The Neolithic Hypothesis (dates)

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/16/99 4:14:11 PM, JoatSimeon at aol.com wrote:

<<these dates are out of date, I'm afraid, apart from the one on Greece.  And
that should be "Greece and the southern Balkans"; they received agriculture at
about the same time.>>

That's fine. The Balkans then too.

Again my whole point was that it took multiple millenia for agriculture to
move across Europe.  And that if we identify PIE or spin-offs with the spread
of agriculture, the language is moving incredibly slow.

And btw it looks like we both might be out-of-date.  I just received a post
that says that dirt farming may have been practiced periodically in Greece
even before 7000 bce: See, though I haven't read it:
S. Andreou, M. Fotiadis, and K. Kotsakis, "Review of Aegean Prehistory
V: The Neolithic and Bronze Age of Northern Greece," American Journal of
Archaeology 100 (1996) 537-97.

<<Agriculture reached the Hungarian plain in the 6th millenium BCE
(5000's)...>>

That seems about right.  Two thousand years to go about 600-800 miles. Just
about slow enough.

<<..and spread across Europe in the late 6th and early 5th millenium with the
Linear Pottery culture.>>

Linear Ware Culture raced ahead of agriculture.  "In physical extent, the LBK
in its early phase began in Hungary, reaching Holland in two to three
centuries,..."  In fact, T.D. Price in  "Affluent foragers of Mesolithic
southern Scandinavia,"(1995) claims that LBK culture spread five and a half
times as fast as Ammerman and Cavalli- Sforza's model of demic advance
predicted.  And of course there were whole sections of Europe (including
Greece) where Linear Ware (LBK) did not go at all.

<<Agriculture was established in Britain in the centuries after 4000 BCE and
the plow was already employed there in the 4th millenium.>>

This is where I think some of our problem arises.  Evidence of agriculture is
not evidence of the adoption of agriculture.  Iron fragments have been found
in Scandinavia dating to 1200 bce, but iron usage came much later.

Bogucki (Forest Farmers and Stockherders: Early Agriculture
and its Consequences in North-Central Europe, Cambridge Univ Press1995) showed
how the transition to farming on the northern plain took nearly a thousand
years AFTER the arrival of the first signs of agriculture.  The evidence has
continued to suggest that early dates reflect availability without
acquisition. (see Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy's work.)  As of 1996, the date I
had consistently seen for TRB farming in Denmark is 3900 bce and I'd love to
know if anything much earlier has been found.

Otherwise let's just say it takes another 1000 years for farming to go another
what 800 miles?

<<and the plow was already employed there [Britian] in the 4th millenium.>>

The evidence in Britain is even more telling.  Although husbandry clearly
comes to Britain early, it looks like that plough was strictly ornamental.
This is the first news brief from British Archeaology March 1996, and I've
seen nothing that contradicts these first findings:

<<...bones of about 23 Neolithic people from ten sites in central and
southern England, suggests that these `first farmers' relied heavily on
animal meat for food, or on animal by-products such as milk and cheese,
and that plant foods in fact formed little importance in their diet. The
bones date from throughout the Neolithic, c 4100BC - c 2000BC. ...

There are a number of ways of tracing the original food source of some of our
tissues, and one way is to look at the relative ratios of certain
elements, known as `stable isotopes', in bone protein. One particular isotope
gives evidence of whether humans were getting most of their food from plant or
animal sources....

Human bones from the Iron Age and from Romano-British sites were also tested,
and their isotope values were a little higher than those of herbivores. This
is as we might expect, as there is little doubt that in these periods people
practised relatively intense cereal agriculture, and only supplemented their
diet with meat....

The Neolithic results, however, were surprisingly different. They were
as high, and sometimes even higher, than stable isotope values of
carnivores. This suggests these Neolithic people had relatively little
plant food in their diet and instead were consuming large amounts of
meat....

Grain and agricultural implements have, of course, been found at Neolithic
sites in Britain. The isotope results do not rule out some limited grain
production and consumption; but they suggest it did not form a significant
portion of the diet. The sites where grain has been found generally seem to
have been used mainly for ritual purposes, and it is possible (as
archaeologists such as Richard Bradley and Julian Thomas have argued) that in
Britain,... grain was grown, or
even imported from the continent, only for ritual purposes.

Agricultural implements may also have assumed a largely ritual
significance...."

So I don't think my dates, given my meaning, are all that bad.
7000 bce to about 3500, a little later in some corners.  About 3-4000 years,
from Greece (and the southern Balkans) to Trafalger Square.  Much longer
than any pre-literate language could stand itself, much less stay
even remotely stay the same from one end to the other.

Regards,
Steve Long