Back to the Mesolithic

For Mardin / Tur Abdin: the 10000s-8000s BC. Scholars slot these millennia into the Mesolithic-now-called-Epipaleolithic, and beyond. In Turkish, since this language has displaced the native Syriac, the complex is "Şika Rika". We don't know what the locals then spoke, maybe Hurri.

The Şika Rika culture, or cultures, number about twenty nearby villages. Cities wouldn't be a thing until later. Their existence looks to start with Younger Dryas 10900 BC, which they outlasted past 9600 BC. Their tools were flint and whatever pottery they had was aceramic. Among this pottery were stone pestles; some mortars were carved from the bedrock directly.

This means the culture made porridge, maybe even tortilla. It also means they were sedentary, at least seasonally, when cereals could be gathered. This is all too early for millet and I don't think they were farming, as such; plucking local barleycorn seems likely (and avoiding rye, that weed). Herding goat be possible.

For reference, Göbekli Tepe sprouts up ~9500 BC after the Earth warmed back up. This is what kicks off the Neolithic.

For the Younger Dryas epoch, though... might we be seeing the term "Mesolithic" return to grace? One (reasonable) argument for knocking it off was that we simply didn't have the data for that timespan leading to the Neolithic agriculture. Now, we might.