The first area where these changes took place was the Fertile Crescent, the region that includes Mesopotamia, the Zagros, the Taurus and the Mediterranean Levant. Between , and , years BC, the last hunter-gatherers began to become sedentary, practicing a diversified economy , in which the collection of wild cereals and legumes had increasing importance. Between and years BC. C., during the Preceramic Neolithic A, the first Neolithic groups began to live in stable villages, cultivating cereals and legumes and managing animals that were still wild, in a phase prior to the domestication of plants and animals. In the Preceramic Neolithic B, between and years BC. C., the large Neolithic towns of farmers and ranchers emerged. It is at the end of this period when the expansion of the new Neolithic forms of life to Europe, Asia and Africa occurs. Location of Kharaysin along with other sites of the period. The Kharaysin site is located in the province of Zarqa, northern Jordan, at the southern end of the Fertile Crescent. It is a large settlement of hectares, with four levels of occupation, dated between and years BC. C.
Its excavation and study allows us to understand the beginnings of agriculture and livestock, the invention of houses and the emergence of the first stable towns. Kharaysin Schematic human figurations B2B Email List made of flint. At the beginning of the Neolithic, human representations acquired a previously unknown relevance. In the oldest occupation phase, dated to the Preceramic Neolithic A, in the first half of the th millennium BC. C., the cabins were still oval and were built in pits dug into the ground, although innovations such as the division of the internal space or the use of lime to cover floors and walls, the oldest documented to date, are already documented. In the second phase of occupation, in the second half of the th millennium, at the beginning of the Preceramic Neolithic B, the houses, still half buried, are rectangular with rounded angles and are built close to each other, sharing party walls.
The floors and walls are covered with lime and the houses have a central hearth, dug into the ground. In the third phase, in the first half of the th millennium, the houses are fully rectangular and built on the ground. They are organized parallel to each other, forming streets that are arranged perpendicular to the slope. A painted lime floor dates from this period, which has been extracted and restored and is on display in the Museum of Archaeology, in the Citadel of Amman. We also find human figurines in flint and terracotta, which shows the knowledge of firing clay before the appearance of ceramics. In the fourth phase, at the end of the th millennium BC. C., the town acquires its maximum extension, appearing large buildings that, for the moment, we only know thanks to geophysical prospecting. This phase of maximum expansion precedes the abandonment of the town, the result of an enigmatic collapse that has also been documented in other sites of the period.