ETHNOLINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF CAUCASIAN NEOLITHIC CULTURE
Abstract
The study of the prehistoric Caucasus was conducted using the method of modern ethnolinguistics, which required an integrated approach to the problem. In the Caucasus, as elsewhere, the Neolithic era postdates the Paleolithic one, or the Stone Age, and it predates the Bronze Age, the earliest period of the same metal tools, when in the Old World the Bronze Age followed the Neolithic one; Early human societies then learned to mix copper and tin to make a new product - bronze, which replaced the early stone and replaced it with more flexible labor tools. The Neolithic Age was characterized by stone tools, which were formed in a peculiar way, i.e. so called tool has already been processed with special human intervention. In addition, Paleo-Caucasian people were employed in crafts such as pottery and weaving. Neolithic cultures of the Caucasus made stone labor tools by crushing and polishing relatively heavy rock layers. Likely, a part of plants and animals were domesticated in the Caucasus of this period; It seems that in the Neolithic era a Caucasian people permanently lived in rural settlements; It seems that the cultivation of grain in the Neolithic period allowed the Paleo-Caucasians to build permanent dwellings and settle densely, and exemption from the nomadic and hunting-collecting economies gave them free time to specialize craftsmanship. As expected, this became the longest and most gradual (evolutionary) transition period in Paleo-Caucasian human history. It was from this period that the Paleo-Caucasians grew barley and wheat and herded sheep and goats, to which later large cattle and pigs were added. Farming communities based on millet and rice also emerged in the Caucasus in no later than 5000 BC. Bean and pumpkin are expected to appear relatively later. Subsequent innovations of the Paleo-Caucasian civilization were spread from Asia Minor to the north, namely to Europe via two ways: via modern Turkey and Greece first to Central Europe, Egypt and North Africa, and from it - to Spain.
keywords: Proto-Kartvelian, Paleo-Caucasian, Semantics, Phonology, Vocabulary, Protoculture, Ethnolinguistics, Kartvelian Languages, Ibero-Caucasian Languages.
