Facing climatic hazards: Paleolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers

Quaternary International xxx (2015) 1e9

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Facing climatic hazards: Paleolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers Ofer Bar-Yosef Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Peabody Museum, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

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Food security intertwined with the need to maintain biological survival of a demographically viable population is the basic long-term policy for all societies. This paper compares selected cases of successful and failed Paleolithic groups of hunter-gatherers, as recorded archaeologically across Eurasia and Africa, in responding to the impacts of abrupt climatic changes. The complex prehistory of Pleistocene foragers is briefly compared to strategies adopted by Neolithic farmers. The major difference between forager and farmer economies is not their social organization as much as the access options to alternative territories and food resources. Open Pleistocene landscapes across Eurasia and Africa allowed for movements of Paleolithic groups over large distances with or without adopting new exploitation techniques. Successes and failures that we measure in a chronological macro-scale left archaeological evidence (lithic assemblages, faunal remains, occasional flimsy dwellings, etc.) in various regions, recorded by systematic and comprehensive surveys and excavations. However, we miss the chronological micro-scale of most of the Paleolithic period that could inform us about extinctions. We can identify only survival stories explained as successful adaptations. When farming communities were established during the course of the Holocene, variable modes of social and economic interactions and group resilience evolved in order to secure survival in years of bad harvests. Interactions with foragers and herders, competition, raids, village abandonment, migration into others' territories, were among the optional strategies. Due to the difference in chronological scales between 2.6 Ma of the Paleolithic period and the 12 Ka of the Holocene (or Anthropocene), we can more easily recognize the role of abrupt climatic changes among prehistoric societies during the Terminal Pleistocene and the Holocene and evaluate the success and failure of both, hunter-gatherers and farmers. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA.

Keywords: Pleistocene Paleolithic Holocene Neolithic Climatic impacts Continuity

1. Opening remarks Archaeologists and paleoanthropologists share a common positive view of continuity of human biological and cultural evolution. The history of these intertwined disciplines during the 19e20th centuries resulted in a view that, I believe, prevents us from ‘writing’ the history of different ‘people with no name’. The notion of seamless continuity emerged from ignoring the important differences between macro- and micro-chronological scales. In writing our anthropological interpretations of the deep past we take into account the modeled extinctions during the Pleistocene, but often fail to account for the archaeological examples. Therefore, before delving into the discussion concerning the role of climatic fluctuations in prehistory and how humans survived natural calamities, we need to briefly examine the contradiction between

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continuity that means endurance and discontinuity that could mean replacement or even extinction. The basis for a supposed relationship between climate change and human culture emerged in the early 19th century, when European scholars first recognized prehistoric remains as evidence of ancient human behavior. These were closely tied with the generalized sequence of river terraces of the Somme in France and the Thames in England. Both artifacts and the remains of extinct mammal species were found in gravel quarries in the terraces. Understanding that topographically higher terraces were older than those below them allowed the creation of a bio-chronology, and an artifact sequence that could be dated by reference to the geo-chronology of glacial cycles established in the Alps (Zeuner, 1959). This relative chronology led to the association between climatic changes and human survival in Europe during the Pleistocene. This association was incorporated in the paradigms of archaeological research which expanded from Europe to eastern Eurasia (e.g., Bar-Yosef and Wang, 2012) as well as in other continents (e.g. Ziegler et al., 2013).

