A few miles east of Girne in North Cyprus, on the seashore, lies the Neolithic site of Vrysi. Archaeologists have examined a small part of the site, and left some of the house walls exposed. The sea has undercut the promontory on which the village stood, and the whole area will fall into the sea before long. Visitors may look at the site and walk around its edges, but may not enter it, lest they disturb this fragile place. If you have seen the artifacts from the site at the museum in Girne Castle, you can imagine them in use, here where they were found. Your guide is a woman who lived here and raised her family some seven thousand years ago, when the village was already very old.

“Welcome to our village, strangers. Please look, but do not touch. My people have lived here for over a thousand years, and our honored dead are buried beneath these stones.

“Imagine this place ringing with the laughter of children, busy with the sounds we made grinding grain, flaking stone tools, chopping wood. We were a happy people, able to raise or find plenty of food, and able to store it against the dry years and the bad crops.

“Though we lived by the sea, we did not fish much. We had our goats and sheep and pigs, and the men hunted in the great forests. The trees provided us with carobs, figs, lemons, and olives. We raised wheat and barley, lentils, even grapes for wine. We could keep pet dogs and cats, because we always had enough to eat.

“We used stone sickles, axes, knives, spindle weights, and chisels. We carved fishhooks and needles from bone.

“You can see just six of our North Cyprus houses. We had about twenty houses in my day. They were grouped in clusters since several extended families lived in our village. We stayed here all year long, generation upon generation. Before our ancestors learned to farm, only small groups of people could stay together all year. In those olden days, the people would come together for festivals and to arrange marriages, then scatter to harvest whatever the wild world provided. Late winter and spring were always starving times, when grandparents died and too often the little children died as well.

“In those days before farming, it was difficult to preserve food for the winter. Our ancestors dug pits in the ground and lined them with hides, but mice and other vermin always found their way into the cache. Of course people have known that some kinds of mud harden in fire ever since the first child tried to bake a mud pie. Pottery was simply no use to our wandering ancestors—too heavy and too apt to break. But we farmed, we lived a settled life, and we made pots. We could store food safely. We had no starving time.

“We lived here by the sea, but the spring where we draw water is some ways away. Without pots, we would need to carry water little by little in skin bags. Have you ever tasted water from a skin bag after a day in the hot sun? Ah, then you can appreciate a pottery water jug.

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