Disappeared by Climate Change. The Shepherd Cultures of Qulban Ceni Murra (2nd Half of the 5th Millennium bc) and their Aftermath

Abstract

Sepulchral landscapes in southeastern Jordan give evidence of hitherto unknown early Mid- Holocene pastoral well cultures (4500-4000 bc), possibly followed by the region's transition to an oasis-type of life-mode, or its contact to Arabia's earliest oases cultures (4000-3500/3000 bc). The latter represents the latest major episode of sédentarisation in the Middle East and has to be considered as the most innovative and adaptive socioeconomic paradigm after the Neolithisation, allowing for sedentary use of arid lands from then on. The (aceramic) Late Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age of Jordan's southeast appears to be part of the western fringe of the pastoral well cultures that once occupied all of the Arabian Peninsula, characterised by their extensive megalithic standing stone graves and cairn fields. Qulban Beni Murra was not only such a large sepulchral centre (>1 km2) with several structural types of burials and other built features; its series of watering complexes (troughs), fed by wells (dating around 4400 bc), gives testimony to a lake/well-based pastoralism that probably became the progenitor of well-based oases economies at hydrologically favoured spots after the climate got drier and colder from 4000 bc on.