Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Article
  • Published:

Climate shaped how Neolithic farmers and European hunter-gatherers interacted after a major slowdown from 6,100 bce to 4,500 bce

Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages 1004–1010 (2020)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

The Neolithic transition in Europe was driven by the rapid dispersal of Near Eastern farmers who, over a period of 3,500 years, brought food production to the furthest corners of the continent. However, this wave of expansion was far from homogeneous, and climatic factors may have driven a marked slowdown observed at higher latitudes. Here, we test this hypothesis by assembling a large database of archaeological dates of first arrival of farming to quantify the expansion dynamics. We identify four axes of expansion and observe a slowdown along three axes when crossing the same climatic threshold. This threshold reflects the quality of the growing season, suggesting that Near Eastern crops might have struggled under more challenging climatic conditions. This same threshold also predicts the mixing of farmers and hunter-gatherers as estimated from ancient DNA, suggesting that unreliable yields in these regions might have favoured the contact between the two groups.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Four major axes of expansion of the Neolithic transition.
Fig. 2: Axis-specific expansion speeds and climatic conditions.
Fig. 3: Hunter-gather ancestry and climatic conditions.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The data collected for this study are available from the Open Science Framework repository (https://osf.io/2hcqr/?view_only=c06b3949770549379ff7e5e4eceaf876).

Code availability

The code used in this study is available from the Open Science Framework repository (https://osf.io/2hcqr/?view_only=c06b3949770549379ff7e5e4eceaf876).

References

  1. Price, T. D. Europe’s First Farmers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

  2. Perlès, C., Quiles, A. & Valladas, H. Early seventh-millennium AMS dates from domestic seeds in the initial Neolithic at Franchthi Cave (Argolid, Greece). Antiquity 87, 1001–1015 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  3. Pinhasi, R. & von Cramon-Taubadel, N. Craniometric data supports demic diffusion model for the spread of agriculture into Europe. PLoS ONE 4, e6747 (2009).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  4. Von Cramon-Taubadel, N. & Pinhasi, R. Craniometric data support a mosaic model of demic and cultural Neolithic diffusion to outlying regions of Europe. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 278, 2874–2880 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  5. Cassidy, L. M. et al. Neolithic and Bronze Age migration to Ireland and establishment of the insular Atlantic genome. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 368–373 (2016).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  6. Kılınç, G. M. et al. The demographic development of the first farmers in Anatolia. Curr. Biol. 26, 2659–2666 (2016).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  7. Lazaridis, I. et al. Genomic insights into the origin of farming in the ancient Near East. Nature 536, 419–424 (2016).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  8. Skoglund, P. et al. Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Europe. Science 336, 466–469 (2012).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  9. Mathieson, I. et al. Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature 528, 499–503 (2015).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  10. Hofmanová, Z. et al. Early farmers from across Europe directly descended from Neolithic Aegeans. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 6886–6891 (2016).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  11. Banks, W. E., Antunes, N., Rigaud, S. & d’Errico, F. Ecological constraints on the first prehistoric farmers in Europe. J. Archaeol. Sci. 40, 2746–2753 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Bocquet-Appel, J.-P., Naji, S., Linden, M. V. & Kozlowski, J. K. Detection of diffusion and contact zones of early farming in Europe from the space–time distribution of 14C dates. J. Archaeol. Sci. 36, 807–820 (2009).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Isern, N., Fort, J. & Linden, M. V. Space competition and time delays in human range expansions. Application to the Neolithic transition. PLoS ONE 7, e51106 (2012).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  14. Rasse, M. Modélisation de la diffusion du Néolithique en Europe. Mappemonde 3, 14302 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Fort, J. Demic and cultural diffusion propagated the Neolithic transition across different regions of Europe. J. R. Soc. Interface 12, 20150166 (2015).

    PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  16. Isern, N. & Fort, J. Anisotropic dispersion, space competition and the slowdown of the Neolithic transition. N. J. Phys. 12, 123002 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  17. Silva, F. & Steele, J. New methods for reconstructing geographical effects on dispersal rates and routes from large-scale radiocarbon databases. J. Archaeol. Sci. 52, 609–620 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Bogucki, P. The spread of early farming in Europe. Am. Sci. 84, 242–253 (1996).

