The Mesolithic contribution
Till the 1980s, it was orthodoxy that Europe received knowledge of domestic plants and animals from the Near East, in almost all regions through the arrival of immigrant settlers from Anatolia and the Levant and their direct European descendants. Radiocarbon dates showed a progressive diffusion of agropastoralism (farming and herding) and associated culture (ceramics, village life, new forms of lithic tools) from Southeast to Northwest Europe, agreeing with an expanding colonist settlement from that direction (Clark 1965) (Figure 3.1). Only in the outer margins of Europe was there evidence for indigenous hunter-gatherers moving gradually toward the Neolithic way of life, but this could be accounted for by acculturation (educative culture contact) through association with adjacent settlers of Near Eastern origin. The
Figure 3.1 The spread of Neolithic farming and herding during the Holocene (our current Interglacial, ca. 10,000 BP [before present] till now). Dates are in years BG.
L. Louwe Kooijmans, Between Geleen and Banpo. The Agricultural Transformation of Prehistoric Society, 9000—4000 BC. Amsterdam, Archaeology Centre, Amsterdam University 1998, Figure 2.
Most recent data confirm this general model (Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984, Gkiasta et al. 2003, Colledge et al. 2004).
Nonetheless, Greece might tell a different story. Its lowlands possessed natural semi-open vegetation, wild forms of the Neolithic cereals, pulses, and legumes, and indeed these were intentionally collected by its hunter-gatherers. Wild forms of cattle, goat, and pig were native to the fauna. Aegean Late Glacial and Early Holocene foragers were adopting a Broad Spectrum economy (see Chapter 2), which in the contemporary Near East was a major factor in the development of the agropastoral (farmer-herder) economy in several regions independently. Even if the domestication of plants and animals spread from the Near East to the Aegean, perhaps it was through contacts between early farmers in the former region and indigenous hunter-gatherers, “acculturation,” rather than via immigration from the East (Kotsakis 2001). The precocious maritime travel demonstrated by the provision of Cycladic obsidian into Mainland forager sites as early as the Upper Palaeolithic, as I suggested a generation ago (Bintliff 1977), perhaps in connection with seasonal pursuit of fish shoals (“transmerance”), might have stimulated knowledge exchange into Greek societies already adapted to more intensive forms of plant and animal exploitation (Sampson 2006).
Perles’ (2001) counter-arguments on this issue were persuasive. The Mesolithic evidence, when she wrote, indicated sparse populations exploiting dispersed resources of low energy yield. The conditions elsewhere (dense packing of increasingly sedentarized foragers in high-quality resource localities), that allowed hunter-gatherers to move to a productive Neolithic economy, seemed lacking in Greece. Early Neolithic settlements, excepting a few special cases, lack underlying Mesolithic occupation, and that handful are more plausibly evidence for acculturation of foragers by nearby Neolithic colonists (e. g., the Franchthi Cave, and Sidari on Corfu).The great island ofCrete appeared devoid of human occupation till the full Neolithic package arrived, unavoidably externally colonized. Nonetheless, the rapid disappearance of huntergathering sites (hunting is a very minor component of the Early Neolithic economy) surely resulted from conversion of indigenous foragers to the agropastoral lifeway, particularly through intermarriage. Significantly, Mesolithic technology and other aspects of material culture are absent from the standard Neolithic assemblage (collection of everyday objects), underlying the domination of the new culture and economy. However, some reverse acculturation would be expected. The high level of use by Neolithic communities throughout Eastern and Southern Greece of Melian obsidian plausibly reflects local knowledge transfer to the colonizers, whilst Perles speculates that the specialist task ofvisiting the largely unpopulated Cyclades for this raw material remained with the descendants of indigenous foragers within the new mixed population.
