The synthesized prehistory of South-West Asia, from the cultural emergence of modern humans as sophisticated and mobile hunter-gatherers in South-West Asia around 50,000 years ago, to the time when a dense population of villagers and mixed farming economies existed throughout the region around 8,000 years ago. It is the story of the momentous transformation of human society and culture; after the seemingly endless millennia of small-scale, mobile, hunting and gathering peoples there emerged a way of life that we can recognize as the foundations of our own. It is an account of the emergence in...