by TIMOTHY OLESON
Even after the introduction of agriculture to Europe about 8,500 years ago, growing Neolithic communities still experienced large population swings. SOURCE/Mary Harrsch
As agricultural practices spread from the Fertile Crescent across Europe, gradually expanding west and north starting about 8,500 years ago, they brought increased and localized food production to a continent where nomadic hunter-gatherers had long made their living subject to the whims of climate and the environment. With agriculture, long-term settlements developed, fertility rates rose and, thus, populations grew steadily. Or at least that’s been the conventional wisdom.
In recent years, some scientists have questioned just how steady Neolithic population growth really was. And now, researchers analyzing archaeological records gathered from across Europe suggest that many regions actually experienced large population swings during the period.
Booms and busts among animal populations are well known, but scientists have assumed that technology, including agriculture, “buffers out those instabilities” in human populations, says Sean Downey, an ecological anthropologist at the University of Maryland at College Park and a co-author of a new study on the subject published in Nature Communications. But, Downey says, this study documents “dramatic oscillations in human population dynamics” in Neolithic Europe.
Earth for more