדים (Kaśdim) and this is translated as Chaldaeans in the Greek Old Testament, although there is some dispute as to whether Kasdim in fact means Chaldean or refers to the south Mesopotamian Kaldu.
During a period of weakness in the East Semitic-speaking kingdom of Babylonia, new tribes of West Semitic-speaking migrants arrived in the region from the Levant between the 11th and 9th centuries BC. The earliest waves consisted of Suteans and Arameans, followed a century or so later by the Kaldu, a group who became known later as the Chaldeans or the Chaldees. These migrations did not affect the powerful kingdom and empire of Assyria in Upper Mesopotamia, which repelled these incursions. (Full article...)
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Desired articles, sorted by how frequently linked to:
- Archaeology of Asia
- Archaeology of Japan
- Archaeology of Tajikistan
- Archaeology of Brunei
- Archaeology of Iraq
- Archaeology of Cambodia
- Archaeology of Jordan
- Archaeology of Kyrgyzstan
- Archaeology of Laos
- Archaeology of Bangladesh
- Archaeology of Kuwait
- Archaeology of Christmas Island
- Archaeology of Bhutan
- Archaeology of Egypt
- Archaeology of Georgia (country)
- Archaeology of South Korea
- Archaeology of East Timor
- Archaeology of Hong Kong
- Archaeology of Sri Lanka
- Archaeology of Iran
- Archaeology of South Ossetia
- Archaeology of Saudi Arabia
- Archaeology of Macau
- Archaeology of Kazakhstan
- Archaeology of Taiwan
- Archaeology of the Palestinian territories
- Archaeology of the Republic of Artsakh
- Archaeology of Abkhazia
- Archaeology of the Maldives
- Archaeology of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands
- Archaeology of Turkmenistan
- Archaeology of Turkey
- Archaeology of Thailand
- Archaeology of Uzbekistan
- Archaeology of Vietnam
- Archaeology of the British Indian Ocean Territory
- Archaeology of Yemen
- Archaeology of Bahrain
- Archaeology of Nepal
- Archaeology of Syria
- Archaeology of Mongolia
- Archaeology of Malaysia
- Archaeology of Myanmar
- Archaeology of North Korea
- Budana
- John David Hawkins
- Gyanpura
- Kheri Lochab
- Khera Gandawala
- Rajpura, Narnaund
- Kagsar
- Nara, Hisar
- Sulchani
- Kinnar, Hisar
- Panihari village
- Gamra
- Pali, Narnaund
- Ukhaa Tolgod
- Geology of Asia
- Kurile arc
- Xinminpu Group
- Zhou Shiwu
- You Hailu
- Wang Xiaolin
- Paul Upchurch
- Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature
- Cyclopygoidea
- Diapophysis
- Changma Basin
- Ukhaa Tolgod
- Kenilworth Sandstone Formation
- He Xinlu
- Cyclopygoidea
Selected images
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Image 2The Ancient Paleo-Siberians formed from the Ancient North Eurasians and Ancient Northern East Asian ancestry, and are closely connected to the first wave of humans into the Americas. (from Prehistoric Asia)
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Image 3Modern humans interbred with an archaic human species called Denisovans on the islands of Southeast Asia. (from Prehistoric Asia)
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Image 5Dolmen from Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India. Woodcut from the article "Indiska fornsaker" by Hans Hildebrand. (from Prehistoric Asia)
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Image 6Map of AsiaNorth AsiaCentral AsiaEast AsiaWest AsiaSouth AsiaSoutheast Asia(from Prehistoric Asia)
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Image 7Modern reproduction of a skull of Homo erectus georgicus from Dmanisi in modern Georgia (Caucasus), the earliest evidence for the presence of early humans outside the African continent. (from Prehistoric Asia)
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Image 8Early Indo-European migrations from the Pontic steppes and across Central Asia, and encounter with Ancient Northeast Asian populations. (from Prehistoric Asia)
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