Uncorking the Past Page 12

A very persuasive DNA study of the Karacada strain of einkorn has shown that compared to other modern wild plants distributed over a wide arc from central Europe to western Iran, the Karacada wheat is genetically closer to the modern domesticated cereal (T. m. monococcum). The archaeobotanical evidence bears out this finding: the earliest wild and cultivated einkorn has been recovered from early Neolithic sites in this region, including Çayönü and Nevali Çori, as well as from northern Syria. Indeed, the origin of three of the eight “founder plants” that jump-started human agriculture during the Neolithic Revolution—einkorn wheat, chickpea, and bitter vetch in the legume family—have been traced to this area. Another founder plant, emmer wheat (Triticum dicoccum), has also been attested in its wild and domesticated forms at Çayönü and Nevali Çori.

  Neither Schmidt nor Mithen went on to speculate about whether the local wheats were used to make bread or beer, and no chemical analyses of vessels from the site have yet been carried out. Neither einkorn nor emmer is ideal for making beer, because they yield insufficient diastase enzymes, when the cereals are sprouted, to break down the starches into sugar. Barley accomplishes this objective more effectively: in modern brewing, a wheat beer is made by mixing in some barley malt to promote the saccharification of the wheat polysaccharides. Our inventive ancestors likely fell upon a similar solution by accident.

  Especially when the first alcoholic beverages were being concocted, an enterprising Neolithic beverage maker had to be willing to try anything. A pure, refined beverage was probably not the goal. Rather, one envisions energetic experimenters gathered around fermentation vats in Neolithic villages across eastern Turkey. They needed to try different combinations of whatever natural ingredients they could find: fruits, grains, honeys, herbs, and spices. Taste and smell were their main guides. No doubt they received a final verdict on their brew from the rest of the community.

  Our beverage maker might well have observed that malted barley tasted sweeter than einkorn or emmer malt. Moreover, because only wild, not cultivated, barley (Hordeum spontaneum) has been reported in these early settlements, wheat was probably the more prevalent grain. Addition of wheat would have helped to bulk up a wild barley beer, besides providing its own delightful characteristics.

  Domesticated barley (H. vulgare), introduced from a nearby area, made its appearance by the late Neolithic. All that was required was a change of two genes to convert a delicate rachis to a tough one that kept the grain from falling to the ground and being lost. Even with enough barley to make a traditional barley beer or a wheat beer, Neolithic beverage makers would have been obliged to add a high-sugar fruit or honey to the vat to get the fermentation going. They might also have reused the same vessel, harboring yeast from past fermentations.

  THE CRANE DANCE OF ÇATAL HÖYÜK

  Some five hundred kilometers west of the upper Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the lower foothills of the Taurus Mountains, an extraordinary site, Çatal Höyük, is rich in possibilities for tracing the development of fermented beverages. I say “possibilities” because a biomolecular archaeological investigation remains to be done.

  Excavations at Çatal Höyük, in the Konya plain of Cappadocia, by James Mellaart in the 1960s and by Ian Hodder since 1993 have revealed a succession of building levels from about 6500 to 5500 B.C., or the late Pre-Pottery Neolithic. A series of some forty structures, apparently shrines, crowded cheek by jowl within the settlement, was the most awe-inspiring discovery at this site, the largest known Neolithic village in the Near East. The walls of the shrines were adorned with painted and repainted frescoes that evoke Palaeolithic cave art and again point to birds of prey as an important part of ritualistic activity. Direct imprints and negative outlines of hands in red paint, row upon row, take us back to the Ice Age caverns, where a group of humans might have similarly signified their solidarity and communion with the gods.

  At Çatal Höyük, vultures (Gyps fulvus) are seen feasting on headless humans, and human skulls fill gigantic multiple breasts painted on another wall. Another image shows a group of at least ten hunters with bows and arrows attacking two stags and a fawn. Their efforts appear to be encouraged by a group of dancers, some headless and one perhaps holding a drum. Actual burials under the floors of the shrines are sometimes headless, and in those instances the person’s chest was usually covered by an enigmatic object—a simple wood board, owl pellets, or an animal’s penis. Outside the settlement, groups of skulls have been found buried, perhaps the counterparts of the headless torsos.

