The 2009 Rhind Lectures, entitled “New Light on the Dawn: a new perspective on the Neolithic Revolution in Southwest Asia” and presented by Emeritus Professor Trevor Watkins, Honorary Professorial Fellow of the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, were the first to be recorded by the Society.

2009 Rhind Lecture 6: “Putting the story together” by Prof Trevor Watkins

Finally, we are ready to put together the story for the Epi-palaeolithic and Neolithic of southwest Asia, weaving the evidence of the archaeological sequence together with current ideas about the co-evolution of human cognition and culture. From the Last Glacial Maximum in southwest Asia people changed their settlement and subsistence strategies, shifting towards sedentism in large, permanently co-resident communities. This account places the developments we have seen in southwest Asia in the context of the rapid cognitive and cultural evolution of Homo sapiens. What was special about the Epi-palaeolithic and early Neolithic of southwest Asia was the cognitive and cultural capacity for systems of fully symbolic culture (the equivalent of syntax and recursion in language) in terms of settlement design, architecture, sculpture, and ritual. Neolithic communities created rich and powerful cultural environments that sustained a new, attractive and expansive way of life, whether at the level of the household, the neighbourhood, the re-resident community of hundreds or thousands, or extensive networks of interaction, sharing and exchange.

Recorded in the Royal Society of Edinburgh auditorium at 3.30pm on 5th April 2009 using Camtasia software from Techsmith