Many American Indian tribes at the time of the original invasions, pounded their maize on tree stumps used as metates and using a wooden mano tied to a bent sapling that served as a spring to pull the mano up after pounding downward and reducing the work of processing the grain. Such a set up would leave no trace archaeologically and perhaps the earliest processing of grain crops is lost because such a use.
Very true. I did mention Ohalo II in the film - that (as far as I know) has the very earliest evidence, at 21,000 years BCE, of processing of wild grains. Again, dependent on the presence of grinding stones though. Maybe I should have gone to Galilee rather than London!
Another comment on the comments - I've never seen so much xenophobia and blatant, hateful bigotry in comments on an archaeology video! Is it because London is involved,is that the trigger? Where did all the reasonable, tolerant and respectful people go, the ones that usually comment here? Please folks, remember what this is: a subjective view on a small piece of archaeological evidence.
I found it very difficult to cope with too. One day I suppose AI will allow us to have a button to turn off background music by somehow filtering it out of the overall sound.
Yes, Michael, ground zero of the expression, "the daily grind" - literally and said in MANY languages. Happy New Year and bravo! This is an *outstanding video!*
Ground zero for the Middle East maybe, but we know agriculture arose independently in numerous sites around the world. There will be a ground zero of agriculture for each region.
I wonder, some people travelled a long way. I wonder could the idea have spread. I mean I know it seems unlikely that The idea could travel from the fertile crescent to South America but people with less resources travelled from Africa to Australia (over generations of course)
Ground Zero in this context is about the first people who developed agriculture anywhere in the world. It happened somewhere first, and it seems like it was in the middle east.
Ignore all of the negative comments. I enjoyed the video, music and all. As for the whinging about the title being a little "clickbaity", for God sake got over yourselves.
I've always liked your filming style, well done, your focus may be archaeology, but you are quite the visual artist. Cheers and have a fantastic New Year.
I liked the presentation in this video. It was visually engaging and the narration was clear. I always enjoy your videos and this was a pleasant change, especially with the British Museum up close and personal!
As a student of history for over 63 years, currently living in the Sonoran Desert, what is amazing is how little that amazing tool has changed over the ensuing 10,000 years. It is larger, more robust, but still very close in appearance to what the Anasazi used over 1,000 years ago in the Sonoran Desert. Thank You for this insightful video Sir. Finally, it is incredible to think of the history that was buried beneath your feet as you shot this video in Londinium. I'll be back!
I am struck by the thought of the women who ground the grain they gathered on that quern, then collected to sow closer to home. Who saved the largest and most prolific ears for next season and guarded them from being eaten through the hard winters. We are so often written out of history. But those women were strong, had foresight, and took us onward and upward.
You might find A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present by Bonnie S. Anderson worth a look. Two volumes, IIRC. My wife found them a few years ago.
I beg to disagree. There are older sedentary sites in Upper Egypt/southern Egypt. They planted food grains, possibly wheat, (haphazardly), harvested it, stored it & processed it on querns. They made flint bladed sickles to do the harvesting. They understood the concept of a food grain growing from a seed. They did plant the seeds, but not in rows. They just broadcast the seeds haphazardly. They may have traveled to another site while the grain grew unattended, then came back in time for harvest. They never domesticated the grain, but they DID plant it & manage the sites where the grain grew. All this was done on sites located on terraces well above the high flood levels of the Nile. They pursued this lifestyle for a few thousand years, (2 or 3 thousand years) then abandoned the sedentary sites & their proto-agricultural lifestyle to go back to classic hunting & gathering. It is thought that desertification is what halted this early experiment in agriculture. A brief search yielded this info: According to archaeological evidence, the "Qadan culture" represents the most prominent 15,000-year-old settlement in Egypt, with sites located primarily in Upper Egypt, characterized by a Mesolithic lifestyle involving hunting and the gathering of wild grains along the Nile River; notable sites include Jebel Sahaba cemetery and areas like Elkab at Wadi Halfa, Faiyum, and Deir el-Badari. Key points about the Qadan culture: Time period: Approximately 15,000 to 10,000 BC Lifestyle: Hunting and gathering wild grains, with efforts to manage and harvest local plants Distinctive features: Developed tools like sickles and grinding stones for processing grains Possible migration reason: Desiccation in the Sahara pushed people towards the Nile Valley
Of course there are older sedentary sites. Never said there weren’t. In fact I mentioned the earliest known of them - Ohalo II along with some other PPNA Natufian sites. It’s just that Abu Hureyra and other contemporary sites seem to be at an inflection point that altered the course of human history.
Some Australian Aboriginals harvested grain and ground it into flour. But they were not farmers. Grinding stones found 35,000 years and very recently discovered 65,000 years.
An interesting supposition. However, I believe you previously stated that at Gobekli Tepe, they were harvesting wild grain, but not farming. Therefore, they must’ve also been processing it. What makes you believe that this settlement where they found the grinder was not used on site during the harvest for processing, and then the people moved on, taking with them just the byproduct of the processing? As is evident in many archaeological finds, hunting and gathering was done at different points during different seasons. Game were harvested along their migratory routes, but the indigenous population did not stay there year round, rather migrated to that point in the migration where they hunted before moving on. Why would that model not apply to grain harvesting and processing as well?
