It is interesting that portable pottery does not appear until the last third of the life of the Jarmo village. Throughout the duration of the village, however, its people had experimented with the plastic qualities of clay. They modeled little figurines of animals and of human beings in clay; one type of human figurine they favored was that of a markedly pregnant woman, probably the expression of some sort of fertility spirit. They provided their house floors with baked-in-place depressions, either as basins or hearths, and later with domed ovens of clay. As we’ve noted, the houses themselves were of clay or mud; one could almost say they were built up like a house-sized pot. Then, finally, the idea of making portable pottery itself appeared, although I very much doubt that the people of the Jarmo village discovered the art. On the other hand, the old tradition of making flint blades and microlithic tools was still very strong at Jarmo. The sickle-blade was made in quantities, but so also were many of the much older tool types. Strangely enough, it is within this age-old category of chipped stone tools that we see one of the clearest pointers to a newer age. Many of the Jarmo chipped stone tools--microliths--were made of obsidian, a black volcanic natural glass. The obsidian beds nearest to Jarmo are over three hundred miles to the north. Already a bulk carrying trade had been established--the forerunner of commerce--and the routes were set by which, in later times, the metal trade was to move. There are now twelve radioactive carbon “dates” from Jarmo. The most reasonable cluster of determinations averages to about 6750 ± 200 B.C., although there is a completely unreasonable range of “dates” running from 3250 to 9250 B.C.! _If_ I am right in what I take to be “reasonable,” the first flush of the food-producing revolution had been achieved almost nine thousand years ago. HASSUNA, IN UPPER MESOPOTAMIAN IRAQ We are not sure just how soon after Jarmo the next assemblage of Iraqi material is to be placed. I do not think the time was long, and there are a few hints that detailed habits in the making of pottery and ground stone tools were actually continued from Jarmo times into the time of the next full assemblage. This is called after a site named Hassuna, a few miles to the south and west of modern Mosul. We also have Hassunan type materials from several other sites in the same general region. It is probably too soon to make generalizations about it, but the Hassunan sites seem to cluster at slightly lower elevations than those we have been talking about so far.