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The concept of “continuity” in human evolution developed from the combined influence of Charles Lyell (1779e1875), the author of Principles of Geology, who adopted the concept of ‘uniformitarianism’ from the writings of James Hutton (1726e1797), and those of Darwin about biological evolution in the world of living organisms. More recently, with the development of genetic studies, we recognized the presence of ‘bottle necks’ in biological evolution marking population decrease (e.g., Cornuet and Luikart, 1996), the impacts of genetic drift (e.g., Nei, 1978), and the effects of interbreeding and of migrations during the Paleolithic. Technical inventions and innovations supposedly improved the survival of prehistoric societies during the last 2.6 Ma. Testing ethnographically the importance of social circumstances that allowed for the acceptance of changes in material culture resulted in rather ambiguous results. On the one hand models demonstrate that larger populations increase the probability of adoption of innovations (e.g., Shennan, 2000; Premo and Kuhn, 2010). But, on the other hand, testing those models against the material culture of hunter-gatherers produced mixed results (e.g., Collard et al., 2013 and references therein). Biological survival does not fully depend on producing new stone tools. A population may loose a set of elaborate material culture as shown by Henrich (2004), who argues that Tasmanians underwent a loss in technological complexity some 3400 years ago when they were cut off from interacting with the Australian continent due to rising sea levels. Apparently they switched to a simpler set of tools that did not impair their survival until Europeans appeared on the island. In contrast, the Inuit, often living at extraordinarily low population densities, maintained the most complex of technologies among hunter-gatherers (Read, 2008). Therefore, the meaning of continuity in material culture or lack thereof is a challenge to the archaeological interpretations of Pleistocene cultural changes. Providing an explanation for ‘how’ and ‘why’ the change in the tool kits supports the notion of cultural continuity or replacement is essential for determining whether the observations mark the former or the latter phenomena. In claiming cultural continuity in face of climatic fluctuations it would be sufficient to demonstrate that the basic tool-kits did not change, whether those were used for hunting, butchering, or working hides. In case one claims for cultural continuity after a climatic crisis, the archaeologist should demonstrate why the new tools were better suited for survival in the same environment under the new circumstances. In this case we also demand to know why the major shift in the composition of the tool-kit does not indicates the presence of new people. A few illustrative examples are described below. When compared to the Holocene records of western Asia where farming societies first emerged around 12/11,700 cal BP, every minor climatic fluctuation had an impact on settlement patterns and village survival. The first to suffer were agro-pastoral societies in the steppic belt and later villages on the banks of the rivers. The current information is based on large data sets of radiocarbon dates
s, 2013; Borrell et al., 2015). (e.g., Weninger et al., 2009; Perle However, also concerning Levantine farmers we ask for the information that supports continuity rather than population replacement. Here I try to examine this issue from a broader viewpoint, looking back into the Pleistocene. 2. The Lower and Middle Pleistocene The possible and sometimes probable interaction between climatic and cultural changes and natural selection became an inseparable part of telling the evolutionary history of humankind that was described by Spencer in his Principles of Biology (1864) and later adopted by Darwin in his The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868) as the “survival of the fittest.”

Movements across landscapes into new territories in search of food sources, proximity to water sources, inter and intra-group competitions, and migrations over long distances were a part of early hominins behavioral repertoire. In addition, social and brain research indicates a difference between perceptual and epistemic curiosity in human behavior. The first is aroused by novel, strange or ambiguous stimuli and relates to all biological beings (Jepma et al., 2012, p. 8). The second, epistemic curiosity, refers to the desire for knowledge or intellectual information and is considered an innate characteristic of humans (e.g., Berlyne, 1954, 1966; Litman, 2005; Jepma et al., 2012, and references therein). Exploratory behavior or the search for specific and diverse knowledge could be the biological background to the evolution of foresight that may explain the motivation for earlier hominin migrations. Biological evidence documents the changes of the human body since the Plio-Pleistocene and in particular the growth of brain size and its complexity that resulted in morphological changes of the skull (e.g., Liberman, 2011). Current interpretations of hominin evolution stress the shrinking of the earlier Pleistocene forests in Africa and the expansion of savannah landscape as the main cause for the specific physical adaptation of Homo habilis and Homo ergaster to food acquisition in a new environment (e.g., Potts, 1998, n Lahr, 2010). Potts and Teague, 2010; Mirazo The overall success of early hominins led to the emergence of Homo erectus that until recently was considered to be the hominin who left Africa. The discovery of five skulls in Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia demonstrated the first ‘out of Africa’ migration to Western Asia at 1.85e1.77 Ma (Ferring et al., 2011; Lordkipanidze et al., 2013). The taxonomic definition of these skulls as Homo erectus indicates that this population was not limited by their original adaptation to foraging and scavenging only to the African savanna (Bar-Yosef and Belmaker, 2011). Moreover, if their original homeland, mostly East Africa, was a “Garden of Eden”, why did members of the Homo erectus population move? We assume that a decline in the carrying capacity or in the predictability of animal and vegetal resources in the African savanna caused a portion of this meta-population to leave. Several motivations, based on ecological conditions, are already suggested, such as the relatively limited size of habitable areas across the African continent and especially the diseases present in tropical and semi-tropical environments (Bar-Yosef and BelferCohen, 2001, Fig. 1). Was it competition among groups of huntergatherers that forced the “losers” to move? Other suggested that the search for food by hominins as scavengers followed the territorial expansion of large carnivores (Turner, 1992), an argument that failed the test of evidence. Decreasing carrying capacity, whether of plant food or animals to hunt and scavenge, is another general explanation. Although the fate of the Dmanisi hominins after 1.77 Ma is unknown, the success of the first pioneer groups supports the assumption that they were able to persist in different kinds of environments, due to their capacities for mobility, hunting, scavenging, feeding in new vegetation environments, and making simple stone tools (Oldowan types). Their tool kits fall within the category of ‘core and flake’ industry, a general term that would fit the majority of the Lower to early Upper Paleolithic assemblages in the Chinese mainland (Bar-Yosef, 2015). The spread of hominins across Asia (Dennell, 2009) and through particular ecological zones where resources were available, predictable and accessible by their tools (made of stones or organic substances such as wood and bamboo) led through time to the establishment of different populations that sometimes became disconnected from each other. Stone tools bear only limited information and their cultural interpretations should be unassertive.

