Comments on: Explaining the Spread of Agriculture into Europe https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/ Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:55:11 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.6 By: Pierce R. Butler https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543671 Tue, 01 Sep 2009 17:55:11 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543671 … it was the New Archaeology of 1967/8…

Yeah, I had a strong hunch that this was some sort of backlash (maybe the more appropriate term would be backwash) from the US war against Vietnam.

Though you’d think, even while the conquest itself was clearly failing, that the admixture of new genes into the population of Indochina would have been recognized (not to mention the new technologies).

djlactin @ # 6: Settled agricultural societies were breeding grounds for disease…

William H. McNeill’s Plagues and Peoples has a great chapter about how the culture which grew rice in paddies thereby took over all of southern China – and would have even if they’d lost every battle, just by breathing on the other guys.

]]> By: Tim H https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543670 Tue, 01 Sep 2009 12:24:32 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543670 What little I’ve read on this topic seems to indicate that the process was different for different parts of Europe (slow migration from the SE up to around the Danube; selective diffusion along the coast in Southern Europe, with only some aspects of the ‘agriculture package’ being adopted.) So the answer would depend on location. I presume the studies above are for SE and Central Europe, not Italy and Spain.

]]> By: djlactin https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543669 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 23:38:51 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543669 I have long considered a scenario in which ‘replacement’ does not require displacement or conquest. It involves disease. Settled agricultural societies were breeding grounds for disease, which would have selected for resistant genotypes. Hence measles, chicken pox and influenza are relatively benign to them (us). Then, as the society expanded, it encountered non-resistant hunter-gatherers and disease eradicated them, leaving empty lebensraum for the farmers. The fate of native North Americans in the 1500s is an example of how this could happen.

The agriculturalists may net even have noticed what they were doing.

]]> By: Greg Laden https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543668 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:20:58 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543668 Pierce, it was the New Archaeology of 1967/8 (longacre, hill, chang, early binford, ascher, etc.) The post-Childe phase. I oversimplify. But about 1968 through 1979 saw the publication of hundreds of papers putting the breaks first on migration then later, difussion. I’m sure migration was way overplayed before this period and it was probably good to get away from that, but the anti-diffusionist literature is sometimes over the top.

]]> By: Pierce R. Butler https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543667 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:11:03 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543667 Later, there were shifts in the way archaeological problems were conceived and dealt with which made diffusional, and especially conquest-based models impossible to sustain politically regardless of any merit they may have had.

Academic PC run amok?

When was “later”, and what events made historically-educated people refuse to contemplate invasions as a plausible model?

Not even, e.g., Riane Eisler (who popularized mother-goddess-centered prehistoric utopia scenarios) went that far ’round the bend!

]]> By: Charlotte https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543666 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:15:44 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543666 Interesting, I’ll take a look at that paper. Without strong admixture though, wouldn’t you expect to see a dramatic reduction in genetic diversity at the point of adoption of agriculture? And I’m not aware of evidence for that, although it’s not something I follow closely. Certainly in the UK and NW Europe where agriculture came late and we have plenty of Neolithic human remains, it should be easy enough to test.

]]> By: doug l https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543665 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:53:13 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543665 I’m decidedly long-headed, to the point that comfortable stetsons can be a bit of a challenge to find.
Perhaps that’s why I have lately been wondering if the criteria by which we identify “agriculture” in the prehistoric record would pick up the signals showing that a woodland landscape that had been consistently modified with selection by humans to produce in a not-entirely naturally dispersed way. Heavily forested prehistoric Eurasia seems to be considered a sparsely populated wilderness but the forests along the Amazon River it has been suggested might have been more like a garden; being neither the wild untamed wilderness nor agriculture as it would be recognized by Eruopeans of that brief era of contact.

]]> By: katydid13 https://gregladen.com/blog/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543664 Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:11:21 +0000 http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/08/31/explaining-the-spread-of-agric/#comment-543664 I’m not in a position to express an opinion on the papers, but this summer, I was struck by the similarity of pre-industrial farms tools on display in a folk musuem in Galacia, Spain and anything I’ve seen in the US. The exhibits were labeled in Galician, which in writing is not similar enough to the Spanish I learned in school to make much head way in reading the labels. However, after a childhood spent going to historical museums, restored homes, and living history museums, I was pretty sure I could identify most of the items.

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