Göytepe Neolithic Excavations in the Middle Kura Valley, Azerbaijan

Have you ever thought of how agriculture—in other words, food production—began? Our daily rice and bread, vegetables and meat, even seasonings, condiments and beverages, are nearly all agricultural products. Seafood products may not be, strictly speaking, in the same category, but aquaculture is certainly a part of our food production.
 
Since the birth of humanity several million years ago, we have lived off plants and animals found in nature, but at some point we began selecting plant species for cultivation and animals for livestock breeding. Gradually, we have come to derive our needed nutrients almost exclusively from food that we produce ourselves. Those of you who grew up in the city are probably not familiar with fields, rice paddies, and farms, and you probably have had few occasions to think about the meaning of this change in lifestyle, despite its major significance in human history. It is significant because food production led to the birth of the village and from there to cities and civilized societies with complex divisions of labor and social systems. Our contemporary society is an extension of this process.
 
Although the beginnings of agriculture are in the distant past, learning about the process still contributes to our understanding of the origins and nature of our civilized society. This research takes a comprehensive scientific approach covering a wide range of fields, from the natural sciences to humanities and sociology, to study not only crops (plants) and livestock (animals), but also topography, paleoclimate, and changes in human society in the period being studied.
 
I have been involved in this research in West Asia, the region of the world in which the first farming is believed to have begun, and for the recent years I have been studying how the earliest kinds of agriculture spread to surrounding areas. This book is a compilation of a report on the findings of excavations carried out in the Caucasus region, now a part of the Republic of Azerbaijan, on the northern border of West Asia. The excavation site is called Göytepe. Agriculture began in West Asia around 11,000 years ago. We now know that that it was introduced into the Caucasus region roughly 8,000 years ago. Why did it take 3,000 years for agriculture to be introduced into the Caucasus region from the area in which it originated in West Asia, only several hundred kilometers (roughly the distance between Tokyo and Osaka in Japan) away? What caused the people of the region to suddenly adopt a new lifestyle that they had so long resisted?
 
This is an intriguing question as we think about the regional societies of the time. The agricultural societies of West Asia and the hunting and gathering societies of the Caucasus had long been in opposition. What happened to upset that balance? I believe the cause was climate change at least in part.
 
This book discusses this with a focus on the findings of the Göytepe excavations. It also explains how the society of the day changed radically and rapidly once an agricultural lifestyle was adopted. I hope that readers will enjoy following the vivid portrayal of some of the world’s earliest farming villages, a portrayal built on overlapping evidence acquired through field research on such aspects as the natural environment of the time, the composition of the villages, their buildings and tools, animals and plants, their spiritual world, and relationships with neighboring villages.

 

(Written by NISHIAKI Yoshihiro, Professor, The University Museum / 2021)