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Difficulties in dating the early occupations do not permit us to write a continuous narration of survival. In reality we should expect to see extinctions, as predicted by various models demonstrated by a few examples in the following paragraphs. A more elaborate scenario is the interpretation of the Middle Pleistocene demography of Europe based on a large number of fossil hominins fitted into a micro-scale chronology (Dennell et al., 2011). The authors of this paper propose a different mode, entitled as “ebb and flow”, suggesting that the expansion northward occurred during interglacial and interstadial periods and the retreat to warmer refugia took place during glacial times. Indeed Dennell and associates recognize the role of extinctions and that populations were affected by the decline of their numbers (labeled as ‘sink’) and recovered by recruiting new people from the Mediterranean basin of Europe, including southwest Asia. Cycles of migration, colonization, and recolonization, following times of extinctions, are suggested as the model that explains why various European fossils represent different paleo-demes. However, except for mentioning the Clactonian and Acheulian traditions as indicating the presence of different people, the rest of the LowerMiddle Pleistocene archaeology is not discussed in terms of ‘people’. I can only mention the Buda industry in Hungary that is essentially a ‘core and flake’ industry like the much earlier Damnisi or the numerous examples in China (Bar-Yosef, 2015; Gao, 2013). Undoubtedly, the challenge that faces archaeologists is to identify past societies or populations by the characteristics of the technical attributes of their lithic assemblages, the only remains we uncover in many Paleolithic sites. Following warnings by social anthropologists, who generally did not bother to learn how stone tools were made and used within their societies, archaeologists often studied the lithic assemblages without considering, even on a hypothetical basis, who their makers were e ‘people with no name’. In other cases, archaeologists preferred to view differences between lithic assemblages as representing functional differences, indicators of seasonal activities, availability of raw materials, etc., ignoring the social-cultural aspect of teaching and learning inherent in the studied stone tools. There is a vast literature demonstrating how practices, from raw material collection to tool discard, are learned by the young in a group sharing particular knowledge with other members of their own biological unit (‘dialectic tribe’ sensu Birdsell, 1968, and references therein). While the full treatment of this subject is beyond the scope of this paper, the next section deals with the question of whether recorded climatic changes on macro- or micro-scale affected the lithic reduction sequences (obtaining flake, blades and other elements from nodules), and the final morphology of typical stone tools. It is perhaps obvious that many societies, or specific prehistoric groups, failed and died out, but given the coarse grain of chronological resolution prior to the range of secure radiocarbon dates (from about 45 Ka cal BP), it is difficult for archaeologists to determine who were the survivors and who were not. Excavations may uncover a site or even several sites that belonged to the same ‘culture’ attributed to the same biological population. But the chronological resolution of climatic fluctuations and archaeological populations is not sufficiently detailed to determine what sites can serve as evidence for survival through major natural calamities and what sites are those of people who perished. Therefore, it is not surprising that we tend to cluster all the sites of people who made the same stone tools, an issue not to be discussed here, and view them as evidence for biological and cultural continuity. When a change takes place in the lithic industry, whether with or without perishable remains, Paleolithic archaeologists suggest, as exemplified below, that climate was the culprit.

