The chemist and gifted storyteller Primo Levi, in his book Il sistema periodico, chapter Ferro, records the beginning of a conversation with a fellow student to whom he wished to convey principles of the philosophy of science: "The nobility of man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error, had consisted in making himself master of matter, and I had enrolled in Chemistry because I wanted to remain faithful to that nobility. To conquer matter is to understand it, and understanding matter is necessary in order to understand the universe and ourselves, and therefore the Periodic System of Mendeleev". Every word of this reflection has a clear, precise and shareable meaning; it concerns man and the environment in which he lives, his research activity based on procedures of trial and error, the knowledge of matter that demands dedicated study and spans of time involving hundreds of generations, the desire to understand the universe. The point of arrival is the knowledge of the "Mendeleev Table" (published in 1869), which means knowledge of the chemical elements, that is, of the constituents of all known matter. These are simple substances made of atoms that are all chemically identical but that may differ in their weight (mass, in scientific terms). Mendeleev's admirable work is a banner of chemistry, a scientific initiative and an intellectual achievement conceived to put in order the chemical elements known at the time. Then, however, over about 150 years, the Table was developed and modified and above all it grew from 63 to 118 elements. Some of the new ones had already been predicted by the Russian chemist but not yet identified, and in his Table they occupied little cells with provisional names, while others are artificial, produced after the discovery of nuclear reactions. During the Cold War there was a competitive race for new elements between Russia and the United States.
It may be that the hundred centuries indicated by Levi for the evolution of Homo Sapiens from a handler of stone tools into one who knows and masters the properties of the atom are only a rough figure, a way of arousing the reader's interest, yet the date of 10,000 years before the present (Before Present, BP, as it appears in scientific dating) corresponds to 8,000 BC, the dawn of a period of fundamental changes for the progress of humankind. The 9th millennium BC is in fact regarded by many authors (1,2,3), on the basis of current archaeological knowledge, as the beginning of the pre-ceramic Neolithic in the Near East. This period, the last of the Stone Age, coincides with the end of the last great glaciation and marks the transition of Homo Sapiens from a hunter-gatherer economy (of a parasitic-predatory kind) to that of a farmer-herder. The basis of this new way of life is the production of food through the domestication of plant and animal species, and it represents the beginning of processes of practical and cultural innovation. In certain territories the transition is very rapid, perhaps produced by the arrival of peoples who had already developed the new culture elsewhere and who carried it as a ready-made "complete package", already assembled and tested, and one therefore speaks of a Neolithic revolution. In other areas it takes shape as a slow, considered and gradual passage, and one speaks simply of a process of Neolithisation. This new culture naturally has economic and social consequences for post-Mesolithic populations; they no longer need continual movement in search of food, and so Homo Sapiens becomes sedentary and begins to build permanent dwellings. Neolithisation, born in the Near East, moved slowly into all the regions of the Mediterranean and then towards northern Europe. To give an idea of the timing of this expansion towards our continent, consider that the first Neolithic sites in Apulia appeared around 6,000 BC, while in the Po-Alpine part of Italy, with considerable differences in time between the various valleys, they arrived with a delay of about a millennium and a half. In Italy, moreover, the new economy based on agriculture, unlike what happened in the Near East, took hold at the same time as the ceramic industry.
Returning to Levi's reflection, the aspect that seems to me worth underlining is the gradual development achieved by Homo Sapiens, through the use of empirical enquiry and of his intellectual abilities, in the "hundred centuries of trial and error" mentioned by the chemist-writer. If we count the ancestors of each of us back to 10,000 years BP, with a rough estimate of four generations per century, we reach about 400 forebears in direct line; a number that appears small when we consider that the starting point is the man who chipped stone and the point of arrival is the man who uses the smartphone, who communicates in real time with his fellows all over the world and who sets out to conquer the universe. In between we have a human chain that gradually, trying and trying again, exchanging objects, knowledge and experiences, has built today's cultural, scientific and social complex.
Through an account organised in three instalments, using information drawn from archaeology (places, materials found, and absolute dates obtained from measurements with carbon fourteen, chemical symbol ¹⁴C), the path that man has travelled will be described, within the time span proposed by Levi, in order to "conquer matter" and "understand it". The innovative processes that appeared in the Near East-Europe area, considered significant for the understanding of this path, will be illustrated. First the spread of the Neolithic from the "Fertile Crescent" to our continent will be examined, together with the changes it brought about in daily life, then the birth of the ceramic industry and the age of metals, down to the emergence of the culture of classical Greece, which gave rise to philosophy, to politics, to the study of the natural sciences and of geography. In that period, with Leucippus and Democritus, the idea of the atom as a constituent of matter also arose; this term has come down to us, even though its physical meaning is now very different. It may be said that scientific research was born in the Greece of the fifth century BC, but to pass from the theory of Democritus to that of Mendeleev a research journey of about 25 centuries was needed. Finally the atom will be addressed, in popular and not strictly scientific terms, its nature and its properties as they are known today. Its capacity to form more complex chemical systems (molecules) will also be discussed, along with the ways of observing, studying and measuring it.
Our Neolithic ancestors had already known the working of stone for many millennia, but they realised that in order to improve the functionality and the appearance of stone products it was necessary to innovate (a word much in use in today's society), and they began to polish the objects of chipped stone that they produced. For this operation they discovered a material harder than stone: corundum (chemically, aluminium oxide); this material, found on the volcanic island of Milos (4), began to be traded throughout the countries of the Mediterranean. Corundum is a stone from which precious jewels are made today, but the mineral of poor quality, owing to the presence of impurities, is still used as an abrasive in industry; it is clear that this was a choice of great usefulness and long duration. Some polished-stone tools are shown as examples in figure 1.

