The deep Palaeolithic Roots of the South-west Asian Neolithic

Abstract This paper sets out to see an aspect of the Neolithic of south-west Asia in the context of its cultural evolutionary history: essential components of the architecture of Neolithic communities – hearth and home, and intramural burial – were present as architectural components of social life tens and hundreds of thousands of years before they were accommodated within Neolithic houses. There are two bases that underpin the paper. One is the general view of cultural evolution and cultural niche construction theory that has emerged over recent decades, emphasising human ultra-sociality and capacity for altruism and cooperation; the other is the understanding of architecture as more than built structures, encompassing objects in, on and around buildings, associated meanings and values, and behaviours. We may trace the development of the architecture of social life as it fostered the intensity of social relations, effectively the roots of Neolithic social life. The process begins at least three quarters of a million years ago with the control of fire, cooking, and eating together around the hearth. The evolution of the human cultural niche continues with the emergence around half a million years ago of the idea of the base camp. That is followed about one hundred thousand years ago by the burying of the body of a member of the group below the base camp floor, binding place and belonging into social memory. The Epipalaeolithic–Neolithic transformation represents a quickening of the pace of cultural cumulation in the specific environment of the hilly flanks of the Fertile Crescent in south-west Asia, with the extension of the group’s stay for at least a season, and the growth in size of the group. The first large, co-resident communities designed and built permanent settlements, houses with hearths, communal buildings, and ritualised intramural burials, forming a new and meaningful architecture of social life embedded in social memory.