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3. The problematic relationships between culture and environment in Africa When evidence for cultural change could be dated approximately to the time of a major environmental change during the Upper Pleistocene (as occurring within a millennium or several millennia) archaeologists, although fully aware that “chronological correlation is not causation”, suggest that the shift in climate forced the people to make different stone tools (see discussions in Meltzer, 1991; Meltzer and Bar-Yosef, 2012; Eren, 2012; Eren et al., 2013). The assumption is that climatic change means a change in available food resources, or a change in the pattern of food distribution across exploited habitats, such as a shift from steppic herds to more dispersed forest animals, and accordingly changes in the seasonal availability of plants. Such shifts in the availability, predictability and accessibility of resources, whether vegetal or animal necessitated, according to the commonly-accepted model, a change in the technology of stone and perishables tools. While this kind of interpretation may correlate with regions affected by major climatic changes such as the northern colder latitudes or the margins of the planetary deserts, most other areas have not provided evidence to justify it. Often the reasons of ‘why’ and ‘how’ older tools were replaced by new ones are not explicitly presented. Employing Optimal Foraging Theory as a leading hypothesis, relocation of forager groups due to decrease in resources or the reduction of high-return rate resources, is employed to explain shifts in the spatial distribution of sites, and possibly, of technology. This issue requires a brief discussion of ‘culture’, ‘industry’ or ‘entity’ as analytical units for the archaeology of the Upper Pleistocene and Holocene periods without delving into the definition of a technocomplex (Clark, 1968). The term ’culture’ as used explicitly or implicitly by Paleolithic prehistorians is based on the detailed study of lithic assemblages (hence ‘industry’) and in some cases by the additional presence of bone, antler, and ivory objects as well as body decorations made from organics, shells and hard rocks. Sequences of industries or ‘cultural entities’ are grouped under periodic labels. Early scholars were cautious in using established terms referring to a generalized relative periodic scheme such as ‘Middle Paleolithic’, ‘Middle Stone Age’, ‘Upper Paleolithic’, ‘Mesolithic’, and ‘Late Stone Age’ industries. Others defined cultural entities attributed to the Paleolithic period as the ‘Stillbay’, ‘Howieson's Poort’, ‘Mousterian of Acheulian Tradition’, and more. The practice of using cultural names for Upper Paleolithic industries, such as Aurignacian, Solutrean, Bohunician, Streletsian, etc. began in western Eurasia and spread to other regions of the world. When the remains of two different cultures were uncovered in a stratified position, and each assemblage markedly differed in its contents, we face a major interpretation challenge. For example, it could be that the same people replaced their old tool-kits with new tools, or that foreigners who replaced the local inhabitants made the new tools. When a climatic change is chronologically correlated with this observable cultural shift often the natural calamity, rather than the option of population replacement is considered as the prime mover. Other common explanations for making radically different tool types is sometimes related to the exploitation of raw materials of different qualities (toolstones) within the range of residential or logistical mobility, including anticipated or accidental seasonal moves (but see Eren et al., 2011, 2014; Bar-Yosef et al., 2012). The overall tendency has been to try and explain the change within a model of population continuity, whether it is a meta-population or only a local one, by implicitly employing a concept already embedded in our research for two centuries. In recent years other
s, 2013; Jaubert et al., 2013), but voices are being heard (e.g., Perle

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given the topic of this symposium I will focus on climatic change as the leading interpretation of observable cultural disruptions. Several examples will do beginning with the replacement of the ‘Stillbay’ (SB) by the ‘Howieson's Poort’ (HP) in South Africa (e.g., Wadley, 2014). McCall (2007) writes that “the emergence of the biface-dominated Still Bay industry related to increased mobility away from lithic raw material resources caused by the deteriorating environments at the beginning of OIS 4, and that the microlithic Howiesons Poort industry emerged as a result of the specific targeting of resources with longer logistical trips” (p. 1750). The same interpretation was offered yet again quite recently (Ziegler et al., 2013). Unfortunately subsequent research indicated that this interpretation does not hold. First, the distribution of the known sites is spread over a million square kilometers and thus sites are separated by at least 500 and often more than 1000 km. Without getting into the chronological details currently indicating that the SB entity is characterized by foliates used as spear points and knives, it is suggested that this entity emerged in the southwestern region of South Africa and then spread eastward (Porraz et al., 2013). The Diepkloof site, one of the longest South African archaeological sequences, dated by TL to 109 ± 10 through 52 ± ka, produced evidence indicating that there were no climatic changes during a long period of time in spite of the cultural shift from SB to HP (e.g., Porraz et al., 2013; Steele and Klein, 2013; Villa and Soriano, 2010). The conclusion of this study was that the “hypothesis of demographic discontinuity in southern Africa assumes the existence of archaeological discontinuities in the cultural record” but the researchers proposed that “the Diepkloof sequence … supports a scenario of continuous changes at a local scale. The SB and the HP appear to have had a regional origin and represent indigenous technological manifestations of southern African populations … The innovative characters of the SB and the HP in South Africa speak in favor of the existence of different cultural paths and scenarios towards the adoption of ‘modern’ hunter-gatherers lifestyles” (Porraz et al., 2013, p.3549). This conclusion is based on the regional evidence that demonstrates stable environmental conditions and attributes the two industries (cultures) to two different populations. However, a major cultural change could still take place under favorable conditions. The question that such statements raise is ‘was it an innovation made by the same population or we are facing simply another group of people who came from a nearby region? Or was it the disappearance of the SB artisans who made the bifacial points? If we adopt Henrich's (2004) model, the latter option seems a reasonable explanation but the case is open for other interpretations, such as the demise of the SB population perhaps due to disease, with the HP people encountering a similar fate later on. The latter suggestion raises the intriguing issue of the end of the Howeison's Poort culture. Excavations at Sibudu cave produced a wealth of information concerning the life ways and technology of the makers of these assemblages (e.g., Wadley, 2010a,b; 2014; Wadley et al. 2011, and references therein). It ended with what is called the Post-HP entity that shows a gradually diminishing presence of the characteristics of the HP industry and a shift to flakes and points removed from other kinds of cores than the ‘classic’ HP cores (Villa et al., 2010). A paleoecological shift from closed to open environments between the early and late Post-HP sequence in Sibudu cave is proposed as a plausible explanation for the changes in the tool-kits. However, the Tasmanian example (Henrich, 2004) shows that even when the knowledge of making many kinds of skillfully designed objects was lost, it did not cause the demise of the local population. Yet, the situation of an island is not the same as the vast landmass of South Africa where a shift in the nature of environmental resources could be seen as an adequate interpretation for culture change (Villa et al., 2010, p. 653).