To think that this is an artifact made and used by not by historical peoples, but by real individuals that lived, and that we could talk to, and relate to; that is just jaw-droppingly inspirational, in fact numinous. How can debate over this myth or that possibly compare to standing before such wonderful finds as this?
I was intrigued by the title I thought no you won't find anything in London yet as you approached the stone it was completely self-explanatory. Lovely video
Apparently the oldest grinding stones used to make flour are in Australia. 35,000 years and 65,000 years. Not suggesting they were farming but they were definitely harvesting. It does seem odd to me that homo sapien does bugger all for 290,000 years then suddenly 10,000 years ago BAM. I guess it was just right time, right place, right conditions.
@@VRnamek I dont think that is the point. 1 million years from now they will know that the technology we currently have is all due to farming that began around 10,000 years earlier. What we dont know is what happened that allowed farming to begin.
Had not heard of the grinding stone find, were both found at the same site, do you know where? I understand dating objects & rock art in Australia is hard as no remains etc accompany any of the finds beyond approx 12k years ago. Mungo Man (appox 42000 yeas old) was subject to a dispute over his DNA, his remains were eventually given to an Aboriginal group who quickly interned him in an unknown location without his DNA ever been proven as Aboriginal. The 1st results opposed by Aboriginal groups found he was seemingly a new species I suspect he was a Denisovan, however, as Land right claims and the entire Aboriginal grievance industry relies on being here first, there is a very strong vested self interest in never finding out the truth. Any and all finds beyond approx 12k-15k years ago will always be claimed as Aboriginal and all investigations will be opposed on cultural sensitivity grounds. Edit If not sure on the veracity of statements check out the "welcome to country and Smoking ceremonies" and Aboriginal dot art pasted off as part of a 65000 year culture, yet both were made up in 1970s &1980s by an activist & a white school teacher for the painting style and like most of the claims of the Aboriginal grievance industry, have zero to do with actual Aboriginal history & culture.
@@Damo-np7ul That DNA sample was found to have been contaminated. It had the DNA of 6 Europeans mixed in. Accounting for that, the sample appears to be an Aboriginal.
@@Damo-np7ul Grinding stones Cuddie Springs Western NSW 30 to 35K. Madjedbebe rock shelter 60k plus. The Madjedbebe apparently has lots of them, only recently dated. Your evidence regarding the Mungo man DNA is out of date. Recent analysis shows that the sample was contaminated with European DNA, when that is accounted for the DNA is Aboriginal. I agree that as a group, Aboriginals have managed the situation extremely poorly (as evidenced by the voice vote). However many Aboriginals have adjusted and just gotten on with life, they just dont make a lot of noise. Be kind.
HateWatchers are overachieving their new years resolutions. Congrats on reaching that highly coveted audience… As an aside, civilization is one of the many illusions created by the extraordinarily dynamic fluidity of life.
Ha, in other conversations online... most people can't even define civilization correctly. So, of course, they are unable to say where the first one was...
Agree! My favourite archaeological channel is Fall of Civilisations which has very subtle, quiet and atmospheric music. Prehistory Guys not usually as cacophonous as this though!
Incredible video! The way you weave the post-modern metropolis that is London, with our earliest archeological findings of our transition from hunter-gatherers to grain domesticators is fascinating! New subscriber here!!
@@ThePrehistoryGuys Definitely. I have to admit I didn't get the joke before now, and I assume that is the case for the people claiming clickbait. Because the ground that the Tube is dug into has nothing to do with this.
I collected and grinding ‘mortar’ and ‘pestle’ just like these while working in the bush in the middle of Australia’s Northern Territory. The mortar was sandstone and the pestlewas unweathered shale. There were no occurrences of either of these rocks anywhere near where I found them. As rocks in this area are deeply weathered, the shale must have come from a mine spoil heap. Mines in this area go back to the 1930s.
👍🏼👍🏼-- I wouldn't be surprised if evidence is discovered to push that 30,000 date back even further one day. So many early sites under water... The British Museum is such a rich resource to have on your doorstep. I would be there every week if I lived in the UK. Have you been to the archaeology museum in Istanbul? Amazing! Seeing the actual items that people from the past made and touched can be quite transporting. And I liked the music 😃
I will have to re-read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. Challenges most of our assumptions about our transitions from hunter gatherers to agrarians. Can be downloaded free.
Excellent summary, a short video packed with info, almost like an index to open and explore. Also, i would like to point out the clarity and fluidity of your speech, in contrast when you partner with your good friend, a lot of giggling and mumbling, sometimes hard to follow, well at least for me a non-native Anglo-Saxon 😊
The line between hunter gatherer and early agriculture is so fine, they will never find such evidence and even were they to do so, it would be give no more insight or reflection to the situation in the rest of the world etc... all they would capture is a fleeting moment of cultural practise... Australian aboriginals would always leave fruit and seeds for next year, wouldn’t consume all and would actively encourage species proliferation wherever and whenever they could... even elephants and monkeys manipulate their environment in such a fashion... it’s a futile quest and shows a real lack of understanding if you ask me! For example they found early efforts at wheat cultivation in Israel 23,000 years ago... it didn’t persist... is that agriculture?
Another great video (I watched it on Patreon!) Thank you for posting. FYI, I tried to 'buy you a coffee' but the link didn't work though maybe it's just my computer :(.
