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      Regional population collapse followed initial agriculture booms in mid-Holocene Europe

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          Abstract

          Following its initial arrival in SE Europe 8,500 years ago agriculture spread throughout the continent, changing food production and consumption patterns and increasing population densities. Here we show that, in contrast to the steady population growth usually assumed, the introduction of agriculture into Europe was followed by a boom-and-bust pattern in the density of regional populations. We demonstrate that summed calibrated radiocarbon date distributions and simulation can be used to test the significance of these demographic booms and busts in the context of uncertainty in the radiocarbon date calibration curve and archaeological sampling. We report these results for Central and Northwest Europe between 8,000 and 4,000 cal. BP and investigate the relationship between these patterns and climate. However, we find no evidence to support a relationship. Our results thus suggest that the demographic patterns may have arisen from endogenous causes, although this remains speculative.

          Abstract

          Between 8000 and 4000 BP, agriculture spread throughout Europe changing consumption patterns and increasing populations. Shennan et al. analyse radiocarbon date distributions and paleoclimate proxies to show that agriculture also triggered regional population oscillations and that climate forcing is an unlikely cause.

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          Most cited references52

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          IntCal09 and Marine09 Radiocarbon Age Calibration Curves, 0–50,000 Years cal BP

          The IntCal04 and Marine04 radiocarbon calibration curves have been updated from 12 cal kBP (cal kBP is here defined as thousands of calibrated years before AD 1950), and extended to 50 cal kBP, utilizing newly available data sets that meet the IntCal Working Group criteria for pristine corals and other carbonates and for quantification of uncertainty in both the14C and calendar timescales as established in 2002. No change was made to the curves from 0–12 cal kBP. The curves were constructed using a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) implementation of the random walk model used for IntCal04 and Marine04. The new curves were ratified at the 20th International Radiocarbon Conference in June 2009 and are available in the Supplemental Material atwww.radiocarbon.org.
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            THE WAVE OF ADVANCE OF ADVANTAGEOUS GENES

            R Fisher (1937)
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              Bayesian Analysis of Radiocarbon Dates

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Nat Commun
                Nat Commun
                Nature Communications
                Nature Pub. Group
                2041-1723
                01 October 2013
                : 4
                : 2486
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square , London WC1H 0PY, UK
                [2 ]Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland , 1111 Woods Hall, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
                [3 ]Research Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, Darwin Building, Gower Street , London WC1E 6BT, UK
                Author notes
                Article
                ncomms3486
                10.1038/ncomms3486
                3806351
                24084891
                62f5d2c7-1593-40eb-94f6-2d5d229190ee
                Copyright © 2013, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved.

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

                History
                : 17 January 2013
                : 22 August 2013
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