The Drumbeat Forever After

1: Introduction & Natufian Syro-Palestine, 13000-9600 BCE (Atrahasis)

(Re-recorded as of November 26, 2022)
Guests: Kelten, Annika
First, a brief introduction to the focus of the podcast: ten episodes on the Neolithic, about ten more on the Chalcolithic period (the Ubaid and Uruk periods), and then at least twenty episodes on Early Dynastic Sumer.
Then, after a quick jaunt through the Paleolithic, we visit the Epipaleolithic Natufian culture in Syro-Palestine (alias The Levant) around 13,000-10,800 BCE. What did their society look like before the agricultural revolution?
Then, the Younger Dryas (ca 10,800-9600 BCE) was a brief return to glacial climate conditions that marked the boundary between the Pleistocene and the Paleolithic on one side and the Holocene and the Neolithic on the other. How did it affect the Syrian village of Abu Hureyra? What about the local tortoise population?
Then: the dawn of the Neolithic! The early Holocene period (starting ca 9600 BCE) saw a warmer, wetter climate and increasing experimentation with cultivating certain types of large-seeded grasses— keep listening to see what they do with it!
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Works cited

2: Göbekli Tepe & Early Neolithic cereal domestication, 9600-8000 BCE (Ninurta vs Asag)

(Re-recorded as of November 28, 2022)
Guest: Kelten
First, the warrior-prince of an orderly Sumerian heaven hears of a challenge to his authority and sets out to meet it with his obsequious talking mace.
Then, we begin our look at the agricultural revolution with a look at the domestication process that turned wild large-seeded grasses on the fringes of Epipaleolithic forests into domestic staple crops of large, complex societies. What role did the volcano Karaca Dağ play in cereal domestication? What does "domestication" mean, anyway?
Then, we follow the histories of specific grains: emmer, einkorn, and barley. Also, humans indulge their fondness for getting drunk and find their oral health scourged by the sequent effects. What do humans give up in return for a reliable grain surplus?
Then, we visit Göbekli Tepe, which ties together a number of threads that will be important throughout this podcast's entire run: monumental construction, feasts, collective labor projects, the role of leaders in their communities, and the various ways those factors interact with each other. Also, more relevant to the Pre-Pottery Neolithic specifically, we take a look at the local head cult!
Finally: After the battle, because Sumerian mythology is rarely subtle, Ninurta invents forced labor, hydraulic engineering, and intensive agriculture.
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Works cited

3: Early Neolithic Upper Mesopotamia, 9600-7000 BCE (Telipinu)

(Re-recorded as of November 28, 2022)
Guest: Jojo
First, we sing the wrath of Telipinu, which brought down countless ills upon the mortal world and ruined dinner in Hittite heaven.
Then, we continue our tour of the northern Fertile Crescent (alias Upper Mesopotamia, alias southeastern Anatolia, alias western Kurdistan), stopping in three villages: Hallan Çemi (to look at early pig management), Aşıklı Höyük (early sheep & goat herding), and Nevalı Çori (miscellaneous), as well as the earliest evidence for cattle herding in the same region.
Then: Pre-Pottery Neolithic villagers, having domesticated grain, apply the same logic to legumes: lentils, chickpeas, peas, & vetch.
Finally: Telipinu's miraculous return!
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Works cited

4: Jericho & Early Neolithic Palestine, 9600-7000 BCE (Joshua, Jesus & Satan)

(Re-recorded as of November 29, 2022)
Guest: Kelten
First, we look at the Hebrew Bible's narrative about the destruction of Jericho: the Israelites cross the Jordan, an angel alludes to Moses's first theophany, and Joshua orders his soldiers to kill every man, woman, & child in the city (except Rahab & her family) and destroy all their property (except their precious metals).
Then, we move southwest to Pre-Pottery Neolithic Palestine, where we see many of the same historical trends as in the northern Fertile Crescent. By the PPNB, their society incorporated not only the dry-farming communities but also herders in the steppes east of the Jordan. What new kinds of work did the Neolithic revolution introduce, and who had to do it?
Then: humans' relationship with cultivated fig trees, barley, and flax.
Then, we visit Jericho, a Neolithic monumental site famous for other reasons. What should we make of its famous plaster skulls? Or its tower & wall, the first of their kind by thousands of years?
Finally, Satan tries to tempt Jesus in the desert, in the process of which he takes him up to the top of Jebel Quruntul (alias Mons Quarantana, alias the Mount of Temptation), where (from Jericho's point of view) the sun sets on the summer solstice!
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5: Early Neolithic Iran & livestock domestication, 8200-6500 BCE (Animal proverbs, Enkidu)

(Re-recorded as of November 29, 2022)
Guests: Annika, Kelten
First, some Sumerian proverbs about animals, including written language's first merciful lion and Mr. Monkey's plaintive cry to his mother Lusalusa. Pigs, foxes, donkeys, mongeese, elephants— they're just like us!
Then, we learn how foragers' attempts to manage wild herds gradually transformed into a lifestyle centered around domestic livestock, and how Neolithic hunters permanently altered the genetics of wild sheep without even having to domesticate them first.
Then, we take a look at the process of domesticating wild herds of ruminants, focusing on goats in Ganj Dareh, in the highlands of western Iran. It turns out every domestic goat on the planet can trace its genealogy to a single lineage of wild male goats in the Zagros mountains in the late 9th millennium! We also visit the nearby sites of Ali Kosh and Chogha Bonut, to see how southwestern Iran adapts to new ways of life on the cusp of the Pottery Neolithic.
Finally, we meet Enkidu, Gilgamesh's enemy and future soulmate, as he roams the hills eating wild grass with the gazelles, makes a new friend, and finds out whether or not the instincts that served him so well as a wild animal might, in new circumstances, alter every aspect of his being and sever his connection with the wilderness altogether!
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7: Life, death, dinner parties, & the first pottery in Syria, 7000-5300 BCE (Inanna, Enki, & Ereshkigal, part 1)

