Early Pastoral Nomadism and the Settlement of Lower Mesopotamia

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. The Akkadians' nomadic origins have generally been assumed. However, the conventional prehistoric archaeological picture fails to illuminate those origins and the Akkadians' involvement in Akkad. Thus the origins of pastoral nomadism must be sought in the context of mixed farming within the Fertile Crescent, specifically during the PPNB. Subsequent expansion into marginal agricultural lands led to a symbiotic relationship between pastoral nomads and farmers. The Akkadians seem to have moved into the northern Arabian steppe and desert (Jezireh and Hamada) during the mid-seventh millennium B.c.; the PPNB/ C populations apparently began intensive herding at the end of that period, and maintained ties to the Fertile Crescent seen in both exotic trade and everyday culture. They began to penetrate into Akkad during the time under discussion. Archaeological sequences in the Arabian desert suggest that the Akkadians probably were of a West Semitic (Levantine) background. Thus, the alluvium in the Akkadian area became a distinct entity as early as ca. 6000 B. C. and represented the early prehistoric forerunners to Akkadians of thefourth and third millennia B.c.

The emergence of Y-chromosome haplogroup J1e among Arabic-speaking populations

“…In summary, haplogroup J1e data suggest an advance of the Neolithic period agriculturalists/pastoralists into the arid regions of Arabia from the Fertile Crescent and support an association with a Semitic linguistic common denominator. 14 …”

“…6000-7000 BCE) of domesticated herding in the arid steppe desert regions. 14 We recently showed an inverse correlation between J1-M267 frequency and mean annual rainfall in the Middle East populations. 15 This finding was interpreted as a founder effect associated with small groups of Neolithic herder-hunters moving into the arid regions of the Arabian Peninsula with a pastoral economy, whereas another ancestral population with a closely associated sister clade, J2a-M410, remained mainly in the regions of the Fertile Crescent that had sufficient rainfall to support a Neolithic farming economy.…”

Bidirectional blade technology on naviform cores from northern Arabia: New evidence of Arabian‐Levantine interactions in the Neolithic

“…Such occurrences are found across eastern Jordan (Betts et al, ; Garrard et al, ), the Amman region (Müller‐Neuhof, ; Rollefson et al, ), the Syrian steppe around Palmyra (Akazawa, ), in western Iraq (Eichmann et al, ) and in western and northern Saudi Arabia (Garrod, ; Ingraham et al, ). While these burin sites appear to be concentrated in the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula (Zarins, ) research conducted in southern Oman has brought forth some examples (Cremaschi & Negrino, ). The burin sites from Oman, however, lack bidirectional blade production on naviform cores, further highlighting the cultural divergence between North and South Arabia.…”

Urbanization as the Cause of Cities: Notes from the Near East and the Northeast

“…When they returned home they exchanged the sheep/goat products for the grain and pulses that had been harvested and stored for them in the corridor buildings. (Maisels, 1999,118; see also Zarins, 1990) The nomads also served as traders, and as such the economic system marked by urban centers served by nomads in mutual interdependence (villages pro vided finished goods, nomads raw materials and goods from other villages) was born. This spatial division of labor would be a trademark of the ancient econ omy for thousands of years to come, and it was a necessary precursor for the emergence of the city (Thomas 2010).…”