The History of the Ancient World: Практическое пособие по английскому языку. Часть 1. Гончарова Л.Ю. - 6 стр.

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      Chapter 2

                            The Neolithic Age
      Read and translate the text:

       As the climate improved with the recession of the last great Ice Age, Late
Paleolithic man gradually became more settled and started staying in favorable spots
for longer than previously. These first fixed settlements led to a shift from a food
gathering society to a food cultivating society, and the appearance of crops and the
domestication of animals have become features of their way or life. This change in
culture is called the Neolithic Age.
       A regular and continuous food supply created by the establishment of farming
meant that bigger populations could live in settled, more secure, areas, and this
marked the first time that the luxury of non-food producing professions within
society became possible.
       This shift from hunter-gatherer to settled agriculturalism occurred in fits and
starts all over occupied Europe and the Near East. The earliest farming sites in
northern Europe are to be found in Ireland, occurring at approximately the same time
as the cultivation of crops in the Mesopotamian River Valley in the Near East. As a
general rule, the first Neolithic settlements can be said to have been established
around 10,000 BC, and the cultivation of edible plants and the domestication of
animals was commonplace all over Europe, the Near and Middle East by 5000 BC.

      Europe and the Middle East – Equally Advanced
       The existence of an original civilization on the continent of Europe which
predates the civilizations in the Middle East, has to a large degree been ignored by
traditional history writers, particularly those who wrote during the dominant Christian
era in Europe.
        This was largely because of a biblical Judeo-Christian bias which held that all
civilization started in the Near East (the biblical Old Testament deals exclusively
with events in the Middle East, and conventional wisdom during the Age of the
Church held that the Garden of Eden was in the Middle East).
       However, this is not an accurate reflection of the facts. While it is most
certainly true that the great cities and states in the Near and Middle East were
towering achievements, in many parts of Europe relatively advanced societies were in
existence either before or simultaneously with the Mesopotamian or Egyptian
civilizations.
       There are many huge buildings – called megaliths – and early Neolithic
settlements, artifacts and burial sites and even the creation of a form of writing,
which show that the inhabitants of Europe were advanced in the evolution of their
society and culture.