Another activity of those times, enjoyed by women and men alike, was the creation of personal ornaments. This practice was already in use in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, and indeed in all the prehistoric sites brought to light considerable quantities of ornamental materials have been found, made with seeds, animal teeth, mollusc shells, bone, ivory, coloured stones and other materials, but in the passage to the Neolithic some novelties appeared. Figure 2 shows, from left to right, ornaments attributed respectively to the Mesolithic and the Neolithic.

The comparison of the objects shows that in the passage between the two periods there were well-defined changes in taste and therefore in the making of the objects; the later ones are of the "granular" type that we still find in jewellers' shops today. For these materials and artefacts too, a long-range trade had developed, from the Near East to the whole Mediterranean and to Europe. In the Neolithic sites around the Dalmatian coasts and the banks of the Danube (which may be regarded as the artery of the Neolithic in central Europe) and along the Elbe, necklaces and bracelets have been found made with shells of spondilus coming from the Aegean (1). The analysis carried out by S. Rigaud on the ornamental objects found at numerous European sites has shown that in the northern countries the "granular" ornaments that mark the Neolithic appeared much later than in the Mediterranean area. According to the author, therefore, the men of the north were slow to adopt the innovative practices of the Neolithic; for example, in southern Sweden agriculture was introduced by groups of the Funnel Beaker culture around 4,000 BC, but in other areas of Scandinavia even a millennium later. Francesca Giusti writes that in general agriculture moved from the Near East as far as Great Britain at an average speed, as the crow flies, of 1 km per year (5).
Farming set in motion a complex system of life that required new working tools and new knowledge. It began with the choice of the land most suited to cultivation, and scholars hold that the "Fertile Crescent" was the first territory converted to agriculture. But important too was the selection of seeds, the design and construction of tools suited to breaking up the soil, to harvesting and to storing agricultural produce. The first eight plant species cultivated, starting from wild precursors, were emmer wheat, barley, the lentil, the pea, the chickpea, the vetch and flax. These plants are still successfully cultivated and form the dietary base of many of the planet's populations; their choice therefore shows the excellent intuition of the Neolithic innovators. The new challenges pushed man to pool his knowledge, to experiment with new implements and to become a maker of tools; at the bottom of figure 1 a sickle of the 6th millennium BC is shown, built with materials already known, tested and traded: wood and flint; the sharpened blades are set obliquely into the wood and resemble the teeth of a saw. The implement was found in the excavations of "La Marmotta" in marshy ground around Lake Bracciano, which protected the wood from decomposition. To make cutting tools (sickles or knives), besides flint a glass of volcanic origin was used, obsidian, which was available on the markets throughout the Near East, the Mediterranean and Europe. Many other materials, having become indispensable to the survival of Homo Sapiens, spread rapidly through all the social classes of the Neolithic populations; but at the same time there also developed a trade, limited in quantity yet long-range, in goods of excellent workmanship with social and/or religious functions and in "prestige objects" of restricted access (4). Capacious ships began to ply the sea from Lebanon to Greece, Sicily, Spain and France for commercial exchanges, and this therefore led to the development of the building of ships ever larger and capable of facing the open sea.
