"Thus, around 7000 B.C. in northern Iraq and in other parts of the Near East man ceases to be a wandering hunter depending for his living upon his luck and skill and becomes a farmer attached to the small piece of land from which he obtains a regular food supply" (...)

Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 45

"...coarse, lightly fire clay vessels have been found at Mureybet, in northern Syria, in a level dated c. 8000 B.C. by a radiocarbon sample, and at Ganj Dareh, an eight millennium site in western Iran. Similar vessels also occur at Jarmo [Iraq], c 6300 B.C., but they already coexist with a decorated pottery characterized by lines of oblique tadpole-shaped blobs painted in red on a pinkish-buff surface, also found at the contemporary site of Tepe Guran."

Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, p. 46

(Citation for "Between the Rivers, Before the State.")