Archaeologists have demonstrated that civilization in Syria was one of the centers of Neolithic culture. About 11,000 years ago, a Syrian community began a practice which would change man's relationship with his surroundings forever: the initiation of cereal domestication and, with it, the commencement of agriculture, a process which lasted several millennia. The discoveries, made at the Tell Qarassa North archaeological site, situated near the city of Sweida in Syria, are the oldest evidence of the domestication of three species of cereal: one of barley and two of wheat (spelt and farrow).
In Tell Jerf el Ahmar, N Syria. The oldest of the communal buildings was discovered. It was constructed fully two meters below ground level in an open area at the center of a cluster of houses. At the end of the life of the building, a man's headless body was laid face down in the central area. A human head was buried in a small pit, and the whole structure was set on fire before the cavity was filled in.
Finds of obsidian tools and other semi-precious stones from Anatolia and central Asia is evidence of early trade relations.
The term Paleolithic was created at the end of the nineteenth century. Its ancient Greek etymology refers to the « Old Stone Age », as opposed to the « New Stone Age », which refers to the succeeding Neolithic period. The Paleolithic period begins with the first evidence of human technology (stone tools) more than three million years ago, and ends with the major changes in human societies instigated by the invention of agriculture and animal domestication. The Neolithic period however, corresponds to the first farming societies, extended from 9600 to 3200 BCE. During this time, the nomadic way of life was replaced by a sedentary one. Ceramic technology was used make pottery and some stone tools, such as axes, were polished.
On 23 August 1993 a joint Japan-Syria excavation team discovered fossilized Paleolithic human remains at the Dederiyeh Cave some 400 km north of Damascus. The bones found in this massive cave were those of a Neanderthal child, estimated to have been about two years old, who lived in the Middle Paleolithic era (ca. 200,000 to 40,000 years ago).