    Google Scholar 

  19. Bonsall, C., Macklin, M. G., Anderson, D. E. & Payton, R. W. Climate change and the adoption of agriculture in North-West Europe. Eur. J. Archaeol. 5, 9–23 (2002).

    Google Scholar 

  20. Cockram, J. et al. Control of flowering time in temperate cereals: genes, domestication, and sustainable productivity. J. Exp. Bot. 58, 1231–1244 (2007).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  21. Halstead, P. in The Beginnings of Agriculture Vol. 496 (eds. Milles, A. et al.) 23–53 (1989).

  22. Colledge, S., Conolly, J. & Shennan, S. The evolution of Neolithic farming from SW Asian origins to NW European limits. Eur. J. Archaeol. 8, 137–156 (2005).

    Google Scholar 

  23. Paludan-Müller, C. in New Directions in Scandinavian Archaeology (eds. Kristiansen, K. & Paludan-Müller, C.) 120–157 (National Museum of Denmark, 1978).

  24. Price, T. D. in The Widening Harvest. The Neolithic Transition in Europe: Looking Forward, Looking Back (eds. Ammerman, A. J. & Biagi, P.) 273–294 (Archaeological Institute of America, 2003).

  25. Price, T. D. in Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers: The Emergence of Cultural Complexity (eds. Price, T. D. & Brown, J. A.) 341–360 (Academic Press, 1985).

  26. Zvelebil, M. & Dolukhanov, P. The transition to farming in Eastern and Northern Europe. J. World Prehistory 5, 233–278 (1991).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Isern, N., Zilhão, J., Fort, J. & Ammerman, A. J. Modeling the role of voyaging in the coastal spread of the early Neolithic in the West Mediterranean. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 897–902 (2017).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  28. Codling, E. A., Plank, M. J. & Benhamou, S. Random walk models in biology. J. R. Soc. Interface 5, 813–834 (2008).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  29. Russelle, M. P., Wilhelm, W. W., Olson, R. A. & Power, J. F. Growth analysis based on degree days. Crop Sci. 24, 28–32 (1984).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Schlenker, W., Hanemann, W. M. & Fisher, A. C. The impact of global warming on U.S. agriculture: an econometric analysis of optimal growing conditions. Rev. Econ. Stat. 88, 113–125 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  31. Lipson, M. et al. Parallel palaeogenomic transects reveal complex genetic history of early European farmers. Nature 551, 368–372 (2017).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  32. Pinhasi, R., Foley, R. A. & Lahr, M. M. in Archaeogenetics: DNA and the Population Prehistory of Europe (eds. Renfrew, C. & Boyle, K.) 45–56 (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000).

  33. Steele, J. & Shennan, S. J. Spatial and chronological patterns in the neolithisation of Europe. Archaeology Data Service https://doi.org/10.5284/1000207 (2000).

  34. Vermeersch, P. M. Radiocarbon Palaeolithic Europe Database Version 21 (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2017); http://ees.kuleuven.be/geography/projects/14c-palaeolithic/index.html

  35. Silva, F. & Vander Linden, M. Amplitude of travelling front as inferred from 14C predicts levels of genetic admixture among European early farmers. Sci. Rep. 7, 11985 (2017).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  36. Coward, F., Shennan, S., Colledge, S., Conolly, J. & Collard, M. The spread of Neolithic plant economies from the Near East to northwest Europe: a phylogenetic analysis. J. Archaeol. Sci. 35, 42–56 (2008).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Conolly, J., Colledge, S. & Shennan, S. Founder effect, drift, and adaptive change in domestic crop use in early Neolithic Europe. J. Archaeol. Sci. 35, 2797–2804 (2008).