I thought there is a permanent farming village in Syria that gies back to 16,000 years ago? Also, I thought that Cheddar man had domesticated grains from the Middle East found with him and I think Cheddar man is older than 11,000 years ago.
There are other sites contemporary with Abu Hureyra that show evidence of the transition to domestic cultivation - Mureybet (also now under Lake Assad) is one of them and is also in Syria. And there is no evidence of domestication of wheat as far back as 16,000 years. You may be thinking of the earliest settled or semi-settled site where they had been harvesting wild grains - that's Ohalo II on the Sea of Galilee, but that's even older at 23,000 years ago. There were no domesticated grains found with Cheddar Man. You may be thinking of reports of grains found at a submerged Mesolithic site off the Isle of White a while back. That is still to be confirmed one way or another as far as I know.
Mate, it happened on an ancient peninsula, called today as Britain. Your ancients went through that transition like elsewhere in the whole world. It was their collective intelligence to observe and act to benefit from nature's climatic repetition. With a refusal to accept huge climatic variations worldwide, why accept it only occurred in Mesopotamia. Apology to Cunliffe!
No-one is suggesting that, only that the climatic conditions in the Middle East were the most favourable for the transition from hunter-gathering to farming. No doubt the peoples of Europe transitioned to being farmers in the centuries after.
Negative review warning: this 10 minute video did not get to its actual (underwhelming) point until 1.5 minutes from the end. In addition to which, the title of the video, in omitting the preposition 'in' between 'not' and 'Gobekli', was deliberately and cynically clickbaiting. Thumbs down for that I'm afraid. Do better.
As amazing as this find is calling this location ground zero is premature. If anything It is one of the ground zeros. Relatively nearby to the South in what became the Levant down to Sinai were the Natufians. Among their settlements (some dated about 17-18,000 yrs ago they had several settlements that had grain storage pits. I'm not saying they were farmers but at the least they started to make inroads in that direction. The ancient peoples of Asia(China, Korea, Japan), Asia Minor(Iran, Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Indus Valley), And the Western Hemisphere All of them had their ground Zeros. Many were making the change to farming independently and separately at about the same time.
I define farming as preparing soil, planting food annually and harvesting. I bet it started by the time large grain storage baskets were developed. In fact grain storage containers are compelling evidence farming was underway. I also consider any annual effort to improve or increase plants that yield food to be farming, such as grape vines or any other plant that produces food. Often overlooked/ignored in agriculture prehistory is trees … figs, apples, nuts, etc. As soon as people found a good food source such as figs, i have no doubt they would try to maximize it by planting seeds.
Excellent video. I wonder who used that quern and others like it. Both sexes or only one? Any particular age group? Was it public property of the whole village or private property of some person, family or kin group? Who got to eat the bread made with the flour it produced? So many questions to ponder...
Thanks you. I'm afraid to report that the study of the burial remains at the village indicate that it was the women who did this hard work. The pathologies of the female bones is quite unequivocal. Answers to many things can be found in the archaeological report. repo.library.stonybrook.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11401/88766/46871.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
@@ThePrehistoryGuysThis document is 854.30 MB which is a monster if downloaded on a mobile phone. Click on the link when on wifi and probably also a PC. Thank you and please excuse the interruption. 😅
Thank you! I enjoy learning pre-history and history as a lay person. Have to sneak it in around busy parenting. Podcasting - my preferred genre is hard for them to sit through it. This video is a great piece! Something i can show to my kids and others who ask about why i like finding out about human history. Thank you!
Funny isn't it? I've been asked lately why I write things down, look things up and why I want to know things. I thought being curious was a great part of being a human being. Cheers from Germany 🎉
The Saddle-Quernstone looks to big, unless the miller was a giant? The stone on top is to small and short by comparison. One was also shown in (I think) the final Royal Institute Lecture by one of the Van Tulliken twins?
If you look at the shape the stone has worn into you'll see how it was used. Constant rubbing from knees or bellies on the narrow end has polished it to a shine, the same as we see on religious statues rubbed for luck. Then there's the gentle curve down and slight rise towards the far end. Holding the grinder/pestle with one or both hands and using your own body weight as an aid to crushing, then grinding seeds by pushing the pestle down and away gives the shaping I describe as evidence of ergonomic use. Two round stones, one fixed and one with a handle to sit over a centre post on the bottom stone is a later invention. Did the latter follow on from the invention of the wheel or was it a precursor as it needs less fixing?
I don’t mind museums having great collections, but 90% of what they have is not on display. That’s the stuff I want to see and not the sterile, curated exhibits.
Thank you. I enjoyed the video and the music. I suspect that the intention was to invoke discussion on the matter of first farming attempts of which there appear to have been several. I am curious about the reasons for transiting from harvesting in the wild to planting and farming. We know even neanderthals harvested and soaked and pounded seeds, pulses and nuts around 70,000 years ago. I wonder what would have happened to make the change given it would involve additional work.