In parallel with agriculture, the raising of livestock spread: the first domesticated animals were the dog, the goat, the sheep and the cow. It thus became easy to have readily available fine proteins from meat and milk, and materials such as wool and hides to make garments, containers and coverings for huts. Farming and stock-raising reduced the need to move about for hunting and for gathering fruits, roots, berries and wild cereals, and so they favoured a settled life. This, in turn, brought with it the need for stable dwellings, whether in natural caves or built with bricks (unfired or fired) and/or stone. Thus arose the first permanent residences (villages, towns and cities); the archaeological excavations carried out at Jericho, on the site where the pre-Neolithic Natufian civilisation had developed, brought to light the remains of a wall and a tower (1) dating to the 9th millennium BC, which make Jericho one of the first cities built by man. With cities there also arose the need for order, for hierarchies, for laws, for kingdoms and for politics.
In that period (pre-ceramic Neolithic) the material culture of the villages consisted practically of cutting tools of flint and obsidian; needles and awls of bone or wood; grindstones and axes of stone; containers of leather and stone; and ornamental objects such as necklaces, bracelets or pendants similar to those seen in figure 2. Foodstuffs were preserved by placing them in pits in the ground or in large stone containers.
Around 6,000 BC, however, there appeared in the Near East new objects and tools made with clay, a material originating from the decomposition of pre-existing sedimentary rocks. Water was mixed with the clay, and the paste thus obtained was shaped and fired to give life to containers of various kinds and sizes: pots, pans, jars, plates, mugs, lamps, artistic objects, images of divinities and other figures of religious importance: thus ceramics were born. Man, who was already master of fire, built pit kilns, where the temperature reached the 800-900°C needed to fire this new material; ceramic containers withstood the fire and so they could be used to cook plant and animal foods in water, in a more flexible and convenient way. Thus in 6,000 BC the ancient "earthenware pot" was born (the firing of ceramic objects in the "Neolithic manner" is shown in this video).
The "B. Bagolini" Archaeological Laboratory of the University of Trento organises demonstrations and courses in firing ceramics with the method used in the Neolithic, as a test of archaeological hypotheses.
Nieuwenhuyse, a Dutch scholar, holds that the ceramic industry, the oldest still in existence, was born in the north of the "Fertile Crescent", around the triple border between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. Indeed, towards the end of the last century, his archaeological team began fruitful excavations at the site of Tell Sabi Habyad (Syria), where it found extraordinary evidence of the first ceramic artefacts and their decorations (6). The research then extended to the surrounding territory, where the Halaf culture developed, from 6,300 to 5,300 BC, which gave rise, according to Nieuwenhuyse, to the "revolution of painted pottery". The simplest aesthetic interventions consisted of marks impressed on the raw pottery with the fingers, nails or awls of bone or wood, but the archaeologists also found a great quantity of pottery painted with the use of various colours (white, black, red, brown, grey, orange). These colourings were obtained from ochres, coloured clays or pulverised coloured stones. In figure 3 we see some decorations reproduced in black and white and given in reference 6.

Besides decorations in geometric style, the archaeologists found many with stylised human figures engaged in various kinds of dance. As can be seen, the prevailing geometric form is the triangle, a figure that will recur continually in many sites of the Mediterranean area, both incised and painted. Figure 4 highlights the rapid evolution of the decorative technique that took place in that territory in about two centuries around 6,000 BC.

The Dutch archaeologist holds that the potters of the time used emulation, but also innovation, to distinguish themselves from one another and to sell their products. Figure 5 shows a sacred two-coloured "Figurine" of the same period, found at one of the excavation sites.