4. The problematic relationships between culture and environment in Eurasia Additional examples are taken from the Paleolithic European world. The demise of the Neanderthals is the first case, because it was often related to climatic causes during MIS3. This contention was supposed to explain the replacement of the European Middle Paleolithic industries (cultures) by the Upper Paleolithic cultures attributed to Modern humans. Research during many decades demonstrated the presence of a number of cultures (or entities) during the Middle Paleolithic in Europe (e.g., Bordes, 1961; Meignen et al., 2009; Delagnes and Rendu, 2011). One of the major culprits for the extinction of the Neanderthals as a viable population was suggested to be the Campanian ignimbrite, a major volcanic eruption dated to ca. 40 Ka cal BP that affected for a few years the weather over a large region (e.g., Golovanova et al., 2010). The evidence for this volcanic eruption is now well-recorded in many caves from central Europe and Western Asia and is associated with Upper Paleolithic age contexts and does not mark the chronological boundary of the Middle/Upper Paleolithic (Lowe et al., 2012). Moreover, the recent summary of the chronology of this replacement of populations indicates an average date of 39e41 Ka cal BP but in terms of years it is interpreted as a time span of 2600e5400 years (Higham et al., 2014). A Pertinent remark on the issue of population replacements concerns the terms employed. Due to the optimistic belief in the past of a continuity from an older culture to a new one, the industry from a layer stratigraphically sandwiched between lower and upper layers that contained artifacts characteristics to both layers, was referred to as a “Transitional industry” (a term that was introduced to western Asia). Formation processes that could possibly be responsible for the “mixed assemblage” due to natural agencies or human activities were not taken into account. However, today it became clear, due to paleogenetics as well as human fossils, that there is no biological ‘transition’ by a simple replacement. This term should be abolished from the Paleolithic archaeological literature. A different example is the case of the Upper Paleolithic Solutrean and the Badegoulian cultures in France. Both persisted during the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM) although the Spanish Solutrean (Zilhao, 2013), had a longer time span (ca. 25.5e18 Ka cal BP) than the French Solutrean and the succeeding Badegoulian (ca. 18e17 Ka cal BP). The Solutrean is well known for its skillfully shaped bifacial artifacts and its spatial distribution in France and parts of Iberia. The makers of the Badegoulian known only from the French territory, appeared in the area during the LGM, produced mostly a flake industry originally labeled as ‘Magdalenian 0’ and ‘Magdalenian I’ (e.g., Banks et al., 2009, 2011) with evidence of antler points.  Breuil, The absence of continuity was already expressed by Abbe an eminent French prehistorian who wrote in 1937 that “if one thing is certain in prehistory, it is that the first Magdalenians are not evolved Solutreans; they were certainly newcomers into these areas, and clumsy in knapping and retouching flint, tasks in which their predecessors excelled” (from Breuil, 1937; translated by Banks et al., 2011, p. 360). This conclusion was supported by de Sonneville-Bordes in her seminal volume on the Upper Paleolithic of the Perigord (de Sonneville-Bordes, 1967). Banks et al. (2013) proposed several interpretations for explaining the nature of the change from Late Solutrean to Badegoulian. The first scenario accepts the idea of continuity through change in the tools kits and exploitation strategies of raw material procurement. The alternative interpretation that seem to me as most relevant is that the lithic technological differences between the Solutrean and the Badegoulian reflect the presence of two