    Google Scholar 

  38. Bogucki, P. in Europe’s First Farmers (ed. Price, T. D.) 197–218 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

  39. Sørensen, L. & Karg, S. The expansion of agrarian societies towards the north—new evidence for agriculture during the Mesolithic/Neolithic transition in Southern Scandinavia. J. Archaeol. Sci. 51, 98–114 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  40. Stevens, C. J. & Fuller, D. Q. Did Neolithic farming fail? The case for a Bronze Age agricultural revolution in the British Isles. Antiquity 86, 707–722 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  41. Stevens, C. J. & Fuller, D. Q. Alternative strategies to agriculture: the evidence for climatic shocks and cereal declines during the British Neolithic and Bronze Age (a reply to Bishop). World Archaeol. 47, 856–875 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Bishop, R. R. Did late Neolithic farming fail or flourish? A Scottish perspective on the evidence for late Neolithic arable cultivation in the British Isles. World Archaeol. 47, 834–855 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  43. Fuller, D. Q. & Allaby, R. Seed dispersal and crop domestication: shattering, germination and seasonality in evolution under cultivation. in Annual Plant Reviews Vol. 38 (ed. Østergaard, L.) 238–295 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

  44. Giampoudakis, K. et al. Niche dynamics of Palaeolithic modern humans during the settlement of the Palaearctic. Glob. Ecol. Biogeogr. 26, 359–370 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  45. Tallavaara, M., Luoto, M., Korhonen, N., Järvinen, H. & Seppä, H. Human population dynamics in Europe over the Last Glacial Maximum. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 112, 8232–8237 (2015).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  46. Galeta, P., Sládek, V., Sosna, D. & Bruzek, J. Modeling Neolithic dispersal in Central Europe: demographic implications. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 146, 104–115 (2011).

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  47. Bar-Yosef, O. Climatic fluctuations and early farming in West and East Asia. Curr. Anthropol. 52, S175–S193 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  48. Siska, V. et al. Genome-wide data from two early Neolithic East Asian individuals dating to 7700 years ago. Sci. Adv. 3, e1601877 (2017).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  49. Pinhasi, R., Fort, J. & Ammerman, A. J. Tracing the origin and spread of agriculture in Europe. PLoS Biol. 3, e410 (2005).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  50. Bronk Ramsey, C. & Lee, S. Recent and planned developments of the program OxCal. Radiocarbon 55, 720–730 (2013).

    Google Scholar 

  51. Reimer, P. J. et al. IntCal13 and Marine13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0–50,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon 55, 1869–1887 (2013).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  52. Singarayer, J. S. & Valdes, P. J. High-latitude climate sensitivity to ice-sheet forcing over the last 120 kyr. Quat. Sci. Rev. 29, 43–55 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  53. Eriksson, A. et al. Late Pleistocene climate change and the global expansion of anatomically modern humans. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 109, 16089–16094 (2012).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  54. Maraun, D. & Widmann, M. Statistical Downscaling and Bias Correction for Climate Research (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2017).

  55. New, M., Lister, D., Hulme, M. & Makin, I. A high-resolution data set of surface climate over global land areas. Clim. Res. 21, 1–25 (2002).

    Google Scholar 

  56. Kaplan, J. O. et al. Climate change and Arctic ecosystems: 2. Modeling, paleodata–model comparisons, and future projections. J. Geophys. Res. Atmos. 108, 8171 (2003).

    Google Scholar 

  57. Calenge, C. The package “adehabitat” for the R software: a tool for the analysis of space and habitat use by animals. Ecol. Model. 197, 516–519 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  58. Olalde, I. et al. The Beaker phenomenon and the genomic transformation of northwest Europe. Nature 555, 190–196 (2018).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  59. Mathieson, I. et al. The genomic history of southeastern Europe. Nature 555, 197–203 (2018).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  60. Martiniano, R. et al. The population genomics of archaeological transition in west Iberia: investigation of ancient substructure using imputation and haplotype-based methods. PLoS Genet. 13, e1006852 (2017).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  61. Mallick, S. et al. The Simons Genome Diversity Project: 300 genomes from 142 diverse populations. Nature 538, 201–206 (2016).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  62. Gamba, C. et al. Genome flux and stasis in a five millennium transect of European prehistory. Nat. Commun. 5, 5257 (2014).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  63. Fu, Q. et al. The genetic history of Ice Age Europe. Nature 534, 200–205 (2016).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  64. Olalde, I. et al. Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European. Nature 507, 225–228 (2014).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  65. Lazaridis, I. et al. Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature 513, 409–413 (2014).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  66. Patterson, N. et al. Ancient admixture in human history. Genetics 192, 1065–1093 (2012).

    PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  67. Lipson, M. et al. Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory. Science 361, 92–95 (2018).

    CAS  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  68. Attenbrow, V. What’s Changing: Population Size or Land-Use Patterns? The Archaeology of Upper Mangrove Creek, Sydney Basin Vol. 21 (ANU Press, 2006).

  69. Naudinot, N., Tomasso, A., Tozzi, C. & Peresani, M. Changes in mobility patterns as a factor of 14C date density variation in the Late Epigravettian of Northern Italy and Southeastern France. J. Archaeol. Sci. 52, 578–590 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  70. Tallavaara, M., Pesonen, P. & Oinonen, M. Prehistoric population history in eastern Fennoscandia. J. Archaeol. Sci. 37, 251–260 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  71. Binford, L. R. Willow smoke and dogs’ tails: hunter-gatherer settlement systems and archaeological site formation. Am. Antiq. 45, 4–20 (1980).

    Google Scholar 

  72. Kelly, R. L. The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

  73. Layton, R. & O’Hara, S. in Social Brain, Distributed Mind (eds. Dunbar, R. et al.) 83–113 (British Academy, 2010).

  74. Becker, R. A. & Wilks, A. R. R maps: Draw geographical maps. R version 3.3.0 https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/maps/ (2018).

  75. Greene, C. A. et al. The Climate Data Toolbox for MATLAB. Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst. 20, 3774–3781 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

R.B., A.E., M.L. and A.M. were supported by ERC Consolidator Grant 647797 ‘LocalAdaptation’. R.B. and J.S. were supported by ERC Consolidator Grant 617627 ‘ADaPt’. E.R.J. was supported by a Herchel Smith Research Fellowship. F.T. was supported by ERC Advanced Grant 295733 ‘LanGeLin’ and funds from the 5 × 1000 Year 2013 assigned to the University of Ferrara. V.S. and L.K.B. were supported by the Gates Cambridge Trust. P.M.D. was supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme ‘Uses of the Past’ (CitiGen) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 649307. P.R.N. was supported by FP7 MC Career Integration Grant number 322261 ‘NEMO-ADAP’. We thank D. Reich, M. Lipson, A. Szecsenyi-Nagy and I. Mathieson for giving us pre-publication access to ancient DNA data. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Lia Betti, Robert Beyer, Eppie R. Jones.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Research in Evolutionary, Social and Inter-Disciplinary Anthropology, Department of Life Sciences, University of Roehampton, London, UK

    Lia Betti

  2. Evolutionary Ecology Group, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Robert M. Beyer, Eppie R. Jones, Anders Eriksson, Veronika Siska, Michela Leonardi, Pierpaolo Maisano Delser, Lily K. Bentley & Andrea Manica

  3. PAVE Research Group, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Robert M. Beyer & Jay T. Stock

  4. Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics, King’s College London, Guys Hospital, London, UK

    Anders Eriksson

  5. cGEM, Institute of Genomics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Anders Eriksson

  6. Department of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

    Francesca Tassi

  7. Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Pierpaolo Maisano Delser

  8. Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Philip R. Nigst

  9. Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada

    Jay T. Stock

  10. Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany

    Jay T. Stock

  11. Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Ron Pinhasi

Authors
  1. Lia Betti
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Robert M. Beyer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Eppie R. Jones
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Anders Eriksson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Francesca Tassi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Veronika Siska
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Michela Leonardi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Pierpaolo Maisano Delser
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Lily K. Bentley
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Philip R. Nigst
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Jay T. Stock
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Ron Pinhasi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Andrea Manica
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

A.M. devised the project. L.B. and R.P. collected the archaeological data. L.B. calculated the expansion routes together with A.M. R.B. curated the palaeoclimatic reconstructions and conducted the analyses of climate and expansion speed together with A.M. and A.E. L.K.B. conducted the CRW analysis together with A.M. E.R.J., M.L. and P.M.D. collected the ancient DNA data and ran the relevant analyses together with A.M. F.T. collated the information on Mesolithic sites. A.M. wrote the first draft of the paper together with L.B., R.B. and E.R.J. L.B., R.B., E.R.J., A.E., F.T., V.S., M.L., P.M.D., L.K.B., P.R.N., J.S., R.P. and A.M. interpreted the results and revised the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Lia Betti, Robert M. Beyer or Andrea Manica.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Peer review information Primary Handling Editor: Stavroula Kousta.

