Difference between Neolithic to the Iron Age - Essay Example

The people of the Neolithic period lived in family-based communities and the societies were presumably egalitarian. Members of the community engaged in subsistence farming, hunting and gathering, and pottery. Generally, Neolithic communities that dwelled in England were highly mobile cattle herders, unlike their South-Eastern Europe counterparts who mainly dwelled in fortified settlements. Agricultural activities carried out included keeping livestock such as goats, sheep pigs, and cattle, and growing plants like barley, lentils, emmer, and einkorn.

Gradually, the development of their farming technologies resulted in their demographic expansion as they further engaged in trade and agriculture with surrounding communities. During the Bronze Age, more efficient tools were developed and used for agricultural activities, and later ox-plows featured in the plowing of land. Tools such as ax heads which were made of bronze and later iron, used by carpenters and farmers were usually ground and polished on a fine-grained rock. In the Middle East, by 12000BC, small urban centers had started developing in Mureybet and Jordan Valley with people living in houses founded in pits and later in surface houses.

The society began to engage in planting and harvesting of some crops as early as 9500BC and later engaged in nomadic pastoralism. Wall painting and the obsidian trade formed part of daily life in the 7000s BC. In some parts of Iraq, the society engaged in pottery irrigated farming and riverside settlement and kept the funerary object in the 6000s (BC). The use of wheels, as well as writing and mathematics, were developed in the Middle East as the society engaged in routine activities. Ancient Sumeria, during pre-historic times, featured prominently as a center for the development of literature, business, science, and agriculture.

While Neolithic groups may have initially engaged in nomadic pastoralism, the civilized Middle East societies settled along river banks and practiced irrigated farming.