SPREAD OF AGRICULTURE TO EUROPE : SEARCHES FOR SOURCES AND ROUTES

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n the light of Nikolay Vavilov’s theory of primary locuses of domestication, a transition to productive economy could be viewed as a multicentric process of chronological frames, which are different for different regions and different sorts of plants and animals. At the same time, in global historical context, the earliest traits of domestication of plants were referred to in a strictly defined east Mediterranean zone or the territory of contemporary Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. In the mid-1960s, Richard Braidwood called this zone the Fertile Crescent and defined more exactly its localization on the border of the Zagros and Tavros mountains with their neighboring steppes.

During the 1960s to 1980s, dissemination of domestic plants and animals over the world was considered a long-lasting process that began in the Fertile Crescent zone since ninth millennium BCE (‘‘effective’’ village stage, Jarmo culture of the Middle East). Harvest collecting arose from seeds gathering, which preceded it. Earliest evidences of plants domestication are traces at Natufian settlements of Palestine, Shanidar, and Ali Kosh in Iran and Iraq and are dated about 9000–7000 BCE. Paleobotanic assemblages from these settlements indicate that barley Hordeum distichum L. and wheat Triticul dioccum Schrank were jointly cultivated there with slight domination of barley.

A detailed historical picture of agriculture dissemination from Fertile Crescent to Aegean and Mediterranean region, its exodus to Balkans, and from there to Central and Western Europe in the course of dispersion of Sesklo, Karanovo, Starcevo-Koros-Crish, and Linear Pottery (LBK) culture was reconstructed on the basis of archaeological data and updated sequences of radiocarbon dates during the 1970s to 1980s.

At that time it became known that Europe could not be regarded as the mentioned locus, and it became the motivation to connect origin of land cultivation and cattle breeding in Europe with the impact from neighboring territories, first of all, from Asia Minor. In the context of European prehistory, transition to productive economy was developing from its southern regions to the north.

The archaeological context of the starting point of the process of spread of agriculture into Europe traditionally is equated with the exodus of population from southwestern Anatolia to the western and northern Aegean region. Settlements on the Cyprus island (Khirokatia), continental Greece (Sesklo), Macedonia (Nea Nikomedia), and Crete resulted from this migration are dated by seventh millennium BCE to the beginning of the sixth millennium BCE. From there, early agriculturists moved to Trachea and farther to the north up to the middle Danube region, central Transylvania, and the Balkans, bringing with them the first domestic plants and skills of cattle breeding.

By the first half of sixth millennium BCE, the whole Balkan region was engaged in the process of early agriculturist dispersion displayed in Karanovo in Bulgaria, Starcevo-Koros-Krish in former Yugoslavia, Romania, and Hungary. Formation and further durable and gradual expansion of this population on vast territory localized between Phessalia and Tysa basin and between Adriatic and eastern Carpathians and Dnister basin has caused ambiguous progress. On the one hand, it has resulted in neolithization of local Late Mesolithic cultures (such as the case of Lepensky Vir). On the other hand, movements of this population had influenced significantly the process of further agriculture spread into Central and Eastern Europe due to diffusion and relatively rapid dissemination of an agricultural set of know-how (ideas, skills, domestic plants and animals, and techniques of their treatment).

Exodus of Sesklo, Karanovo, and Starcevo-Krish populations from the Balkan region meant overcoming the natural limits of the Mediterranean climatic zone and is traditionally associated with the origin and dissemination of sites attributed to linear pottery (Bandkeramik, LBK) culture. Its core is localized in the Carpathian region, and during the second half of sixth millennium BCE, transmitters of this culture started their dissemination over broad territories of Western and Central Europe. Recent studies based on new series of calibrated radiocarbon data obtained from sites of linear pottery culture show that the duration of spread of the LBK is shorter than the available temporal resolution of the radiocarbon dating. The rate of spread of the initial pottery making is estimated as 1.6 km per year and is comparable to the average rate of spread of the Neolithic in Western and Central Europe.

Since the end of sixth millennium BCE, one can trace coexistence of at least two sorts of secondary locus of productive economy spread over Europe: foreststeppe areal of land cultivation zone and steppe zone of cattle breeding. Population of these zones differed not only by form of food procurement but also by general livelihood systems, social organization, and spiritual sphere. The forest-steppe population have an affinity with the Balkan cultures while the steppe pastoralists have shown their connection with the nomadic populations of the Eurasian steppes.

In "Popular Controversies in World History" Steven L. Danver, Editor, ABC-Clio, USA, 2011, excerpts volume one p.28-29. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa. 

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