The Upper and Lower Fertile Crescents

Circa 10,000 to 7,000 BCE, the Fertile Crescent was actually 2 distinct regions: upland and lowland.

The Upland Crescent, including the city Göbekli Tepe, is where we have found the earliest signs of animal husbandry.

The Lowland Crescent, including the city Çatalhöyük, is where we have found the earliest signs of plant cultivation.

The two cultures traded significantly, but also show signs of intentional difference.

	Upland	Lowland
Food source	Herder-Hunters	Gardener-Traders
Building material	Stone	Clay
Social organization	Hierarchy	Co-creation
Treatment of skulls	Decapitation of enemies	Skull portraits of loved ones.
Art	Dick pics	Female statues
Way of being	Male violence	Female science
Government	Patriarchy	Matriarchy

Upland Crescent, Göbekli Tepe

Follows the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros Mountains, near the border of Turkey and Syria.

The area includes, Göbekli Tepe and other massive stone monuments.

Contains the earliest sites of livestock domestication, including sheep and goats in western Iran, and cattle in eastern Anatolia.

Upland art, inscribed on stone, is often violent. It features predators and penises. In one example, a raptor tears the head off a man with an erection. In another, a lion rears and roars, showing off its male genitals.

One site, the House of Skulls, includes the remains of 450 people. Many of the dead are young adults separated from their heads, in a manner suggesting decapitation during the prime of life. Blood stains reveal that it was a place of ritual slaughter, perhaps victims were even chosen for their youth and vitality.

At Göbekli Tepe there are few bodies, but 2/3rds of the remains are of skulls, often bearing signs of violence.

Note the similarity to later European royalty's preference for predator heraldry and putting people's heads on sticks.

Lowland Crescent, Çatalhöyük

Follows the Euphrates and Jordan river valleys including the Levantine Corridor.

Occupied pockets of fertility in a diverse landscape. Relied on trade to support large, settled populations.

Thanks to the ecological diversity, each area developed a specialized craft.

Farming (or more accurately gardening) emerged as one such specialization, with different crops (emmer wheat, einkorn, barley, and rye) originating in different areas. These are the earliest known sites of grain cultivation.

Used clay for art and construction, instead of stone. Clay usage was related to experiments with alluvial farming, aka "flood retreat" farming, or "mud" farming. Alluvial farming was practiced at Çatalhöyük and along the Levantine Corridor.

Flood retreat farming is "lazy." It lets water do the work of clearing the land and cultivating the soil. And it has an inbuilt resistance to private property since a patch may be fertile one year and flooded the next.

Early cultivators we're not mostly hard-working male farmers, enslaved by wheat or whatever crop. They were probably women, experimental gardeners and pharmacists, artisans of plant materials and clay, and mathematicians.

More: Women invented agriculture

They were reluctant farmers, aware of the labor involved and wary of it.