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The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic (formerly known as the Stone Bowl Culture) is a collection of ancient societies that appeared in the Great Lakes region in East Africa during a time period known as the "Pastoral Neolithic". Through archaeology and historical linguistics, they conventionally have been identified with the area's first Cushitic settlers. Archaeological dating of livestock bones and burial cairns has also established the cultural complex as the earliest center of pastoralism (cattle, goats and sheep) and stone construction in the region. ==Overview== The makers of the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic culture are believed to have arrived from the Horn of Africa sometime during the Neolithic period. According to archaeological dating of associated artefacts and skeletal material, they first settled in the lowlands of Kenya between 5,200 and 3,300 ybp, a phase referred to as the ''Lowland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic''. They subsequently spread to the highlands of Kenya and Tanzania around 3,300 ybp, which is consequently known as the ''Highland Savanna Pastoral Neolithic'' phase. Excavations in the area indicate that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples were primarily cattle pastoralists.〔 They milked this livestock, and also possessed ovicaprids (goats and sheep). They typically buried their deceased in cairns. Their toolkit was characterized by stone bowls and pestles, grindstones and earthenware pots. The Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples also hunted medium and large game on the plains,〔 which they managed with a blade and bladelet-based lithic industry. During the culture's lowland phase, they likewise fished in Lake Turkana.〔 Additionally, they may have introduced the age-set system of social organization to the area at this time.〔 Based on the recovered materials, it has been hypothesized that the Stone Bowl peoples also practiced irrigation and cultivated grains such as millet, eleusine (savanna grass), and sorghum.〔 Sonia Mary Cole (1954) indicates that certain pestles and grindstones that she excavated from ochreous levels were stained with red ochre, while others from the carbonized layers were not. She consequently suggests that the latter were instead used for grinding grain. Other scholars have argued that there is no direct archaeological evidence that the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic peoples cultivated grains or other plant domesticates. Although detailed information on this segment of African prehistory is not abundant, data so far available reveal a succession of cultural transformations within the Savanna Pastoral Neolithic. The transformations seem to have been fostered by both environmental change and population movements.〔Bower, John. The Pastoral Neolithic of East Africa, Journal of World Prehistory, Vol, 5, No.1, 1991 p. 49 (online )〕 Among these changes was the apparent abandonment of the stone bowls at around 1,300 years before present. According to Daniel Stiles (2004), who excavated Savanna Pastoral Neolithic graves, the Stone Bowl makers were likely ancestral to the tall "Azanians" of the early Common Era. The latter peoples were described in the 1st century CE Greco-Roman travelogue the ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' and in Ptolemy's ''Geographia'' as a high-statured population that inhabited the East Africa coast and traded commodities with populations in the Middle East and Southern Europe, among other areas. Credited with having erected the colossal stone monuments in the Horn and Great Lakes regions, they were also identified as "Hamites" by Charles Gabriel Seligman, as "Ancient Azanians" by G.W.B. Huntingford, and as "Megalithic Cushites" by George P. Murdock. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Savanna Pastoral Neolithic」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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