Book Review: The Old World: Early Man To the Development of Agriculture (Under the editorial supervision of Robert Stigler)

Reading this book, I learnt that how from the flowers, which were identified by the pollens found in the grave, it was possible to determine the burial month of an individual (p. 61).

In southwestern France in Upper Paleolithic times we have the appearance of two cultures, the Aurignacian and the Perigordian, which run almost side by side in the same region (p. 65). Solecki says that the Aurignacian is quite widespread there, through Turkey and the Zagros Mountains as far as Afghanistan (p. 65). Solecki further states that most probably 30, 000 years ago people entered Australia by boat (p. 68).

Perkins. Jr and Daly state that food production most probably began in the Near East in the Highland Zone (p. 72). The authors further state that the theory that the retreat of glaciers was assumed to have shifted the rain belts, causing increasing desiccation- seems to have numerous flaws( p. 74). As per these authors a domestic animal is one 'which breeds in captivity and is of significant economic importance' (p. 80).

Stigler writes that in the Near East the early stages of food production did indeed take place in such mostly upland country and only afterwards did Neolithic settlement  begin to fill  the alluvial valleys and lowland plains (p. 100). Stigler further writes that in Catal Huyuk the entrances were through the roofs which presented a blank façade to the outside world (p. 104). The author further writes that some old world archeologists sometimes refer the "Old Testament effect", which means 'attributing the appearance of any cultural innovation to an immigration of peoples from the outside' (p. 110).Ubaid in Southern Mesopotamia  has origins which are often attributed to a new people coming into the area from south western Iran (p. 114).

Writing on Egypt and India Stigler writes that 'the later dynastic written sources indicate that by Late Pre-dynastic times two parallels lineages of "kings" ruled Upper and Lower Egypt respectively' (p. 140). The author states that in India and Pakistan the links between Mesolithic and the Neolithic are still missing from the archeological record (p. 145). Stigler is of the view that the 'earliest date farming communities known to be of direct relevance to the subcontinent proper are located in Baluchistan' (p. 146). In addition to that the author writes that the site of Kile Gul Mohammad in the Quetta Valley of north-eastern Baluchistan is a cornerstone of the Baluchistan Neolithic, providing the earliest carbon-14 dates for the period in all of India-Pakistan' (p. 146). In geographical extent this was the largest of the four "primal" civilizations of the Old World- Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus, and China- stretching some thousand miles along the great alluvial river valley (p. 150).

This book covers plant domestication, sexual division of labor, deer-slayers in Germany and Poland, transition from hunter to townsman, hunting peoples, agrarian peoples, principal food animals (p. 75), definition of "civilization"(p. 116), historian Karl Wittfogel on irrigation (p. 117), Tasian burial practices and Walter Fairservis' views on first settlements in Baluchistan (p. 148).