From: jdcroft@...
Message: 10519
Date: 2001-10-22
> >Might a model of "acculturation" not work here as wellAgainst Renfrew's "Demic Expansionism" there is also the evidence of
> >as for the W. Med.? And if not why not?*******
>
> Well, if I may quote Renfrew here:
> "In Europe it has been calculated that the density of population
> during the period of hunter-gathering might usually have been no
> more than about one person for every 10 square kilometres on
> average. The subsistance techniques of early farming can support,
> in Europe and Western Asia, a population of about five persons per
> square kilometre without great difficulty, and without advanced
> farming techniques. That represents a fiftyfold increase -- an
> increase of 5000 per cent!"
>
> So the concept of colonization *is* important. In the Western
> Mediterranean, the circumstances were favourable to the locals:
> domesticates and ideas arrived at first mostly by sea, carried by
> just a boatful of people, and were picked up by precisely those
> Mesolithic groups that were already able to sustain higher
> population densities than the Mesolithic average of 0.1 per km2,
> and already enjoyed a sedentary lifestyle (again: fish and
> shellfish), and were thus more prepared to pick them up in the
> first place. The circumstances were not so favourable
> in "temperate Europe": population densities were lower, the
> lifestyle was more nomadic, and the number of newly arrived
> farmers much higher.
>
> Where the agricultural wave petered out (due to climate and/or
> terrain) there were again opportunities for a model of
> acculturation.