*The grinding stone you show at **9:07** is around 11,000 years old.* Yet that is not the oldest record we have of a grind stone or the connected domestication of grain - in the world. Australian Aboriginal grind stones date back to nearly X3 as far to 30,000 years ago. Such scientifically dated grinding stones have been found at Cuddie Springs, NSW
@@Sammyli99 Uhmmmm -- Interesting - but tbh - that might be pushing it. It's just that discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere tend to get the limelight due in part to their close proximity. There is also a bit of a hang-over from Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' and its connected use in early scientific anthropology. In that - the idea of classes of humans in the ladder of progress - that was also used to lay the foundation of the pseudo-science of 'Eugenics'
@@PaxAlotin Nope I will stay with my "Controlled Education" theory after our good Co-vid lesson on medical practices, theory and paper reviews, you stay warm and cosy in a "Mantra repeated 1,000 times by Puppets" must be the truth---world. Its a kabuki theatre from start to finish.
I never claimed this was the earliest evidence of processing of cereals. In fact I mentioned the site with the earliest known processing of cereals in the Levant: Ohalo II, which dates to 23,000 BP. The transition from processing wild grasses to deliberately cultivating domestic grains and pulses around 11,000 BP is an inflection point in human history and I stand by that premise.
That would all depend on the summer and autumn weather. Some years they would have had more than enough. The evidence being they had enough to store for later use.
I'm talking about the domestication of cereals here. 'Hunter Gatherers' in the Levant had been grinding wild grains at least 10,000 years earlier than this.
Very interesting video... but I'd like to point out that I went to the British Museum (and the UK) for the first time in 67 years, last month. It's 12 hours from where I live. Gobekli Tepe is 22 hours from where I live as well. That quirm stone is fantastic, and I did miss seeing it in The British Museum (but then again, I could only spend a day there, since it's a ways away). But ground zero? Wouldn't that be where the stone originally came from? And while we obtain our food from agriculture, there aren't many of us who live in an "agricultural society". So maybe "civilization" goes back further than the development of domesticated grains? It was a major step, but why not the development of methods to build monumental structures? Why not the art created in cave paintings? All of those were major steps in "civilization". Ah, but it was a wonderful video!
The Younger Dryas seems to have been a really important time in the developement of cultures that would lead to our own. I wonder if we will ever know much about that world?
Many American Indian tribes at the time of the original invasions, pounded their maize on tree stumps used as metates and using a wooden mano tied to a bent sapling that served as a spring to pull the mano up after pounding downward and reducing the work of processing the grain. Such a set up would leave no trace archaeologically and perhaps the earliest processing of grain crops is lost because such a use.
Very true. I did mention Ohalo II in the film - that (as far as I know) has the very earliest evidence, at 21,000 years BCE, of processing of wild grains. Again, dependent on the presence of grinding stones though. Maybe I should have gone to Galilee rather than London!
Another comment on the comments - I've never seen so much xenophobia and blatant, hateful bigotry in comments on an archaeology video! Is it because London is involved,is that the trigger? Where did all the reasonable, tolerant and respectful people go, the ones that usually comment here?
Please folks, remember what this is: a subjective view on a small piece of archaeological evidence.
Best starbucks ad I've ever seen, I'm still never going to drink it.
Sorry I cant listen to this despite being interested in the subject matter. The background music is apauling.
I found it very difficult to cope with too. One day I suppose AI will allow us to have a button to turn off background music by somehow filtering it out of the overall sound.
Yes, Michael, ground zero of the expression, "the daily grind" - literally and said in MANY languages. Happy New Year and bravo! This is an *outstanding video!*
Thank you! Right back at you. 😊
Ground zero for the Middle East maybe, but we know agriculture arose independently in numerous sites around the world. There will be a ground zero of agriculture for each region.
I wonder, some people travelled a long way. I wonder could the idea have spread. I mean I know it seems unlikely that The idea could travel from the fertile crescent to South America but people with less resources travelled from Africa to Australia (over generations of course)
Ground Zero in this context is about the first people who developed agriculture anywhere in the world. It happened somewhere first, and it seems like it was in the middle east.
I like the way this was set up and turned into a little story!
Ignore all of the negative comments. I enjoyed the video, music and all.
As for the whinging about the title being a little "clickbaity", for God sake got over yourselves.
Interesting proposition but please cut out the over production - the background music and visual space fillers.
I've always liked your filming style, well done, your focus may be archaeology, but you are quite the visual artist. Cheers and have a fantastic New Year.
That's really nice to hear. Thank you! 😊
better without the unnecessary added loud music
Agreed. Music, the curse of You Tube
Well, I thought it was effective. Good use of sound in video.
It's free stop griping 😅
I’d say the music was ok, it was just too loud in the mix.
So true!
Edward Bernays would be proud his legacy lives on.
I liked the presentation in this video. It was visually engaging and the narration was clear. I always enjoy your videos and this was a pleasant change, especially with the British Museum up close and personal!
Thank you very much!
As a student of history for over 63 years, currently living in the Sonoran Desert, what is amazing is how little that amazing tool has changed over the ensuing 10,000 years. It is larger, more robust, but still very close in appearance to what the Anasazi used over 1,000 years ago in the Sonoran Desert. Thank You for this insightful video Sir. Finally, it is incredible to think of the history that was buried beneath your feet as you shot this video in Londinium. I'll be back!
Thats a really nice observation.
Loose the music, the walking, and give more map context and background on climate and geography.
Excellent presentation, hugely enjoyable and whilst the title is click bait, I will concede it is a point well made. Thank you 👍
Much appreciated!
Thanks!
Very few open minds in the comment section!
