as rude hoe culture, necessitating movement from place to place as the surface soil became exhausted. There is no evidence of agricultural practice by any other people so early in history; early Semitic migrants from Syria, for instance, evidently introduced both wheat and grape culture into Egypt. The principal cereals (wheat, barley and millet), fruits (olives, grapes and figs) and vegetables all were cultivated and improved before recorded history.
With the shift to stock and crop raising, the Mesolithic nomad became a settled villager. Caves and rock shelters in highlands were gradually abandoned in favour of clay huts or mud-brick houses in settlements on plains. Remnants of primitive habitations have been found in the earliest levels of the human occupation of Jericho, dating back to about 5000 B.C. No earlier settlements have been discovered anywhere else, so Jericho has perhaps the longest continuous existence of any city in the world.
Land ownership arose. Fixity of abode led to the accumulation of experience in the form of cultural tradition, and to the transmission of this tradition to subsequent generations. One important result of community life was the strong impetus it gave to the evolution of language, which Mesolithic man elaborated to an astounding degree. A comparison of modern colloquial Arabic, for example, with the reconstructed mother Semitic tongue reveals a continuing process of simplification from the high and remote prehistoric level.
Another relic of the higher life of Mesolithic man is belief in some deity or deities and a crude idea of some life for the departed person after death, as indicated by the presence of food vessels and offerings in burial places. The practice of agriculture and animal husbandry necessitated gods to watch over fields and flocks, instead of the spirits and magic on which hunters relied. Pastoral people were presumably devotees of the moon god, who in a warm country like Syria seemed more kindly disposed than did the
