Cultural Overview
New Products in North America
A Culture in Mesopotamia!
Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!
Atlatls, Personal Seals, and Temple Prototype
We’ve jumped time to 6100 B.C. (TGD).
Cultural Overview
Nothing new is happening in China, Greece, or Pakistan. In Egypt, the Faiyum culture is gone with nothing to replace it. Merngarh in Pakistan is expanding from its farming community, but there are no significant changes.
However, because of the rising seas at the close of the last ice period, Britain is now an island! Although trade will continue through navigation, the British will become a closed community, beginning their own traditions.
New Products in North America
In North America, all sites demonstrate a proliferation of tools, trade goods, and burial items. Columbia River sites in Oregon concentrated tool making on salmon fishing. In Utah the emphasis was on wool, leather, fur, and basketry.
The Great Basin sites, where people lived in caves or rock shelters, added the atlatl (a curved stick for hunting), smoking pipes, medicine bags and the deer-hoof rattles possibly used in the ceremonies, seashell ornaments, and bird-bone whistles.
A Culture in Mesopotamia!
But the best news is that Mesopotamia has awakened at last!
The Halaf culture, lasting one thousand years, was now first seen at Sakce Gözu, which is in Turkey near Syria. The most important site was located in what today is in the suburbs of Mosul, Iraq.
Halaf culture existed primarily in the valley of the Khabur River, although its beautiful pottery was found throughout Mesopotamia.
Bowls and plates are frequent finds. Nude female figures made of terracotta show traces of pigment as if clothes were painted on them. The earliest stamp seals known in the Near East began in the Halaf culture.
Greek Megaron: Prototype of Classic Temples!
It’s 5700 B.C. (TGD) in Sesclo of the Thessaly area of Greece. A new form of architecture has been developed. It’s called a “megaron house,” although later traditional megarons were not houses to live and sleep in, but were great halls for meetings, celebrations, and/or religious worship.
We don’t know the purpose of this oldest megaron. Maybe it was just the house of the most important or richest man.
It sits on the apex of the hill. (Where have we seen a structure on the highest place before?) Today, only the foundation remains, but we can learn much more from archaeological finds.
The megaron is surrounded by circular stone walls that separate it from the simple houses. It is rectangular and sits on an east-west axis. The foundation is stone. Finds indicate that the walls were brick and the roof was timber.
To enter, you walked through the porch, then the entrance to the main chamber. This chamber is almost square. It has a clay floor and a square clay hearth. On the northwest corner two oblong stone structures act as an area to prepare, serve, or assemble whatever is required. Three conical holes in the middle of the floor would have held the timbers that supported the roof.
Beyond the square room is the back room, possibly for storage. Later, a trapezoid area on the east would become a back porch.
Well! This is quite fancy for Greece! And the megaron is the prototype for the splendid temples of classic Greece.
Photo credit: Marinela Malcheva on Unsplash
