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Edited by Melinda A. Zeder, National Museum of Natural History, Santa Fe, NM, and approved December 5, 2016 (received for review August 12, 2016)
Significance
The Neolithic expansion in Europe took place at an average rate of 1 km⋅y−1. In the West Mediterranean, the archaeological record yields a much faster rate of spread, one that cannot be explained by classical overland models. Voyaging has been put forward as an alternative line of explanation. Here, we develop a computational model to identify the key elements and mechanisms and to estimate the values that yield outcomes that fit the observations. The results show that voyaging is indeed required to explain the pattern. We have also found that interactions with local hunter-gatherers played a lesser part in the fast rate of spread.
Abstract
The earliest dates for the West Mediterranean Neolithic indicate that it expanded across 2,500 km in about 300 y. Such a fast spread is held to be mainly due to a demic process driven by dispersal along coastal routes. Here, we model the Neolithic spread in the region by focusing on the role of voyaging to understand better the core elements that produced the observed pattern of dates. We also explore the effect of cultural interaction with Mesolithic populations living along the coast. The simulation study shows that (i) sea travel is required to obtain reasonable predictions, with a minimum sea-travel range of 300 km per generation; (ii) leapfrog coastal dispersals yield the best results (quantitatively and qualitatively); and (iii) interaction with Mesolithic people can assist the spread, but long-range voyaging is still needed to explain the archaeological pattern.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: neus.isern{at}udg.edu.
Author contributions: J.Z., J.F., and A.J.A. designed research; N.I. performed research; N.I. and J.F. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; J.Z. prepared the database; N.I. and J.F. analyzed data; and N.I., J.Z., J.F., and A.J.A. wrote the paper.
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1613413114/-/DCSupplemental.
Modeling the West Mediterranean Neolithic spread
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