Technological progress in the Levant fits a 'punctuated equilibrium' model
During the late 10th century BCE, the emerging Edomite Kingdom of the southern Levant experienced a "leap" in technological advancement, according to a study released September 18, 2019 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University, Israel and colleagues. This finding supports the use of a "punctuated equilibrium" model for the development of ancient technology.
Erez Ben-Yosef, Brady Liss, Omri A. Yagel, Ofir Tirosh, Mohammad Najjar, Thomas E. Levy. Ancient technology and punctuated change: Detecting the emergence of the Edomite Kingdom in the Southern Levant. PLOS ONE, 2019; 14 (9): e0221967
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0221967
While the punctuated equilibrium model has been employed in paleontological and archaeological research, it has rarely been applied for technological and social evolution in the Holocene. Using metallurgical technologies from the Wadi Arabah (Jordan/Israel) as a case study, we demonstrate a gradual technological development (13th-10th c. BCE) followed by a human agency-triggered punctuated “leap” (late-10th c. BCE) simultaneously across the entire region (an area of ~2000 km2). Here, we present an unparalleled, diachronic archaeometallurgical dataset focusing on elemental analysis of dozens of well-dated slag samples. Based on the results, we suggest punctuated equilibrium provides an innovative theoretical model for exploring ancient technological changes in relation to larger sociopolitical conditions—in the case at hand the emergence of biblical Edom–, exemplifying its potential for more general cross-cultural applications.