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populations cautiously expressed in the following citation. “The second scenario proposes that the technological rupture between the Upper Solutrean and the Badegoulian was due to the influx of new human populations that carried with them a different technical system and that these intrusive human groups adopted and exploited the same territories used by the earlier groups” (ibid., p. 371). Aubry and colleagues clarify the role of culture versus nature: “The role of environmental constraints on technological options remains difficult to define. The geographic distribution of largesized laurel leaves is restricted to the regional groups on the border of the Massif Central and seems to comply with the constraints imposed by the availability of suitable raw material blanks with appropriate morphologies. However, this environmental constraint cannot entirely explain the variability in techniques …. The systematic use of heat treatment in association with pressure retouch in the assemblages of Southern Iberia doesn't correspond to raw material availability, but rather to different strategies of seasonal group displacement … (Ripoll ~o, 1997)” (Aubry et al., 2003, p. 179; italics Perello, 1991; Zilha added). 5. Lessons from the Paleolithic sequence In sum, the various options for hominins to deal with climate change during the Lower Paleolithic were to move to a new territory or die. The archaeological remains of Acheulian and coreand-flake industries across Africa and Eurasia can be seen as reflecting a response to biological survival ensured by their technical skill level in using the same cutting, butchering, shaping wooden or bamboo objects with stone tools. During the Middle Pleistocene new technical combinations in making wood and bamboo artifacts with stone tools demonstrate a growing variability in knapping techniques and secondary modification of blanks. However, none of the recorded changes in the lithic industries can be securely related to a climate change, even such as the shift from glacial to interglacial cycles and back to cold conditions. The regional continental situations changed during the first part of the Late Pleistocene when humans occupied all the ecological habitats, expanding on seasonal basis into the northern arctic environments (Pavlov et al., 2004). We can view the global cultural map of Paleolithic Eurasia and Africa as demonstrating a vast variability, represented by a large number of lithic industries that probably reflects an overall incremental demographic increase. However, when examined closely, there is evidence for successes and failures in survival strategies. The advance of glacial conditions in Western Europe resulting in southern movements of bearers of different Mousterian industries could be interpreted as a successful retreat of everyone or the demise of an unknown numbers of human groups who previously survived in this region during the Last Interglacial (Bar-Yosef, 1988). For example, the blade makers during the early Middle Paleolithic in northwestern Europe were perhaps the victims of climatic deterioration as we do not find the continuity of this knapping tradition in the southern region of this continent. During MIS3 alternation between harsh and ameliorated conditions characterized temperate Europe before colder ones were established with the LGM (van Andel and Davies, 2003). Even then we note cultural gaps at the regional chronological micro-scales. Climatic calamities, success of well-organized populations versus others who failed, created the complex cultural pattern across temperate Europe. Others, who lived in more stable environmental conditions within the Mediterranean basin, especially in its southern and eastern margins, did much better than many European populations further afield.

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6. Holocene farming societies and local rapid climatic change The archaeological evidence for the Holocene period, gathered in the Levant, a corridor-like region that stretches from the foothills of the Taurus-Zagros arc to the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula as well as the Aegean area, were recently recognized as interrupted by a sequence of Rapid Climatic Changes (RCC; e.g., Bar-Yosef, 2001; Weninger et al., 2006, 2009; Berger and Guilaine, 2009). The issue of how farming societies emerged in the Levant, the role of the ‘core area’ in its northern part, the role of river transport especially across Mesopotamia during the complex processes of cereal cultivation, domestication, and animal husbandry, will not be discussed here. Readers are advised to consult the existing wealth of publications regarding these issues and the few references mentioned here provide some basic information and current debates (e.g., Abbo et al., 2010, 2012; Bar-Yosef, 2011, 2014a,b; Belfer-Cohen and Goring-Morris, 2011; Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen, 2011; Willcox and Savard, 2011; Zeder, 2011, 2012; Vigne et al., 2011a,b; Asouti and Fuller, 2013; Willcox, 2012; Willcox and Stordeur, 2012; Zohary et al., 2012). RCC impacts, as based on the paleoclimatic records, were first offered as explanations for the establishment of sedentary communities such as the Early Natufian sites reacting to the Heinrich 1 cold event (ca. 16e15 ka cal BP), known in Europe as the “Older Dryas” (Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen, 1989). This new kind of aggregation by foragers was seen as a socio-economic decision in face of what is known in southwestern Asia as “relative demographic pressures” caused by the improved and enduring conditions at ca.18e15 ka cal BP, the Terminal Pleistocene. During this time period groups of hunter-gatherers such as the Geometric Kebaran (designated by the common microlithic tools) dispersed from the Levant into the previously semi-arid belt and others (employing different types of microliths) moved from Northeast Africa through the Sinai Peninsula into the southern Levant. The second suggestion was to see the Younger Dryas (YD) times (ca.12,800e11,700/ 500 cal BP) as the cause for the onset of cultivation during the first millennium of the Holocene (Moore and Hillman, 1992). While the YD in the Levant is still seen as a cold period, there is no environmental evidence for drier conditions but, instead, for wetter ones (Torfstein et al., 2013) with lower temperatures that affected the biome (Hartman n.d.). Moreover, speleothem records indicate increased seasonality during the YD when compared to earlier and later periods that impacted the sedentary and semi-sedentary Natufian foragers depending on their particular habitats (Orland et al., 2012). The climatic stability of the first Holocene millennium (ca. 11,700/500 10,500/300 cal BP) witnessed the establishment of Neolithic villages dated in the Levant as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic A period (PPNA) divided into three cultural entities: Khiamian, Mureybetian and Sultanian (Cauvin 2000). Other social groups were those who remained sedentary hunter-gatherers along the Tigris River valley or as mobile populations in the semi-arid lands of the eastern and southern Levant (Goring-Morris, 1993; GoringMorris and Belfer-Cohen, 1997; Bar-Yosef, 2014b). PPNA villages demonstrate the evidence for major energy expenditure invested in buildings (stone foundations, brick walls, and flat roofs), storage facilities (private and public), long distance exchange of Anatolian obsidian, and even in the construction of central ceremonial centers (e.g., Schmidt, 2005, 2011; Kuijt, 2009; Bar-Yosef, 2014c). The current debate is whether this was the time when systematic experimentation in cultivation occurred or only intensification of harvesting of natural fields. What Colledge (2002) called “pre-domestication cultivation” supported by additional evidence from an earlier experiment in cultivation done at Ohalo II, a 23,000 years old site (Snir et al., 2015). Most authorities agree that by