If your mind is too open, your brain falls out.
I remember seeing this artifact in the BM but i had no idea of its significance at the time. Thanks for putting it in perspective for me :D
Got me subscribed for being short, informative and entertaining with a great soundtrack. Bravo!
Good to hear - thanks!
I am struck by the thought of the women who ground the grain they gathered on that quern, then collected to sow closer to home. Who saved the largest and most prolific ears for next season and guarded them from being eaten through the hard winters.
We are so often written out of history. But those women were strong, had foresight, and took us onward and upward.
I'd prefer to be a hunter-gatherer without the nagging.
You might find A History of Their Own: Women in Europe from Prehistory to the Present by Bonnie S. Anderson worth a look. Two volumes, IIRC. My wife found them a few years ago.
There is no GROUND ZERO of Civilisation imho
I really enjoyed this video.
I thought it was edited well and very informative.
Happy New Year, Michael& Rupert, may you walk and talk among the stones for years to come❤️
London's looking Quiet...Happy New Year 🍷
I beg to disagree. There are older sedentary sites in Upper Egypt/southern Egypt. They planted food grains, possibly wheat, (haphazardly), harvested it, stored it & processed it on querns. They made flint bladed sickles to do the harvesting. They understood the concept of a food grain growing from a seed. They did plant the seeds, but not in rows. They just broadcast the seeds haphazardly. They may have traveled to another site while the grain grew unattended, then came back in time for harvest. They never domesticated the grain, but they DID plant it & manage the sites where the grain grew. All this was done on sites located on terraces well above the high flood levels of the Nile. They pursued this lifestyle for a few thousand years, (2 or 3 thousand years) then abandoned the sedentary sites & their proto-agricultural lifestyle to go back to classic hunting & gathering. It is thought that desertification is what halted this early experiment in agriculture.
A brief search yielded this info:
According to archaeological evidence, the "Qadan culture" represents the most prominent 15,000-year-old settlement in Egypt, with sites located primarily in Upper Egypt, characterized by a Mesolithic lifestyle involving hunting and the gathering of wild grains along the Nile River; notable sites include Jebel Sahaba cemetery and areas like Elkab at Wadi Halfa, Faiyum, and Deir el-Badari.
Key points about the Qadan culture:
Time period: Approximately 15,000 to 10,000 BC
Lifestyle: Hunting and gathering wild grains, with efforts to manage and harvest local plants
Distinctive features: Developed tools like sickles and grinding stones for processing grains
Possible migration reason: Desiccation in the Sahara pushed people towards the Nile Valley
Of course there are older sedentary sites. Never said there weren’t. In fact I mentioned the earliest known of them - Ohalo II along with some other PPNA Natufian sites. It’s just that Abu Hureyra and other contemporary sites seem to be at an inflection point that altered the course of human history.
Some Australian Aboriginals harvested grain and ground it into flour. But they were not farmers. Grinding stones found 35,000 years and very recently discovered 65,000 years.
I loved the videography and music and editing . Keep educating in your style
Thank you! Will do!
@@ThePrehistoryGuys You didn't mention that it was the women that did all the back breaking grinding of the grains with those stone tools.
An interesting supposition. However, I believe you previously stated that at Gobekli Tepe, they were harvesting wild grain, but not farming. Therefore, they must’ve also been processing it. What makes you believe that this settlement where they found the grinder was not used on site during the harvest for processing, and then the people moved on, taking with them just the byproduct of the processing?
As is evident in many archaeological finds, hunting and gathering was done at different points during different seasons. Game were harvested along their migratory routes, but the indigenous population did not stay there year round, rather migrated to that point in the migration where they hunted before moving on. Why would that model not apply to grain harvesting and processing as well?
Very cool. I've not seen this quern before!! Thank you😊
Excellent short video. Thank you good sir.
To think that this is an artifact made and used by not by historical peoples, but by real individuals that lived, and that we could talk to, and relate to; that is just jaw-droppingly inspirational, in fact numinous. How can debate over this myth or that possibly compare to standing before such wonderful finds as this?
I was intrigued by the title I thought no you won't find anything in London yet as you approached the stone it was completely self-explanatory. Lovely video
I like to think of archeology as an exploration, not a competition.
Happy New Year! Thank you for your amazing show!
Nice presentation. Makes me want to go to London and explore that museum for a whole day.
Sorry, I missed it, where was that found? (before it was placed in the BM)
Somewhere along the Euphrates. Northern Syria, I think he said.
Abu Hureyra
Thank you 🙏 It was the title of video had me confused..as to where. Yes it is now in the BM..
Yes - The British Museum helped fund the archaeological rescue excavation 1972-3.
Apparently the oldest grinding stones used to make flour are in Australia. 35,000 years and 65,000 years. Not suggesting they were farming but they were definitely harvesting. It does seem odd to me that homo sapien does bugger all for 290,000 years then suddenly 10,000 years ago BAM. I guess it was just right time, right place, right conditions.
in 1 million years someone will be questioning why suddenly 1 million years ago...
point is: it needs to happen sometime
@@VRnamek I dont think that is the point. 1 million years from now they will know that the technology we currently have is all due to farming that began around 10,000 years earlier. What we dont know is what happened that allowed farming to begin.
Had not heard of the grinding stone find, were both found at the same site, do you know where?