(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)
Guests: Kirra, Victoria
First: Inanna, patron goddess of Unug, visits Enki in his hometown of Eridu and they start drinking. Will he make any ill-advised decisions vis-a-vis all the abstract concepts he's god of? Will he, having sobered up, send a cavalcade of mythical monsters after Inanna before she can get back home with all his stuff?
Then, an introduction to the Pottery Neolithic (or the Ceramic Neolithic, or the Late Neolithic), spanning roughly 7000-5300 BCE. We'll look at the complementary trends of village fragmentation and increased interactions between individual households.
Then, we visit Tell el-Kerkh, in northwestern Syria, to track its development from a PPNB megasite to a tiny hamlet during the Pottery Neolithic. About 280 burials from the Neolithic here cast a light on malnutrition and starvation during the transition to the Pottery Neolithic. We also see evidence of a feasting tradition shared with the broader region.
Then, now that pottery has become common in the Near East, we take a look at its historical context, its forerunners, and the culinary transformation that it enabled, as well as the chemical process of firing pottery.
Finally: we begin the story of Inanna's journey to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal. Let's see how that goes for her!
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Works cited

8: Gender, marriage, & property in Late Neolithic Syria, 7000-5300 BCE (Inanna & Ereshkigal, part 2)

(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)
Guests: Kirra, Victoria
First, we continue the story of Inanna's descent to the underworld, from last episode. She's dead and hanging from a hook on a wall in hell, so her vizier Ninshubur takes charge of the rescue effort!
Then, we visit Sabi Abyad in northern Syria. What can this site cluster tell us about the state of Late Neolithic gender relations and political development?
Then, a look at gender across the world created by the widespread adoption of the Neolithic lifestyle: a transregional and disproportionate drop in life expectancy for women during the Neolithic, the use of newly domestic livestock as wedding gifts, and the incorporation of female figurines into early record-keeping practices.
Finally: Inanna can't escape from the underworld unless she finds someone to take her place. Who will she pick? And what did her husband do to deserve it?
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Works cited

9: Late Neolithic daily life: farming, herding, cooking, weaving, & brewing, 7000-5300 BCE (Inanna & Dumuzi, part 3)

(Re-recorded as of December 18, 2022)
Guests: Kirra, Victoria
First: Dumuzi, doomed by his wife Inanna to spend the rest of his life in the underworld, has a prophetic dream, and his sister Geshtinanna helps him interpret it. Can she save him from the galla-demons?
Then, we take a look at the entire Near East throughout the Pottery Neolithic, with a focus on the Halaf period (6250-5300 BCE), the period directly following the peak of the 8.2 kiloyear event.
Then, a day in the life of a Halaf-period villager, in a fictional median village somewhere in northern Mesopotamia during the early 6th millennium BCE. We talk about herding, agriculture, textiles, cooking, & brewing beer.
Finally, we finish this three-episode arc about Inanna & the underworld. Can she reach an understanding with the galla-demons that allows her to spend 100% of her time outside hell? How does this new arrangement affect her in-laws?
Questions? Feedback? Email us at drumbeatforeverafter@gmail.com.
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Works cited

10: Late Neolithic Iran & the Susiana plain, 6800-4700 BCE (Sumerian proverbs)

(Re-recorded as of December 19, 2022)
Guests: Kirra, Sheila
First: Sumerian proverbs, encompassing both practical advice and obscure references to shepherds' staves. To stand and to sit, to spur on the donkeys, to support the prince: who has the breath for that?
Then, some Samarran towns in central Mesopotamia develop irrigation techniques to grow crops like flax outside the dry-farming belt. Before the end of the Neolithic, these peoples appear to have migrated both eastwards into Iran and southwards into the Mesopotamian alluvium; we'll deal with the latter next episode.
We also look at cattle in the eastern Fertile Crescent and the earliest evidence for wine in northwestern Iran and the Caucasus, both of which herald a new era during the 6th millennium BCE.
Then, we return to the river plain of Susiana (home to Chogha Bonut in episode 5) to track the history of Chogha Mish throughout the Late Neolithic, through various cycles of ebbing and flowing interregional interactions, until its fiery destruction around 4700 BCE.
Finally: more Sumerian proverbs. What has submitted will exhibit resistance!
Questions? Feedback? Email us at drumbeatforeverafter@gmail.com.
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Works cited

11: The early Ubaid period in the southern delta, 6500-5300 BCE (Bird vs Fish)

Guest: Annika
First, we visit the chronological beginning of Sumerian cosmology again. As soon as Enki transforms the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plain into marshland, our two combatants make themselves at home and immediately start insulting each other.
Then, an introduction to the Ubaid period in southern Mesopotamia (ca 6500-4200 BCE), specifically its climate and wetland ecosystem.
Then, we visit Tell el-Awayli (or Oueili, or Uwaili), the oldest known settlement in southern Mesopotamia, and explore its connections to the earlier Pottery Neolithic cultures in the north.
Then, we finish up by introducing Eridu, the first and oldest city in the Sumerian legendary tradition, and what may be the city's first temple to its patron god Enki.
Finally, Bird and Fish each engage in some light infanticide before they decide to take their case to the proper authority. 
Questions? Feedback? Email us at drumbeatforeverafter@gmail.com.
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Works cited