  A strange set of painted interlocking hexagonal cells, whose sides are broken off at the edges, has been interpreted by Mellaart as a honeycomb with bees either encapsulated within their brood cells or emerging above a field of flowers. We should not dismiss this interpretation as reading too much into the geometric imagery. Bees are also likely depicted on a set of unique stone plaques from Körtik, as well as on one of the most elaborately carved pillars in a cult building at Göbekli. Anatolia is renowned for its honey, which includes the delightfully citrusy varieties from the west coast, wildflower types from the central plateau, and those made from honeydew, an insect exudation on red pine trees, in the southwestern forests. Around the highest peak in the Taurus, Mount Ararat, bee hunters still scour the woods for wild hives high in the trees that have not been cleaned out by bears. The great advantage of honey in making a fermented beverage, as I cannot overemphasize, is that it has the highest concentration of simple sugars in nature and, when diluted, will be fermented by its own yeast.

  Numerous stone and pottery figurines of a naked, amply proportioned female figure with child, the so-called mother goddess, is also evocative of Palaeolithic Venuses. The Çatal Höyük female is shown sitting regally on a chair or throne with arms resembling leopard’s paws. On the frescoes, this “mother goddess” gives birth to aurochs and rams. Vulture beaks protrude through plaster-molded breasts on walls. Although the female is predominant, a bearded male or “god” figure, mounted on aurochs and leopards, is also depicted. The intermingling of human and animal is confounding but at the same time conforms in many respects to later mythological thinking.

  We can partly enter into this mystical world of our Neolithic forebears by considering a bird wing that was found deposited in a small, inaccessible cavity, together with an aurochs horn core and two wild goat horn cores. Analysis of the bone identified the bird as a common crane (Grus grus), which immediately suggests that something unusual was afoot. As we have seen, wing bones of other crane and swan species were made into flutes in places as far-flung as southern Germany and East Asia. The intricate mating dance of the Chinese red-crowned crane is nearly identical to that of its Anatolian cousin. Study of the cut marks on the Çatal Höyük wing bones determined that the wing had been perforated by an awl-like tool in a regular fashion. Most likely fibers were strung through the holes so that the wing could be worn on the shoulder of a human as part of the costume for a special dance.

  Figure 11. Neolithic “mother goddess” flanked by leopards, from a grain pit at Çatal Höyük, Turkey, ca. 6500 to 5500 B.C. (height 11.8 cm, head restored). It perpetuated a grand tradition of “Venus” figurines, with roots going back into the Palaeolithic period. Photograph courtesy of James Mellaart.

  Partial archaeological support for this hypothesis comes from a fresco at the site, which shows a pair of cranes facing each other; on another wall of the same room, five dancing figures wear leopard skins and sport tails made of black feathers, possibly from the common crane. At Bouqras along the Euphrates River in Syria, a painted and incised panel shows seventeen cranes dancing as a group, all posed in the same direction, behavior that has been observed in the wild. And I have already mentioned the crane depicted on one of the Göbekli pillars.

  The case for a special crane dance at Neolithic Çatal Höyük gains credibility when we consider that crane dances are found among peoples in Siberia, China, Australia, Japan and other Pacific islands, and southern Africa. When the Greek hero Theseus esca
ped the Minotaur on Crete and landed on the island of Delos in the Aegean Sea, the Plutarch legend has it that he danced like a crane.

  Although we do not yet have the biomolecular archaeological evidence to show that a fermented beverage might have been associated with a Neolithic crane dance or the geometrical and figural imagery of the frescoes and statuary at Çatal Höyük, other finds are suggestive. The pottery chalices (some made of wood, which had been preserved because of the site’s anaerobic, boggy conditions in Neolithic times), funnels which could be used to transfer liquids, and other vessel types suitable for storing and serving beverages—including high, narrow-mouthed storage jars in the shape of a seated “goddess,” bird- and boar-shaped forms, and cups—point to a highly developed drinking culture. The recovery of considerable domesticated barley and wheat throughout the site demonstrates that the raw materials for beer were available. Surprisingly, grapes are absent from the archaeobotanical corpus, even though today excellent vineyards flourish only fifty kilometers to the east, at a high elevation. The use of honey is another possibility, based on the artwork, but still unproven. According to Christine Hastorf, an archaeobotanist for the recent expedition to the site, there is one high-sugar fruit—hackberry (Celtis sp.)—that might well have been a major ingredient in whatever beverages were concocted at the site. This nutritious fruit has the taste and consistency of a date. Wood fragments of the shrub indicate that the plant grew in the vicinity.