I understand dating objects & rock art in Australia is hard as no remains etc accompany any of the finds beyond approx 12k years ago. Mungo Man (appox 42000 yeas old) was subject to a dispute over his DNA, his remains were eventually given to an Aboriginal group who quickly interned him in an unknown location without his DNA ever been proven as Aboriginal. The 1st results opposed by Aboriginal groups found he was seemingly a new species
I suspect he was a Denisovan, however, as Land right claims and the entire Aboriginal grievance industry relies on being here first, there is a very strong vested self interest in never finding out the truth. Any and all finds beyond approx 12k-15k years ago will always be claimed as Aboriginal and all investigations will be opposed on cultural sensitivity grounds.
Edit If not sure on the veracity of statements check out the "welcome to country and Smoking ceremonies" and Aboriginal dot art pasted off as part of a 65000 year culture, yet both were made up in 1970s &1980s by an activist & a white school teacher for the painting style and like most of the claims of the Aboriginal grievance industry, have zero to do with actual Aboriginal history & culture.
@@Damo-np7ul That DNA sample was found to have been contaminated. It had the DNA of 6 Europeans mixed in. Accounting for that, the sample appears to be an Aboriginal.
@@Damo-np7ul Grinding stones Cuddie Springs Western NSW 30 to 35K. Madjedbebe rock shelter 60k plus. The Madjedbebe apparently has lots of them, only recently dated. Your evidence regarding the Mungo man DNA is out of date. Recent analysis shows that the sample was contaminated with European DNA, when that is accounted for the DNA is Aboriginal. I agree that as a group, Aboriginals have managed the situation extremely poorly (as evidenced by the voice vote). However many Aboriginals have adjusted and just gotten on with life, they just dont make a lot of noise. Be kind.
HateWatchers are overachieving their new years resolutions.
Congrats on reaching that highly coveted audience…
As an aside, civilization is one of the many illusions created by the extraordinarily dynamic fluidity of life.
Ha, in other conversations online... most people can't even define civilization correctly. So, of course, they are unable to say where the first one was...
Agree! My favourite archaeological channel is Fall of Civilisations which has very subtle, quiet and atmospheric music. Prehistory Guys not usually as cacophonous as this though!
"Context is everything" A great creed for history, and life.
I agree 🤟
fantastic production on the video & sound quality 👏👏👏
Gosh, the out-patients have come out in force for this video… the "bold claim" evidently gets you a lot of views and a lot of vitriol! Hmm…
Incredible video! The way you weave the post-modern metropolis that is London, with our earliest archeological findings of our transition from hunter-gatherers to grain domesticators is fascinating! New subscriber here!!
considering the object you showed us at the end, is calling ' Ground Zero' an intentional pun or not?
My original script reads: "At the risk of what could be a dreadful pun, I'm declaring this ... etc." Do you think I should have left it in?
@@ThePrehistoryGuys Definitely. I have to admit I didn't get the joke before now, and I assume that is the case for the people claiming clickbait. Because the ground that the Tube is dug into has nothing to do with this.
I collected and grinding ‘mortar’ and ‘pestle’ just like these while working in the bush in the middle of Australia’s Northern Territory. The mortar was sandstone and the pestlewas unweathered shale. There were no occurrences of either of these rocks anywhere near where I found them. As rocks in this area are deeply weathered, the shale must have come from a mine spoil heap. Mines in this area go back to the 1930s.
If one conspiracy nut manages to get exposed to actual archaeology, then the clickbait of the title is worth it
They'll probably rush off and worship at the feet of Graham Hancock
Loved it and the music is perfect! Thank you!
Glad you liked it!
Wonderful video. And very well done, (including the music at the end).
Thank you very much!
👍🏼👍🏼-- I wouldn't be surprised if evidence is discovered to push that 30,000 date back even further one day. So many early sites under water...
The British Museum is such a rich resource to have on your doorstep. I would be there every week if I lived in the UK. Have you been to the archaeology museum in Istanbul? Amazing! Seeing the actual items that people from the past made and touched can be quite transporting.
And I liked the music 😃
I will have to re-read The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengrow. Challenges most of our assumptions about our transitions from hunter gatherers to agrarians. Can be downloaded free.
well... that was quite a clickbait
Great video and excellent sound track. Missing Rupert of course! :)
One of your best short videos.
Gave up on this at 55 seconds due to stupid music overlay.
Pity as wanted to hear whay you had to say.
Loved the whole thing music included
Excellent summary, a short video packed with info, almost like an index to open and explore. Also, i would like to point out the clarity and fluidity of your speech, in contrast when you partner with your good friend, a lot of giggling and mumbling, sometimes hard to follow, well at least for me a non-native Anglo-Saxon 😊
The line between hunter gatherer and early agriculture is so fine, they will never find such evidence and even were they to do so, it would be give no more insight or reflection to the situation in the rest of the world etc... all they would capture is a fleeting moment of cultural practise... Australian aboriginals would always leave fruit and seeds for next year, wouldn’t consume all and would actively encourage species proliferation wherever and whenever they could... even elephants and monkeys manipulate their environment in such a fashion... it’s a futile quest and shows a real lack of understanding if you ask me! For example they found early efforts at wheat cultivation in Israel 23,000 years ago... it didn’t persist... is that agriculture?
Awesome presentation. Thank you!
