Rapid climate change and variability of settlement patterns in Iberia during the Late Pleistocene

Around 8200 calBP, large parts of the now submerged North Sea continental shelf (‘Doggerland’) were catastrophically flooded by the Storegga Slide tsunami, one of the largest tsunamis known for the Holocene, which was generated on the Norwegian coastal margin by a submarine landslide. In the present paper, we derive a precise calendric date for the Storegga Slide tsunami, use this date for reconstruction of contemporary coastlines in the North Sea in relation to rapidly rising sea-levels, and discuss the potential effects of the tsunami on the contemporaneous Mesolithic population. One main result of this study is an unexpectedly high tsunami impact assigned to the western regions of Jutland.

/pdf/the-catastrophic-final-flooding-of-doggerland-by-the-4tl99z1dxv.pdf

The catastrophic final flooding of Doggerland by the Storegga Slide Tsunami.

In this paper I propose that evolutionary demography and associated theory from human behavioral ecology provide a strong basis for explaining the available evidence for the patterns observed in the first agricultural settlement of Europe in the 7th-5th millennium cal. BC, linking together a variety of what have previously been disconnected observations and casting doubt on some long-standing existing models. An outline of relevant aspects of life history theory, which provides the foundation for understanding demography, is followed by a review of large-scale demographic patterns in the early Neolithic, which point to rapid population increase and a process of demic diffusion. More localized socioeconomic and demographic patterns suggesting rapid expansion to local carrying capacities and an associated growth of inequality in the earliest farming communities of central Europe (the Linear Pottery Culture, or LBK) are then outlined and shown to correspond to predictions of spatial population ecology and reproductive skew theory. Existing models of why it took so long for farming to spread to northern and northwest Europe, which explain the spread in terms of the gradual disruption of hunter-gatherer ways of life, are then questioned in light of evidence for population collapse at the end of the LBK. Finally, some broader implications of the study are presented, including the suggestion that the pattern of an initial agricultural boom followed by a bust may be relevant in other parts of the world.

/pdf/evolutionary-demography-and-the-population-history-of-the-231d4tdks4.pdf

Evolutionary Demography and the Population History of the European Early Neolithic

In extension of the recently established ‘Rapid Climate Change (RCC) Neolithisation Model’ (Clare 2013), in the present paper we demonstrate the existence of a remarkable coincidence between the exact (decadel-scale) entry and departure dates of the Neolithic into/from the Aegean ( ~ 6600/6050 calBC) with begin/end of RCC-conditions.

Neolithisation of the Aegean and Southeast Europe during the 6600–6000 calBC period of Rapid Climate Change

The impact of the abrupt 8.2 ka cold event on the Mesolithic population of western Scotland: a Bayesian chronological analysis using ‘activity events’ as a population proxy

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/841657/file/6825220.pdf

Daniela Holst

Papers

A Radiocarbon Database for the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in Northwest Europe