Neolithic, also called New Stone Age, final stage of cultural evolution or technological development among prehistoric humans. It was characterized by stone tools shaped by polishing or grinding, dependence on domesticated plants or animals, settlement in permanent villages, and the appearance of such crafts as pottery and weaving. The Neolithic followed the Paleolithic Period, or age of chipped-stone tools, and preceded the Bronze Age, or early period of metal tools.
The Neolithic stage of development was attained during the Holocene Epoch (the last 11,700 years of Earth history). The starting point of the Neolithic is much debated, with different parts of the world having achieved the Neolithic stage at different times, but it is generally thought to have occurred sometime about 10,000 BCE. During that time, humans learned to raise crops and keep domestic livestock and were thus no longer dependent on hunting, fishing, and gathering wild plants. Neolithic cultures made more-useful stone tools by grinding and polishing relatively hard rocks rather than merely chipping softer ones down to the desired shape. The cultivation of cereal grains enabled Neolithic peoples to build permanent dwellings and congregate in villages, and the release from nomadism and a hunting-gathering economy gave them the time to pursue specialized crafts.
Archaeological evidence indicates that the transition from food-collecting cultures to food-producing ones gradually occurred across Asia and Europe from a starting point in the Fertile Crescent. The first evidence of cultivation and animal domestication in southwestern Asia has been dated to roughly 9500 BCE, which suggests that those activities may have begun before that date. A way of life based on farming and settled villages had been firmly achieved by 7000 BCE in the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys (now in Iraq and Iran) and in what are now Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan. Those earliest farmers raised barley and wheat and kept sheep and goats, later supplemented by cattle and pigs. Their innovations spread from the Middle East northward into Europe by two routes: across Turkey and Greece into central Europe, and across Egypt and North Africa and thence to Spain. Farming communities appeared in Greece as early as 7000 BCE, and farming spread northward throughout the continent over the next four millennia. This long and gradual transition was not completed in Britain and Scandinavia until after 3000 BCE and is known as the Mesolithic.
Neolithic technologies also spread eastward to the Indus River valley of India by 5000 BCE. Farming communities based on millet and rice appeared in the Huang He (Yellow River) valley of China and in Southeast Asia by about 3500 BCE. Neolithic modes of life were achieved independently in the New World. Corn (maize), beans, and squash were gradually domesticated in Mexico and Central America from 6500 BCE on, though sedentary village life did not commence there until much later, at about 2000 BCE.
In the Old World the Neolithic was succeeded by the Bronze Age when human societies learned to combine copper and tin to make bronze, which replaced stone for use as tools and weapons.
The Birth of Civilisation - Cult of the Skull (8800 BC to 6500 BC)
The Rise & Fall of Europe's First Longhouse Builders - European Prehistory
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Theory:
The zombies are crypto-blacks. They're coming for you and it's totally OK to take out all the guns you've been carefully stockpiling and shoot them. Otherwise you'll become one with them!
They almost never are. Like this gets thrown around a lot here, but in most post Night of the Living Dead movies the zombies are white middle class consumers, random Londoners, mostly white pirates, space aliens, rich people, Nazis, cruise ship passengers; Basically any group other than racialized minorities. I'm open to the idea that there are a bunch of zombie movies I haven't seen where the zombies are coded as racialized minorities, but i haven't seen or heard of them. The closest I can think of off hand would be Resident Evil 4, where the Zombies are the Japanese designer's idea of a remote Spanish rural village.
I honestly can't even think of a zombie movie where they're a metaphor for immigration. One of the really consistent things about the zombie genre is that the zombies come from within - They're your neighbors, they're part of your socioeconomic and racial class. Part of the horror is that insiders become outsiders, people who are like you become the dangerous, ravenous other that seeks to destroy you. that juxtaposition is essential to the horror and I would say is largely what distinguishes zombie movies from other kinds of horror movies; People who should be on your side are unwillingly converted in to a hostile enemy. There are also a fair few zombie stories that aren't even really about zombies, zombies are just the excuse to throw the characters in to a very stressful situation.
I don't mean the zombies are literally black people. They're what whites imagine blacks are - this swarm that's going to consume them and turn them into one of them.