Archaeologica.org

People nowadays tend to forget that in ancient times, and most especially the Neolithic, lions and wolves were a serious risk to livestock.

I wish they reported more clearly on the walls. I've seen another report of a Chalcolithic era walled community, that they then went back and looked at the dirtwork, and realized the wall was only 4-5 foot high. It was a corral.

This kind of thing is still seen in Africa, where villages have a pallisade to keep the lions and leapords out. I've seen the same in my neck of Ozark woods. A neighbor lost a 70 pound pig. Something climbed a 6 foot fence and hauled the pig out over it. Since then, I've seen a damn big cat in the headlites. A couple years ago, a woman was killed by a big cat while visiting a friend in the woods.

People nowadays assume that all the enemies were human.

I went back to the site to see if there was any more info but, alas no. The "impression" given was that these were more than a fence to keep out unwanted pests but in fairness, it is nothing more than an impression. It does not even say that the walls were made of stone or mud bricks or wood.

Is a wall around a settlement supposed to be one of the mileposts of
civilization?

I think exactly the opposite.

The article seemed to stress the importance of the wall.
Frankly, I have never thought of this before. Like it was the world's oldest wall or something....

In New Mexico they build fences to keep coyotes out.

I thought the article stressed the uniqueness of the wall. Generally, one would not go through the time and trouble to build fortifications for unimportant towns/villages. As suggested by others, a reasonable fence would do to keep predators out. That's a far cry from a stone wall.

One of the pieces of evidence used by archaeologists to demonstrate the rise of Israel in the 12th century BC was a characteristic tendency to lay their villages out in an oval. This apparently mimics the pattern used by nomadic herders with their tents and any livestock are placed in the middle of the encampment for the exact purpose of keeping them safe from predators.

Minimalist wrote:[...] the pattern used by nomadic herders with their tents and any livestock are placed in the middle of the encampment for the exact purpose of keeping them safe from predators.

It's unlikely that nomadic herders would go to the trouble of building a wall. Nomads would use a quick & dirty "thorny bush" corral to house their livestock at night. Like e.g. the east-African Masaï and Samburu peoples still do today.
Walls – with the same functionality as "thorny bush" corrals: to house their livestock at night – were built by permanent settlers.
It so happens I have part of such a wall in my backyard (today it's really a 20" to 25" high mound-like 'ridge' running through my, and many others', backyards). Ring-shaped, with a diameter of about 500 meters/yards, it was built between 800 and 1000 AD and goes by the name of "cow dyke"...
However, human dwellings were also built inside that perimeter, which is how 'my' town got started then.

I's nagged at the back of my mind for 35 years that I maybe should excavate a cross-section of it. Perhaps I will one day.

Finklestein's point is that when those nomadic herders settled down, (as they did to become the proto-Israelites) they built their earliest settlements in the same shape as their nomadic encampments. Whether or not they put up barriers between the houses to confine the livestock is unknown, but likely. There would not have been as many animals as in the days when they lived strictly by herding.

In the colonial US,
people had to protect their crops from the domesticated (and wild animals such as turkeys, deer and rabbits.)

So the domesticated animals such as sheep, cows, hogs, and some fowl were fenced out. They grazed in the woods and fields, accompanied by herders, who drove them back at night or spent the night with them. At least this was the practice in the Appalachian and Eastern US into the early
20th century.
Bronze-age findings in England reveal cattle paths with ditches and
corrals in settlements. (I recently read an excellent book
about "Woodhenge.")

The American examples I know of were on a farm-by-farm basis.
As to towns, palisades stopped being built after the Indians were subjugated.

Factors in wall -building might include:
Security (or lack of it) for the human population from hostile neighbors. (In some civilizations provided by a powerful
central autority?)
Security (or lack of it) for the crops from animals.
Security (or lack of it) for the animals from predators and theft.

I know I'm fudging the difference between walls and fences here. But perhaps the patterns in colonial US are ancient ones that existed before monumental walls and contributed to
their development.

stan wrote:[...] I know I'm fudging the difference between walls and fences here. But perhaps the patterns in colonial US are ancient ones that existed before monumental walls and contributed to their development.

Not surprising, because the difference between walls and fences is 'fudged': palisades stood on/in dykes providing a more or less solid base to the palisade. These dykes later developed into real walls. With or without moats around them.

Hello, I have just joined this discussion group. I'm looking forward to exchanging ideas with you all, although I know that we won't always agree. I do want to make a few things clear and I hope you will believe and respect what I'm saying. I am not an ethnocentrist. I am not a racist. I am not an anti-feminist. In fact, as far as this discussion forum goes, I am not anti anything. I do think however that I seem to be one of the last multi-regionalists on the planet. Multi-regionalism was the predominant theory until some mtDNA evidence came out not long ago and many folks have just given up their beliefs in the face of that. Soooo....hello to all of you.

it's simple....Natural Selection, plain and simple. Nature selected them for extinction.

although I know that we won't always agree

That's cool. It's boring when there is too much agreement.

In my lifetime I have seen HNS revised, modified, and reincarnated. He/She has gone from apeman/brute with a club to an individual with greater intelligence than ourselves. Now he is once again being portrayed as someone with barely adequate language skills, no appreciation for anything artistic or spiritual, and can't even build a fire as well as HSS. I suspect that our view of Neandertal will change again someday, as the science does.

As we learn more the theories have to change. It's an ongoing thing. One of the facets of science. That's what's great about it. It never gets old and boring.

Is that Beagle as in HMS Beagle, Darwin's ship?