Like the music thought provoking, making us modern humans 11,000 years ago.
Excellent Michael! Happy New Year! 🎉
Another great video (I watched it on Patreon!) Thank you for posting. FYI, I tried to 'buy you a coffee' but the link didn't work though maybe it's just my computer :(.
It didn’t work for me either.
Nice video, thanks.
Ya, the thing about anthropological science is that you will not likely not know if you found the end.. Are we to dig up the entire planet?
Thank you Michael great video. As an open minded person I think we have many blanks to fill yet. No doubt arable farming was a game changer.
Opening train sequence... watch out for werewolves...
😂.......they exist look up dogman 👍🏾
Nah, that pice of basalt was the saddle off Fred Flintstone’s Norton, I know an old fossil in the Norton Owners’ Club who was there when it was made!
I thought there is a permanent farming village in Syria that gies back to 16,000 years ago? Also, I thought that Cheddar man had domesticated grains from the Middle East found with him and I think Cheddar man is older than 11,000 years ago.
There are other sites contemporary with Abu Hureyra that show evidence of the transition to domestic cultivation - Mureybet (also now under Lake Assad) is one of them and is also in Syria. And there is no evidence of domestication of wheat as far back as 16,000 years. You may be thinking of the earliest settled or semi-settled site where they had been harvesting wild grains - that's Ohalo II on the Sea of Galilee, but that's even older at 23,000 years ago.
There were no domesticated grains found with Cheddar Man. You may be thinking of reports of grains found at a submerged Mesolithic site off the Isle of White a while back. That is still to be confirmed one way or another as far as I know.
Mate, it happened on an ancient peninsula, called today as Britain. Your ancients went through that transition like elsewhere in the whole world. It was their collective intelligence to observe and act to benefit from nature's climatic repetition. With a refusal to accept huge climatic variations worldwide, why accept it only occurred in Mesopotamia. Apology to Cunliffe!
No-one is suggesting that, only that the climatic conditions in the Middle East were the most favourable for the transition from hunter-gathering to farming. No doubt the peoples of Europe transitioned to being farmers in the centuries after.
Well declared! 😁
Happy new year!
It was not well declared calling a grindstone 'ground zero'. That is speculative at best.
I used to love London in the 90s ,l was with loads of different birds it was great the clubs
It’s a bittersweet symphony.
Negative review warning: this 10 minute video did not get to its actual (underwhelming) point until 1.5 minutes from the end. In addition to which, the title of the video, in omitting the preposition 'in' between 'not' and 'Gobekli', was deliberately and cynically clickbaiting. Thumbs down for that I'm afraid. Do better.
As amazing as this find is calling this location ground zero is premature. If anything It is one of the ground zeros. Relatively nearby to the South in what became the Levant down to Sinai were the Natufians. Among their settlements (some dated about 17-18,000 yrs ago they had several settlements that had grain storage pits. I'm not saying they were farmers but at the least they started to make inroads in that direction. The ancient peoples of Asia(China, Korea, Japan), Asia Minor(Iran, Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Indus Valley), And the Western Hemisphere All of them had their ground Zeros. Many were making the change to farming independently and separately at about the same time.
I define farming as preparing soil, planting food annually and harvesting. I bet it started by the time large grain storage baskets were developed. In fact grain storage containers are compelling evidence farming was underway. I also consider any annual effort to improve or increase plants that yield food to be farming, such as grape vines or any other plant that produces food. Often overlooked/ignored in agriculture prehistory is trees … figs, apples, nuts, etc. As soon as people found a good food source such as figs, i have no doubt they would try to maximize it by planting seeds.
Excellent video. I wonder who used that quern and others like it. Both sexes or only one? Any particular age group? Was it public property of the whole village or private property of some person, family or kin group? Who got to eat the bread made with the flour it produced? So many questions to ponder...
I like to think people took shifts at grinding.
I've seen children doing their bit, supervised by James Dilley.
Thanks you. I'm afraid to report that the study of the burial remains at the village indicate that it was the women who did this hard work. The pathologies of the female bones is quite unequivocal. Answers to many things can be found in the archaeological report. repo.library.stonybrook.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11401/88766/46871.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
@@ThePrehistoryGuysThis document is 854.30 MB which is a monster if downloaded on a mobile phone. Click on the link when on wifi and probably also a PC. Thank you and please excuse the interruption. 😅
You are correct...BUT look at the shape, the material...this (already) is a mature Technology!
Happy New Year!
Doesn’t that artifact merely indicate that these people used and processed grains? It doesn’t seem to tell us much about how they were procured.
Thank you! I enjoy learning pre-history and history as a lay person. Have to sneak it in around busy parenting. Podcasting - my preferred genre is hard for them to sit through it.
This video is a great piece!
Something i can show to my kids and others who ask about why i like finding out about human history.
Thank you!
Funny isn't it? I've been asked lately why I write things down, look things up and why I want to know things.
I thought being curious was a great part of being a human being.
Cheers from Germany 🎉
The Saddle-Quernstone looks to big, unless the miller was a giant? The stone on top is to small and short by comparison. One was also shown in (I think) the final Royal Institute Lecture by one of the Van Tulliken twins?