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10,300e10,000 cal BP a suite of plants were already partially domesticated as the frequencies of wild forms gradually diminished in the fields documented by the archaeobotanical studied samples from Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period sites (PPNB; 10,500/ 300 cal BP) (e.g., Tanno and Willcox, 2006; Willcox and Savard, 2011; Willcox, 2012; Willcox and Stordeur, 2012). Undoubtedly, animal bones reflect intensive hunting and possibly corralling of goat, sheep, cattle and pigs that became domesticated by the onset of the PPNB (Vigne et al., 2011a,b; Zeder, 2011, 2012). According to the analysis of large data sets of radiocarbon dates and sites' sizes in the Levant, the first Holocene RCC occurred at ca. 10,300 10,000 cal BP (Weninger et al., 2009). It is expressed by the abandonment of a good number of known villages and thus indicates that successive droughts, the fear of all farming societies, had an impact on the population across the entire Levant (Borrell et al., 2015). An example of deserted neighboring PPNA sites are Gilgal and Netiv-Hagdud, and the stratigraphic break in Jericho in the Lower Jordan (Bar-Yosef et al., 2010; Borrell et al., 2015). Here we should wonder to what extent intra-group and intergroup human conflicts caused the interrupted sequences as recorded in these and other Early Neolithic sites. The most parsimonious interpretation would be that both intra-group fissioning according to clan-lines, accompanied by individual conflicts and raids played a major role during the PPNA and even later in the course of the PPNB period. Whether these phenomena were related to successive droughts causing failures of annual harvests, is unknown. Under the premise that intra-group conflicts caused “scalar stress”, this may have triggered the splitting of villages (e.g., Roscoe, 2008, 2009). The ‘breaking up’ of village communities could explain, for example, the general contemporaneity of PPNA Gilgal (1 ha) and Netiv Hagdud (1.5 ha) situated only 1.5 km apart in the lower Jordan Valley (Bar-Yosef et al., 2010). Site abandonments are recorded towards the end of the PPNB period at ca. 8600/400e8200 cal BP in the Levant and Anatolia and seem to be the result of a RCC known as the “8200 cold event” clearly evidenced in the Dead Sea as reduction in annual precipitation (e.g. Bar-Yosef, 2001; Weninger et al., 2006, 2009; Marciniak and Czerniak 2007; Berger and Guilaine 2009; Litt et al., 2012). During these several centuries the climate in the Eastern Mediterranean fluctuated with a tendency to drier years. Droughts were probably a recurrent phenomenon. Villagers abandoned their settlements, died of hunger, moved to other places by forcing their way or by creating agreements with locals in adjacent territories. These are the times when the archaeological evidence for violence should increase and become visible in the excavations. A good example is the detailed micro-scale chronology of Tell Sabi Abyad in the Balikh Valley, northern Syria. The excavations and the detailed radiocarbon chronology demonstrated that the original village was abandoned for a century or less around 8200 cal BP and then reoccupied by the same people who rebuilt their village on the slope of the same mound (van der Plicht et al., 2011). Several sites in the Levant provide the evidence for a desertion that lasted for several centuries. A good case for the impact of the 8200 BP RCC is the site of Sha'ar HaGolan in the central Jordan Valley, where the very late PPNB, also known as PPNC occurred around 8900e8700 cal BP and was replaced by the Yarmukian culture, the first to make pottery as mass production. The latter occupations are dated ca. 8400e8000 cal BP and then the village was abandoned, although it was established on the bank of the Yarmuk River (Garfinkel and Ben-Shlomo, 2009). Interestingly, a well discovered in the site meant that clean water was desired. Wells, deep enough to reach the aquifer are known within the perimeter of the PPNB sites across the Levant and Cyprus (Garfinkel et al., 2006; Peltenburg, 2012). They are probably not only an indication of recurrent droughts, but perhaps were related to the