  Of one thing we can be certain: the Çatal Höyük inhabitants had some kind of alcoholic beverage. They were situated close to the proposed core area of Neolithic “founder plant” domestication. Grape seeds have been recovered at almost every other Neolithic site in the general area, dating back as early as 9000 B.C. (for example, Çayönü). Other fruits, such as raspberry, blackberry, cornelian cherry, elderberry, and bittersweet, were also being exploited. With such a wealth of fermentable materials to hand, the Çatal Höyük beverage maker probably entered into the spirit of the time and prepared a highly experimental beverage, likely including hackberry fruit and honey.

  TRAVERSING THE ASIATIC RIFT VALLEY

  The wine culture that was consolidated in the Neolithic core area of southeastern Turkey and northern Syria might better be dubbed a mixed fermented beverage or extreme beverage culture, as it likely made use of a wide assortment of fruits, grains, honey, and various herbs in addition to grapes. As we trace the spread of this beverage revolution to other parts of the Near East, the Jordan Valley is of special interest.

  Extending from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on Earth, the Jordan Valley continues the line of the African Great Rift Valley north into western Asia. Our ancestors coming out of Africa about one hundred thousand years ago probably passed this way before dispersing to other parts of the globe. To judge from the wealth of Palaeolithic encampments throughout the valley, however, many must have been induced by the abundant wildlife and verdant plant life to stay on. It is said that you can hardly take a step without treading on a prehistoric site; but you might get the opposite impression when you initially enter the valley, as I did on my first trip to the Middle East in 1971. Taking the modern highway from Jerusalem to Jericho, which follows an ancient route, feels like descending into hell. As the altitude drops, the moderate, breezy climate of the uplands gives way to a much hotter desert environment. Just when you are about to cry out desperately for a drink, the green oasis of Jericho fills your view. Soon you are enjoying mango juice, eating papaya, and lounging in an open-air cafe.

  Ancient Jericho, lying nearly three hundred meters below sea level and close to the Dead Sea, has a sequence of permanent human occupation going back to 10,000 B.C. We have Dame Kathleen Kenyon of Oxford University to thank for carefully peeling back the layers of time in the 1950s and revealing a remarkable early Pre-Pottery Neolithic burial custom similar to what was happening slightly earlier in Anatolia to the north.

  Kenyon found groups of plastered human skulls beneath the floors of ancient Jericho buildings, which resemble the human and animal plaster modeling on the walls of Çatal Höyük. All the features were finely delineated. Curiously, the top of the head was left bare and the lower jaw (mandible) removed and replaced with plaster. Cowrie and other shells, which had to be brought hundreds of kilometers from the Red Sea and Mediterranean Sea, were inserted into the eye sockets and gave the eerie appearance of a person sleeping with eyes closed.

  It appeared that the plastered skulls were sometimes treated like a community gathering. Three might be grouped together, facing the same direction. In one case, they were arranged in a tight circle, all looking inward. I saw a similar practice in an early Iron Age burial cave with 227 individuals, which I excavated in the Baq‘ah Valley, near Amman, less than fifty kilometers away. The skulls, which were not plastered in this instance, had been removed from their bodies in a succession of burials dating from about 1200 to 1050 B.C. and later laid out in a circle around the walls of the cave. At the time, I believed the arrangement represented an ancestral gathering of an extended family in the realm of the dead (Hebrew Sheol).

  As the pace of excavation in the Jordan Valley and its adjoining highlands quickened in the decades to follow, more plastered skulls were uncovered. One of the most amazing series of finds was discovered by chance. When a new highway was being cut north of Amman on the Transjordanian plateau in 1974, an extensive Pre-Pottery Neolithic village, ‘Ain Ghazal, was revealed. A salvage team, headed by Gary Rollefson and Zeidan Khafafi, moved in to preserve what they could. What they discovered were not just plastered skulls, but thirty-two complete statues of human figures. They were found in two pit caches, separated by about two hundred years during the seventh millennium B.C. All the statues had been carefully laid down in an east-west direction.