As we have seen for agriculture, so too for ceramics there was a migration of knowledge towards the west; through the coasts of Turkey, Syria and Lebanon the skill in working clay moved, by land and by sea, towards Greece, Italy, France and the Iberian Peninsula. The ceramic industry expanded so rapidly that some scholars think its appearance occurred simultaneously in several centres in the Mediterranean area. In Thessaly, towards the end of the 6th millennium BC, in the settlements of Sesklo and Achilleion, the first monochrome pottery of Greece developed; from here the knowledge to create, decorate and fire clay artefacts proceeded northwards and spread into the territory of the Balkans and then the plains of central Europe.
Beginning around 6,000 BC there developed on the coasts of the Mediterranean (map in figure 6) a culture considered the first of the Neolithic (7), identified as the Impressed/Cardial Ware culture, with reference to the method used for the decorations.

These were traced on the clay before firing, with punches of wood, bone or flint, with the fingertips and in particular with the shell of the mollusc cardium edulis; for this reason the pottery is also called Cardial. Details of impressed surfaces are shown in figure 7. In Italy this type of working was begun in Apulia and Lucania at the start of the 6th millennium BC, and in the 5th the whole peninsula was affected by it. At the Italian sites the decoration was carried out in various ways: by impression, by incision, by excision (removing a part of the material), by graffito (a very fine incision), by the addition of small cords of clay and by the application of coloured materials. Looking at the map in figure 6 we see the first areas of diffusion of this type of pottery, in black, and also the names of the main sites involved; we may add those of Malta, Sardinia and Corsica, again of the 6th millennium. On the first island we have as an important centre the cave of Ghar Dalam (Dark Cave), on the second the Filiestru Cave (Bonu Ighinu–Mara) and on the last the sites of Basi and Stretta. In figures 7 and 8 are shown some images, drawn from websites, of the pottery made in different areas of the Mediterranean in the 6th-5th millennium BC, in order to show its characteristics and artistic qualities; as can be seen in these finds too, the triangle appears often.

I leave it to those readers who wish to do so to look for other examples on the internet (there are a great many) using the names cited in the text and on the map and the bibliographical references. (By registering with "Academia.edu" one can also read original works from archaeology journals (mainly in English) that are a guarantee of scientific authority.) With impressed pottery in the Mediterranean we have reached 60-70 centuries BP of Primo Levi's journey and, as we have seen, Homo Sapiens has continually used his mind to be master of what surrounded him for his survival, perhaps out of a craving for knowledge, but also driven by his desire for beauty. Y.N. Harari writes that Homo Sapiens became "lord of the planet" because it is the only animal able to speak of things that exist only in its imagination.

Bibliography

Bernardino Bagolini, Introduzione al neolitico dell'Italia settentrionale, Supplemento n. 9, novembre 1979, del Bollettino della Società Naturalisti "Silvia Zenari", Pordenone.

Autori Vari, Rassegna. Sito web: neolitico-archeoserver/1; e anche: http://docplayer.it/11857035-1-il-concetto-di-neolitico.html; Laura Seragnoli, Università di Milano, Il Neolitico, Dispense del corso di Archeologia. A.A. 2001-02.

Mario Federico Rolfo, Appunti di storia del vicino oriente, Appunti di Archeologia, Università Tor Vergata, A.A. 2008-09, documento web.

Catherine Perlés, Systems of exchange and organization of production in Neolithic Greece, Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology, 5/2, 1992.

Francesca Giusti, La nascita dell'agricoltura: aree, tipologie e modelli, Donzelli Editrice, Roma, 1996.

Walter Cruells and Oliver Nieuwenhuyse, The Proto-Halaf period in Syria. New sites, new data. Paléorient, 30/1, 2004.

Mario Alinei, Le conseguenze per la linguistica Corsa delle nuove teorie sulle origini indoeuropee, Atti del Congresso "Environnement et identité en Méditerranée", giugno 2000; Biguglia, Corse, Sammarcelli, 2001.

Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens Da animali a dei, Giunti Ed., Firenze 2018.

Gian Gaetano Aloisi was a full professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Perugia. He is the author of numerous publications in international scientific journals. Many of his works set out research concerning chemical reactions induced by the absorption of light. He also took an interest in the photoinduced reactivity of antimalarial drugs. For example: "DNA cleavage induced by photoexcited antimalarial drugs", published in Photochemistry and Photobiology, 83, 664, 2007. Having reached retirement in 2008, he then devoted himself to the study of ancient history and prehistory.