Alexander

Regarding the connection between Kebaran and Natufian you may like to
check http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/03.html

You aked

> Do evidences of wavy-line pottery in Palestine really exist?
> Unfortunately, I know nothing about Minhatta culture.

I first came upon the Minhatta phase in "The Neolithic of the Near
East" by James Mellaart (1975). He makes the point that Minhatta
pottery seems to have arrived from across the Jordan having travelled
north from Moab and Edom. It appears to make the initial incursion of
nomadic pastoralists in the Levant, and the pottery seems to have
developed from earlier crudely made forms found for carrying water and
storing seeds amongst the hunter gatherers of the Sinai, Edom and
Negev, who replaced the PPNB farmers with the worstening climates
6,200-5,800 BCE. Unfortunately because the culture was not as
"progressive" as the PPNB, these hunter-gatherer and nomadic
pastoralist groups have received little attention archaeologically. I
can locate no web-based resources for you.

Similar pottery has been found in Egypt at a period roughly the same.
The argument whether the Sinaitic-Minhata pottery came from, or moved
into Egypt is still undetermined. Given that a number of cultural
features associated with the hunter-gatherer precursors to Minhatta
show evidence of derivation from the earlier Isnana culture of Egypt,
I feel the circumstancial evidence points to a move out of Africa (and
hence the proto-Semites).

In Byblos and along the Levantine coast the PPNB culture survived with
a new ceramic tradition (derived from the painted pottery of Anatolia)
known as Amuq ware. The following Ghassulian period produced very
fine quality ware that has never been exceeded, showing the
development of a class of specialised craftsmen and long distance
trade. An introduction to this culture is found at
http://ancientneareast.tripod.com/Teleilat_Ghassul.html

Regarding Afro-Asiatic, you wrote

> If so why nobody speaks about Cushitic linguistic family, Chadic
> linguistic family, Berber linguistic family etc. of the same
> tacsonomic rank as Indo-European family (the Sredny Stog culture
> existed as late as between 4400 BC and 3500 BC)?! Why the problem of
> fighting with conservators, who deny existing a real genetic
> relationship between different Afro-Asiatic branches, is not actual?

Blomard states that the Afro-Asiatic group had split at least three
ways by 8,000 BCE, between VSO, SVO and SOV groups. The first group
later split between Berber, Egyptian and Semitic. I tend to support a
very early split, given the fact that there are no common cognates for
neolithic sheep or goats found in the AA "family". The fact that
there is group fro arguing that there is no real genetic relationships
suggests to me that there is evidence of a much earlier split than in
IndoEuropean.

> Yes, the Anatolian group (the only one!) seems to have split some
> earlier.In my opinion they could be associated with Cernavoda-I in
> Romania - the first steppe horse-breeding culture behind Danube.
> Usatovo is situated in SW Ukraine (between Dniester and Bug) and
> shows peculiarities of both Tripolie-Cucuteni and Sredny Stog
> cultures. This culture also can be considered as a candidate for the
> earliest Anatolians. If we find any specific Tripolian traces in
> Hittite or Luwian cultures it would be a strong argument for this
> variant.

Interesting thought. I know almost nothing of Cernavoda culture. Do
you know of any web-based resource descriptions?

Regards

John