---
title: "Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Settlement Wars"
year: 9650
country: "Levant"
canonical: "https://recap.at/9650/ppna-settlement-conflict"
slug: "ppna-settlement-conflict"
recapType: "global_event"
startDate: "9650-01-01"
---

# Pre-Pottery Neolithic A Settlement Wars

> Archaeological evidence from Jericho and Ain Ghazal reveals the earliest known defensive violence between settled communities, predating written history by millennia.

Around 9650 BCE in the Levant, people stopped hunting and started farming—a shift so fundamental it reshaped human civilization. The Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period marks when communities began domesticating plants and animals, abandoning the mobile life their ancestors had known for thousands of years. This transition didn't happen smoothly or everywhere at once; some settlements thrived while others failed, driven partly by climate shifts like the Younger Dryas cold snap.

## Summary

The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Near East, dating to c. 12,000 – c. 8,500 years ago,. It succeeds the Natufian culture of the Epipalaeolithic Near East, as the domestication of plants and animals was in its formative stages, having possibly been induced by the Younger Dryas.

## Sources

- [Pre-Pottery Neolithic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Pottery_Neolithic) - Wikipedia

---
Canonical: https://recap.at/9650/ppna-settlement-conflict