Word: braidwood
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Human history passed a critical transition when wandering hunters settled down in permanent villages. Archaeologists have reason to believe that this experiment in communal living was made for the first time in Iraq or Iran. Dr. Robert Braidwood of the University of Chicago has reported finding in northern Iraq a village so crude that it seems to be close to the ancient transition point...
...Braidwood is not sure whether the pit-house dwellers were truly agricultural. Their mortars proved that they ground some sort of grain, but they may have collected wild seeds instead of planting crops. He hopes to have some sort of answer to this question after the dirt of M'lefaat has been sifted for fragments of grain and other meaningful trifles. Even without this evidence, it looks as if M'lefaat may be one of man's earliest attempts to live in a permanent community...
Jarmo, discovered in 1948 by an expedition led by Anthropologist Robert J. Braidwood of the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, covers the area of a modern city block. Enough of it was excavated this year to give a good idea of life in the earliest farm days...
...inhabitants made no heavy-duty weapons, only feeble flint arrowheads for hunting small animals. Jarmo's mud houses were about 20 by 20 ft., each containing three small rooms and a small courtyard. Between each of the huddled houses were two separate walls. This proves, says Dr. Braidwood, that the Jarmoites had a well-developed sense of private property. The village apparently had its big shots too. One house was much larger than the others, with six rooms and a corridor. It probably belonged to a priest or chief...
Fertility Cult. In the ruins of Jarmo, Dr. Braidwood found many bones of young sheep and goats, proving that the inhabitants had domestic animals. Probably they grazed their flocks in summer and kept them in the sheltered courtyards in winter. To judge from the scarcity of wild animals' remains, the Jarmoites did very little hunting...