a deep cultural change. Population and communities Outside the Near East, most people around the world still lived in scattered hunter-gatherer communities which remained firmly in the Palaeolithic. Within the Near East, Neolithic culture and technology had become established throughout much of the Fertile Crescent by 8000 BC and was gradually spreading westward, though it is not believed to have reached Europe till about the end of this millennium. Planting and harvesting techniques were transferred through Asia Minor and across the Aegean Sea to Greece and the Balkans. The techniques were, in the main, cultivation of wheats and barleys; and domestication of sheep, goats and cattle. The world population was probably stable and slowly increasing. It has been estimated that there were some five million people c. 10,000 BC growing to forty million by 5000 BC and 100 million by 1600 BC. That is an average growth rate of 0.027% p.a. from the beginning of the Neolithic to the Middle Bronze Age. Fertile Crescent By c. 7500 BC (see map above right), important sites in or near the Fertile Crescent included Jericho (Tell es-Sultan), 'Ain Ghazal, Huleh, Tell Aswad, Tell Abu Hureyra, Tell Qaramel, Tell Mureibit, Jerf el Ahmar, Göbekli Tepe, Nevalı Çori, Hacilar, Çatalhöyük, Hallan Çemi Tepesi, Çayönü Tepesi, Shanidar, Jarmo, Zrebar, Ganj Dareh and Ali Kosh. Jericho in the Jordan Valley continued to be the world's most significant site through this millennium. Çatalhöyük (see image) was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia which flourished from c. 7500 BC until it was abandoned c. 5700 BC. Pottery and dating systems There was no pottery per se in the Near East at this time as the potter's wheel had not yet been invented. Rudimentary clay vessels were hand-built, often by means of coiling, and pit fired. Dame Kathleen Kenyon was the principal archaeologist at Tell es-Sultan (ancient Jericho) and she discovered that there was no pottery there. The vessels she found were made from stone and she reasonably surmised that others made from wood or vegetable fibres would have long since decayed. The first chronological pottery system had been devised by Sir Arthur Evans for his Bronze Age findings at Knossos and Kenyon used this as a benchmark for the Near East Neolithic. She divided the period into phases called Pre-Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA), from c. 10,000 BC to c. 8800 BC; Pre-Pottery Neolithic B