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Process of selecting the connecting segments of the Neolithic expansion routes.

a, Main vertices (blue circles) and routes of expansion (in yellow, red and green) from the core area (grey polygon) at time X before common era (BCE); Neolithic sites present before time X indicated as small black circle and blue circles, blue lines showing the minimum convex polygon around the sites’ distribution. b, At time X - 100 years, a new main vertex of expansion is identified by redrawing a minimum convex polygon over the updated set of Neolithic sites. Two possible connecting segments are identified (dashed lines), including the shortest segment connecting with previous vertices, and an additional segment whose length was less than 150% of the former. c, To identify the most likely expansion route, we counted the number of Neolithic sites that occurred in the following 300 years (up to time X - 400 years; small red circles) within a buffer zone of 50 Km either side of the connecting segments (orange shaded rectangles) and divided it by the segment length. d, The segment with the highest density of filling-in sites in the following 300 years was selected. e, Solid lines show the obtained expansion routes. Where these cross oceans in unrealistic ways, we added a minimal set of additional waypoints to force routes to run along coasts instead (dashed lines). Country borders were plotted using ref. 75.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Mean expansion speeds of each expansion axis.

Lisnes were obtained by taking the derivative of the cumulative distances in Fig. 1. Colours correspond to the same routes as in Fig. 1. Slowdowns are highlighted by a black line. The dashed black line represents a threshold below which expansions were considered to be subject to a slowdown.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Expansion axes and mean summer temperature.

a, The expansion axes superimposed on a map of mean summer temperature days at 5,500 BCE. b, Mean summer temperature experienced along each expansion axis. Blue, purple, orange and green lines represent the Mediterranean, Central European, Scandinavian, and Northeast European axis, respectively. The slowdown is highlighted by a black line.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Expansion axes and mean winter temperature.

a, The expansion axes superimposed on a map of mean winter temperature days at 5,500 BCE. b, Mean winter temperature experienced along each expansion axis. Blue, purple, orange and green lines represent the Mediterranean, Central European, Scandinavian.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Expansion axes and mean annual temperature.

a, The expansion axes superimposed on a map of mean annual temperature days at 5,500 BCE. b, Mean annual temperature experienced along each expansion axis. Blue, purple, orange and green lines represent the Mediterranean, Central European, Scandinavian, and Northeast European axis, respectively. The slowdown is highlighted by a black line.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Expansion axes and precipitation of the driest month.

a, The expansion axes superimposed on a map of precipitation of the driest month days at 5,500 BCE. b, Precipitation of the driest month experienced along each expansion axis. Blue, purple, orange and green lines represent the Mediterranean, Central European, Scandinavian, and Northeast European axis, respectively. The slowdown is highlighted by a black line.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Expansion axes and net primary productivity.

a, The expansion axes superimposed on a map of net primary productivity days at 5,500 BCE. b, Net primary productivity experienced along each expansion axis. Blue, purple, orange and green lines represent the Mediterranean, Central European, Scandinavian.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Distribution of Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic sites during the Holocene.

Maps are based on data from a, the Palaeolithic Radiocarbon Europe Database v2134 (younger than 9,500 BCE); b, Steele and Shennan33; and c, Pinhasi, Foley and Lahr32. Country borders were plotted using ref. 74.

Supplementary information

Reporting Summary

Supplementary Video 1

The expansion of farming based on dates of first arrival. Blue, purple, orange and green lines represent the Mediterranean, Central European, Scandinavian and Northeast European axes, respectively. Country borders were plotted using ref. 75.

Supplementary Data 1

Details of the archaeological sites with the earliest radiocarbon date reliably associated with early Neolithic cultures with evidence of domestication (including the list of problematic dates that were removed from the dataset).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Betti, L., Beyer, R.M., Jones, E.R. et al. Climate shaped how Neolithic farmers and European hunter-gatherers interacted after a major slowdown from 6,100 bce to 4,500 bce. Nat Hum Behav 4, 1004–1010 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0897-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0897-7

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing