© Peter Watson 2017 the end of one line, and begun anew, to announce the initiation of a new line on a propitious location. A new family would take over, led by a new male who established his own line. If sexual reproduction was understood as primarily a matter of penetration, then building the hard, piercing parts of animals into walls was designed to help the family remain fertile. They were hidden because the hard penis was hidden when it was inside the female. Chapter 9: Things Again, several archaeologists have noted that, during the Neolithic, ‘there was a massive increase in things.’ Whether these were figurines, toys, tools, jewellery or cooking implements the number of objects in everyday use – including the routinely thrown-away on refuse dumps after use – increased by an order of magnitude. There was a marked increase in ‘materiality.’ This too links with the development of individual nuclear families because, with their advent, people have far more specific identities and could mark that identity with more and more objects that told others where someone fitted in. An exploration of these objects will confirm that many ‘things’ identified people as family members related as descendants of an eminent personage. Chapter 10: Human Agency Again, many archaeologists have noted that there was in the Neolithic a new sense of human agency. What they mean by this is that there was a new sense in which humans deliberately intervened in, or acted upon, the world, to bring about change, that there was more directed activity, whether that activity was social, religious, intellectual or economic. At this stage there is, according to the archaeologists who have excavated at these sites, less passive acceptance of the world around them, and a greater involvement in making things happen, a greater concern to shape their own lives. Nothing before 8000 BC suggests such expression. This too stems from the discovery of paternity, which stimulated the idea of the specific family, a rudimentary notion no doubt, along the lines of ‘blood is thicker than water’, of family rivalry and family loyalty, all of which would have spurred actions. Not to mention family alliances