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.