  The ‘Ain Ghazal statues were of two general types: one-headed with lower body parts more or less defined, and two-headed, with a shared body or bust. In all cases, the plaster had been molded around reed armatures, not around skulls and other bones. The greatest care had been taken in modeling the heads, which had striking, wide-open eyes and irises outlined in bitumen. The plaster had been polished and given an ocher sheen. Some of the statues were clearly female, since they held their breasts and enlarged bellies with their hands in the way that is so common beginning in the Palaeolithic period and continuing for millennia. The genders of the double figures are less certain, as body parts, even arms and legs, are absent; the heads stick up from solid bases. Measuring about thirty centimeters to one meter tall, the statues could stand on their own and were evidently meant to be displayed.

  Another group of finds at ‘Ain Ghazal may enable us to see through the eyes of our Neolithic ancestors and begin to understand the complex symbolism behind the plastered skulls and statues. Three plaster masks of a human face, eyes nearly closed in the manner of the dead, were found together. Perhaps these masks covered skulls intended for burial, but another possibility is that they were worn by a cultic representative of the dead ancestors or a shaman. The statues, possibly representing the fertility goddess and her male consort, might also have been paraded in a ceremony. Their wide-eyed, penetrating stares appear to look beyond the grave and to unite living and dead. After the ceremony, they might have continued to exercise their preternatural powers in the confines of a religious structure. The excavators identified a number of circular and rectangular structures, with prominent orthostats or upright stones sometimes demarcating possible altars, hearths, or apsidal recesses as shrines or temples, and the statues might have originally stood in these places.

  Figure 12. Statue of two Neolithic “ancestors,” their bodies merged, staring out from prominent, bitumen-defined eyes (height 85 cm). The nearly half life-sized figure was found in a mid-seventh-millennium B.C. cache of many other plaster statues at ‘Ain Ghazal, Jordan. Courtesy the Department of Antiquities of Jordan. Photograph by John Tsantes, courtesy Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.

  Two cir
cular shrines provide a further clue to possible cultic activity. A large central hole in the middle of the plaster pavement, which had been replastered over and over again, as might be expected for a repetitive ceremony, fed into subfloor channels. This central feature reminds one of the cult buildings at Çayönü with above-ground and subterranean channels, which the excavators there interpreted as related to ceremonial libations.

  As with so much else Neolithic, we have glimpses of the inhabitants’ symbolic world but still lack firm evidence about which fermented beverages were integrated into the rituals. No laboratory has yet analyzed the pottery of later phases of the Neolithic period, including jars and slipped and painted cups, which would have been ideal for storing, serving, and ceremonially pouring out a potable. We have no evidence of the domesticated grape on the Transjordanian Plateau or Jordan Valley as early as the Neolithic period. It was not transplanted southward until around 4000 B.C. Domesticated emmer and einkorn wheat, as well as barley, were available for making beer. Honey could have been used.

  A recent discovery from another site in the lower Jordan Valley, only twelve kilometers north of Jericho, sheds a new light on the issue. Gilgal I is an early Neolithic village, dating back to 11,400–11,200 B.P. Although excavated more than thirty years ago, its fruit remains were examined in detail only recently, by Mordechai Kislev of Bar-Ilan University. His analysis of nine dried common figs (Ficus carica) and hundreds of drupelets, the inner pulp of the fruit, showed that their seeds or embryos had not been fertilized by the symbiotic wasp, Blastophaga psenes. He and his colleagues argue that this is presumptive evidence that the fig had already been domesticated. A single mutation enabled the tree to reproduce parthenocarpically (that is, without fertilization by pollen, normally delivered by the wasp) and produce very sweet, edible figs that do not fall to the ground. Because this plant cannot reproduce by seed, however, humans had to step in and propagate the plant by taking and transplanting cuttings of branches. The fig readily adapts to human manipulation because it develops roots more easily than any other fruit tree.