We have extensive knowledge of Neolithic and Early Bronze Age (EBA) boats. Models from various Greek sites and surviving freshwater boat outlines from Macedonian lake deposits can be combined with EBA iconography on pottery. A range of boat types, but all sail-less, can be reconstructed (Broodbank 2000, Marangou 2001a). Tree dugouts, hide-coated light wood structures, and reed bases, all seem likely boat varieties. In 1988 an experimental sailing from Central Greece to Melos in a flat, lake-reed craft with a cypress frame showed the feasibility of such an extended journey.
The recent Mesolithic survey by Runnels et al. in the Argolid peninsula (2005), nonetheless, challenges the perception of low-density Mesolithic populations, struggling to survive in unfavorable mid-Holocene landscapes (Kotsakis 2006a). At least in favored localities (niches) with a variety of rich plant and animal food, relatively dense networks of temporary and permanent settlement or camp sites may have existed. On the other hand, the fact that very extensive parts of Greece do not offer such rich environments prevents us from generalizing from the sheltered coastal bays of the Argolid to repopulate the rest of the country to the same density of hunter-gatherers. Nonetheless, warning us not to underestimate the complexity of Greece’s broad-spectrum foraging populations is the discovery at Maroula (island of Kythnos), of a Mesolithic settlement with round houses and formal burials (Sampson 2006). Most recently, Runnels has repeated his success in a targeted survey in likely ecologies for Mesolithic lifestyles on Crete, discovering a score of Mesolithic findspots on the southwest coast (Strasser et al. 2010). Despite all this, the very weak contribution of Mesolithic culture to the succeeding Neolithic, and its strongly exotic elements, would seem to leave the balance of evidence in support of Perles’ position, where genuine colonization is the dominant factor in the spread of the Neolithic throughout Greece.
Near Eastern roots
The vast majority of Early Neolithic sites present a homogenous culture, quite different from preceding Mesolithic assemblages (Perles 2005). Only immigrants could have brought the range of skills on display: farming, herding, building, stone polishing, pressure flaking, and spinning. Chronology and cultural similarities lead to the inevitable conclusion of Near Eastern colonization. Even the potential for local domestication of many Neolithic plants and animals represents unfulfilled opportunities: Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic exploitation in Greece remains at gathering and hunting rather than showing progressive domestication. DNA study confirms this, showing that the domesticated species of Europe are predominantly descended from Near Eastern rather than local breeding stocks (Bollongino and Burger 2007, Brown et al. 2009, Tresset and Vigne 2007). Equally significant is the genetic evidence suggesting that Southeastern Europe has been predominantly peopled from the Near East, with increasing contributions from indigenous populations the further west through Europe one travels (Bentley et al. 2003).
Yet, there is no total match for the Early Greek Neolithic with any particular Near Eastern region,
Leading to the inference that there were multiple founder groups from different parts of the Near East. Plausible overland connections are claimed between Northern Greece and Northern Anatolia (Asian Turkey), and by sea between Crete, Cyprus, and the Levant (Perles 2005, Efstratiou 2005), and most recently across the Aegean from Anatolia (Ammerman et al. 2008).
The timescale of supposed colonization fits neatly into major developments within the Near Eastern Neolithic (Efstratiou 2005,2007). Although the Greek Early Neolithic (EN) horizon is seventh millennium BC, if we allow for its earlier origin in the Levant and Anatolia, its source cultures should be eighth millennium BC. The complex of related Neolithic groups at this time in those neighboring regions are known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (PPNB). Cauvin (1994) characterizes this as the “great exodus,” when farmers expanded from a nuclear zone for early farming in the “Fertile Crescent” into Central Anatolia, the Near Eastern semi-deserts, and the temperate Mediterranean zone. This dispersal coincides with the development of second-generation cereals (for example the more advanced hexaploid wheat), the domestication of pulses (legumes such as beans and peas), and the full package of early domestic animals, especially cattle. The fact that at some Greek sites pottery use in the oldest EN levels is confined to figurines and ornaments, is consistent with the same limited use in the oldest Neolithic cultures of the regions of the Near East and on Cyprus considered ancestral to the Greek Neolithic (the Preceramic Neolithic group).
World History
