Neolithization

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Neolithic Europe

As Neolithization (from ancient Greek νέος neos "new, young" and λίθος lithos "stone"), the spread of agriculture and animal husbandry with the beginning of the Neolithic referred (New Stone Age). The beginning of the new way of life in the fertile crescent was described by Gordon Childe as the " Neolithic Revolution ".

Causes of the Neolithization

Many authors see the drastic environmental changes at the end of the last Ice Age as the trigger for the beginning of agriculture and livestock farming in the Middle East. Accordingly, in the mild Alleröd Interstadial there were particularly favorable conditions for the food supply in the area of ​​the fertile crescent in the Middle East (especially herds of gazelle, wild grain). For the first time this led to a largely sedentary lifestyle for some groups of people. This was associated with a cultural change in many areas of life and significant population growth . The resulting overhunting of wild stocks led to the first bottlenecks, which required an increased use of wild grain. After all, people were forced to shift the focus from hunting and gathering to (significantly more labor-intensive and risky) productive agriculture when the climate cooled down drastically for the last time in the Younger Dryas and had a correspondingly negative impact on the supply situation. A return to the nomadic way of life was no longer possible or wanted.

The subsequent gradual neolithization of adjacent areas is primarily seen as the result of the demographic explosion (around a forty-fold increase) that brought about the new way of life.

Origin and Spread

The roots of the neolithization of Europe lie in the fertile crescent. From there arable farming spread in all directions where suitable soils were available:

The course of the Neolithization, the regional change in economic methods , has not been conclusively clarified, because the process not only took place differently, but also took place in regions with very different resources and climatic conditions.

Features of the Neolithization of Europe

Development of ceramics is one of the characteristics of Neolithization

Characteristics of the Neolithic are a sedentary way of life, the cultivation of cultivated plants, domestic animal husbandry , the use of ceramics and cut stone tools. The latter has been cast into doubt by the Castleconnell dig in County Limerick , Ireland . If the observations from 2001 are confirmed, Mesolithic people were already familiar with cut stone axes .

Essentially, Europe will be Neolithic on two routes: up the Danube and across the western Mediterranean. In Central Europe, colonization by immigrant " band ceramists " has long been archaeologically secure. Ribbon ceramics are widespread from the Ukraine to the Paris Basin, especially fertile loess soils were colonized. In a first step it spreads around 5600 to 5400 BC. From western Hungary to the Rhine-Main area, in a second to the Paris basin, but also far to the east.

Whether the spreading cultures arise from the acculturation of local hunters and gatherers or from the immigration of colonists can only be determined archaeologically in rare cases and is still scientifically controversial. In 2000, Zvelebil developed seven different models, ranging from displacement by immigrants to cultural adaptation of the original population. Investigations on traditional Neolithic genetic material showed that both extremes can be ruled out and mixed immigration by larger groups and individuals can be assumed, with clear regional differences.

Recent attempts have been made to determine whether the ceramic band settlement of Central Europe was caused by immigrants or acculturation based on genetic studies. So far it was only certain that all European cattle come from Anatolia and are not tamed European aurochs . Since the genetic investigations of the research group around Barbara Bramanti from the University of Mainz, it appears that cattle breeding and agriculture in the Neolithic were brought to Central Europe by immigrants from the Carpathian Basin around 7,500 years ago and probably over generations from the site of the Neolithic revolution. Farm animals and seed plants were not obtained through domestication or breeding from the Central European wild stock, but brought with them. The genetic analyzes have shown that the Neolithic population were not descendants of the resident Ice Age hunters and gatherers, but neither were the ancestors of today's population in Europe. When and from where they immigrated is unclear, and a genetic marker has not yet been found. It remains unclear where the early farmers disappeared to.

Even earlier, namely before 5900/5800 BC. The coasts of the western Mediterranean were settled by farmers. From here, certain cultivated plants and cultural features also reach the areas north of the Alps. What is the connection between the early traces of arable farming in the Alpine foothills, which began around 6900 BC? Even for archaeologists it is a mystery, since the Neolithic cultures that can be reliably grasped were still limited to the Orient and the Eastern Mediterranean.

In the northern European lowlands, on the British Isles and in Scandinavia, Neolithization did not begin until after 4500 BC. Gradually through.

literature

  • Detlef Gronenborn, Jörg Petrasch (Hrsg.): The Neolithisierung Mitteleuropas . Schnell + Steiner publishing house, Regensburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7954-2424-4 .
  • Eszter Bánffy : The 6th Millennium BC boundary in western Transdanubia and its role in the Central European Neolithic transition (the Szentgyörgyvölgy-Pityerdomb settlement). Varia Arch. Hungarica. Volume 15. Budapest 2004, ISBN 963-7391-85-1 .
  • Marion Benz: The Neolithization in the Middle East . Ex oriente, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-9804241-6-2 .
  • Detlef Gronenborn: Considerations on the expansion of the rural economy in Central Europe - attempt of a cultural-historical interpretation of the oldest ceramic flint inventories. In: Praehistorische Zeitschrift 69. Berlin 1994, ISSN  0079-4848 , pp. 135-151.
  • Ian Hodder : The Domestication of Europe. Blackwell, Oxford 1990, ISBN 0-631-17769-8 .
  • Silviane Scharl : The Neolithization of Europe. Selected models and hypotheses . Marie Leidorf, Rahden Westf 2004, ISBN 3-89646-072-2 .
  • Wolf-Dieter Steinmetz : The importance of Southeast Europe for the Neolithization in Central Europe In: News from Lower Saxony's Urgeschichte Vol. 52/1983 Lax Hildesheim
  • Andreas Tillmann: Continuity or Discontinuity? On the question of a ceramic land acquisition in southern Central Europe. In: Archäologische Informations 16. Bonn 1993, ISSN  0341-2873 , pp. 157-187.
  • Brigitte Volkhausen: Ethnographic parallels and comparisons to the process of Neolithization . P. Lang, Frankfurt / M. 1994, ISBN 3-631-47112-2 .
  • Hans-Peter Uerpmann : From hunters to arable farmers - The Neolithic revolution of human subsistence. (pdf, 1.3 MB) In: Mitteilungen der Gesellschaft für Urgeschichte 16. 2007, pp. 55–74 , archived from the original on September 19, 2011 .;

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Marion Benz: The Neolithization in the Middle East . Ex oriente, second, hardly changed edition, Berlin 2008. ISBN 3-9804241-6-2 . pdf version , pp. 13, 25-27, 63, 105-110, 136, 146.
  2. ^ T. Collins, F. Coyne: Fire and Water - Early mesolithic cremations at Castleconnell, Co. Limerick . In: Archeology Ireland. Bray, Summer 2003, ISSN  0790-892X , p. 24ff.
  3. ^ M. Zvelebil: The social context of the agricultural transition in Europe. In: C. Renfrew, K. Boyle (Eds.): Archaeogenetics: DNA and the population prehistory of Europe. 2000. pp. 57-59.
  4. ^ Martin Richards: The Neolithic transition in Europe: archaeological models and genetic evidence. (pdf, 148 kB) In: Documenta Praehistorica January 30 , 2003, pp. 159–167 , accessed on January 14, 2020 (English).
  5. Anthropology: Farmers were sexy. In: Focus Online . January 19, 2010, accessed January 14, 2020 .
  6. Andrea Naica-Loebell: The first European farmers were migrants. In: telepolis . September 5, 2009. Retrieved September 5, 2009 . B. Bramanti et al. a .: Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe's First Farmers . In: Science . tape
     326 , no. 5949 , October 2, 2009, p. 137-140 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1176869 , PMID 19729620 .