If you look at the shape the stone has worn into you'll see how it was used. Constant rubbing from knees or bellies on the narrow end has polished it to a shine, the same as we see on religious statues rubbed for luck. Then there's the gentle curve down and slight rise towards the far end. Holding the grinder/pestle with one or both hands and using your own body weight as an aid to crushing, then grinding seeds by pushing the pestle down and away gives the shaping I describe as evidence of ergonomic use. Two round stones, one fixed and one with a handle to sit over a centre post on the bottom stone is a later invention. Did the latter follow on from the invention of the wheel or was it a precursor as it needs less fixing?
*too big* *too small*
I love how stuff from the other half of the world all ends up in a British museum or a "private collection."😂
I don’t mind museums having great collections, but 90% of what they have is not on display. That’s the stuff I want to see and not the sterile, curated exhibits.
@eucliduschaumeau8813 I got this really great book on Olmec culture and the majority of it was from private collections.
Better in the British museums, where entry is FREE, surely.
@patdent I'm sure the folks to whom it belongs, enjoy a trip to a foreign place to see their ancestors relics....for free.
@@scottmcley5111 You're right. The BM is always full of tourists. I've seen European art in American museums too. Go figure.
What a treasure to have on display.
Thanks for sharing again.
Welcome to 2025.
Thank you. I enjoyed the video and the music. I suspect that the intention was to invoke discussion on the matter of first farming attempts of which there appear to have been several. I am curious about the reasons for transiting from harvesting in the wild to planting and farming. We know even neanderthals harvested and soaked and pounded seeds, pulses and nuts around 70,000 years ago. I wonder what would have happened to make the change given it would involve additional work.
Happy New Year Guys from the beautiful Hudson Valley. Interesting video indeed. Much food for thought! Cheers!
*The grinding stone you show at **9:07** is around 11,000 years old.*
Yet that is not the oldest record we have of a grind stone or the connected domestication of grain - in the world.
Australian Aboriginal grind stones date back to nearly X3 as far to 30,000 years ago. Such scientifically dated grinding stones have been found at Cuddie Springs, NSW
agree another white wash from white-hall.
@@Sammyli99 Uhmmmm -- Interesting - but tbh - that might be pushing it.
It's just that discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere tend to get the limelight due in part to their close proximity.
There is also a bit of a hang-over from Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' and its connected use in early scientific anthropology.
In that - the idea of classes of humans in the ladder of progress - that was also used to lay the foundation of the pseudo-science of 'Eugenics'
@@PaxAlotin Nope I will stay with my "Controlled Education" theory after our good Co-vid lesson on medical practices, theory and paper reviews, you stay warm and cosy in a "Mantra repeated 1,000 times by Puppets" must be the truth---world. Its a kabuki theatre from start to finish.
I never claimed this was the earliest evidence of processing of cereals. In fact I mentioned the site with the earliest known processing of cereals in the Levant: Ohalo II, which dates to 23,000 BP. The transition from processing wild grasses to deliberately cultivating domestic grains and pulses around 11,000 BP is an inflection point in human history and I stand by that premise.
Thank you. From London❤
Has anything else been discovered while I was drinking?
Ive had dreams like searching the British museum for something specific.
I once found some uncatalogued and uncased white porcelain ware, in a room there named Gents. A very satisfying discovery.
Don´t you think they also grinded randomly found seeds on stones like this before? People then could not afford to leave eadible seeds unused!
That would all depend on the summer and autumn weather. Some years they would have had more than enough. The evidence being they had enough to store for later use.
I'm talking about the domestication of cereals here. 'Hunter Gatherers' in the Levant had been grinding wild grains at least 10,000 years earlier than this.
well.
you seem to have roused the paleofabulators from their dens.
Apparently the British Museum has had a few additions since the last time I was there. Pretty cool quern!
Last time I went there was over the summer of 1980. I don’t even recognise it now, save for the entrance with the pillars.
A lot more visitors at the BM these days. Queues are shocking!
Almost no civilization in London is now and it doesn't take long.
Happy New Year to you and yours.
Very interesting video... but I'd like to point out that I went to the British Museum (and the UK) for the first time in 67 years, last month. It's 12 hours from where I live. Gobekli Tepe is 22 hours from where I live as well. That quirm stone is fantastic, and I did miss seeing it in The British Museum (but then again, I could only spend a day there, since it's a ways away). But ground zero? Wouldn't that be where the stone originally came from? And while we obtain our food from agriculture, there aren't many of us who live in an "agricultural society". So maybe "civilization" goes back further than the development of domesticated grains? It was a major step, but why not the development of methods to build monumental structures? Why not the art created in cave paintings? All of those were major steps in "civilization".
Ah, but it was a wonderful video!
The Younger Dryas seems to have been a really important time in the developement of cultures that would lead to our own. I wonder if we will ever know much about that world?
Because everything is at the British Museum?
better that than flooded and/or destroyed
Posted before watching. James Acaster says it best, "No!"
I wouldn't buy a coffee in s-bucks if you paid me.
ahhhh agree, wake up world.
@@lauchlanguddy1004 ❤
I love Starbucks.
Excellent video
Thank you very much!
Great video!
There must be a lot of ground zeros around the world. They’re all over California as well.
Time I took another trip up there...I lived in London for 60 years, and only visited it 4 times in 70...
How old are you?
which means brits have traditional culture in the form of tribal art n tech, just like in asia.