fear of raiders or for ritual purposes or awareness of zoonotic diseases? See Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen (2010) apparently, there is a growing understanding that lethal violence was present during the Neolithic period in southwestern Asia although the physical evidence (e.g., impacted wounds) is very rare (Bar-Yosef et al., 2010 and comments therein). Interestingly, the major change of settlement pattern at the end of the PPNB identified today with the “8200 cal BP cold event” was already observed by past archaeologists such as K. Kenyon (1957). Finally, a similar case of site abandonment is the famous site of €yük in central Anatolia (Hodder, 2007). The main mound Çatalhuo was deserted for a century or two during the “8200 BP” RCC and the West Mound was a new settlement built next to the main East Mound but not on top of the old settlement (Marciniak and Czerniak 2007; Biehl et al., 2012). Therefore, one can follow the impact of the same event from the Levant westward across Anatolia. 7. Conclusions The early Paleolithic period witnessed extinctions and migration that are often attributed to climate changes but the associations between the two records are not well known. Undoubtedly Paleolithic societies were impacted by macro and micro-scale climatic changes, and the degree of resilience depended on each group, clan or tribe. ‘Free riders’, individuals, poor or good leaders probably determined the fate of their people. Natural selection had the final ruling, and the evolutionary success of hominins is recorded archaeologically and biologically among modern humans and their predecessors, the Neanderthals. Survival in colder regions required the invention of some cloths. Harsh conditions caused population movements and this was an option in a land that was not filled yet by other humans. High or low degree of mobility could be feasible when bands knew each other and their biological networks allowed successful reproduction to function in spite of large geographic distances (e.g., 100e150 km). The Upper Pleistocene is the time period when documented cultural changes are correlated with climatic fluctuations. Often the reasoning addresses environmental changes, but why the cultural record, as generally expressed in the tool-kits, should change is rarely or never explained. Even if we accept that for example the Stillbay disappeared due to a climatic environmental change, why should people give up their efficient hunting and butchering tools if they continue to survive, at least in part, on hunting? There needs to be strong, logical, and explicit linkage between the climatic cause and the cultural effect (Meltzer, 1991; Eren, 2012; Meltzer and BarYosef, 2012). A good example to demonstrate that natural calamity such as the Campanian volcanic eruption that several scholars refer to as a cause for cultural change-such a shift in making stone tools occur. The several troubled years did not impact the survival of local cultures although it caused an increase of mortality that is hard to document. Still it is possible that those societies living close to the volcano eruption were demographically affected during several years as suggested for Holocene environment (Tallavaara and €, 2012). Seppa Major climatic impacts on forager societies during the Terminal Pleistocene are recorded by many but others offer different interpretations (Eren, 2009; Meltzer and Holliday, 2010). Here we need to remember that the northern and higher latitudes were often occupied by hunter-gatherers who already acquired the needed means for survival in challenging environments, during the Upper Paleolithic. The adventurous migrations into the Americas required the technology to adapt to cold, snowy winters or nonhospitable mountain areas. In such areas it is not surprising that the evidence records demographic fluctuations, short periods of

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abandonment and reoccupations (e.g., Riede, 2009, 2014; Munoz et al., 2010; Tallavaara and Sepp€ a, 2012; Kelly et al., 2013). In this case it is interesting to note that the latter authors made the following comments concerning foragers in Finland: “In fact, there is evidence suggesting that hunteregatherers are rather unaffected by short term inter-annual or decadal environmental fluctuations” €, 2011, p. 222). It is this kind of abrupt changes (Tallavaara and Seppa that affected farmers in the Levant. If we compare the Holocene climatic fluctuations between the Mediterranean basin and Scandinavia, the plains of the Great Lakes in North America, or the higher Rockies, their impacts on farming societies were more disastrous. These village societies invented boats of different shapes that facilitated the colonization of Cyprus and other islands in the Aegean Sea, when they were still the cultivators of cereals in their wild forms as in the mainland (Willcox and Stordeur, 2012). They built houses with bricks on stone foundations, had stable and permanent storage facilities, new types of arrowheads and more. In short, these societies, and especially those who relied on farming, were more vulnerable to abrupt, short-term climatic changes. One can learn from historical records such as the droughts of the Sahel during the 1980's, or the fate of 17th century farmers in the Loess Plateau in China during sequential droughts on the magnitude of such climatic changes, causing famine and outward migration. Undoubtedly, the loss of life, given the different population sizes between foragers and farmers, was much great among the latter. The same can be said about pastoral societies that emerged during the 8th or 7th millennia BP (Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen, 2010). Rainy years afforded expansion into semiarid areas while consecutive dry winters caused stress among the nomadic tribes and the need for extra pastures resulting in physical conflicts. The observed micro-scale chronological gaps in many sites across the Levant and neighboring regions raise again the issue of continuity and its potentially variable interpretations (e.g.,
s, 2013). The detailed discussion of this issue is beyond the Perle scope of this paper, but the basic argument expressed in the previous pages is quite simple. In sum, Holocene RCCs seriously affected farming societies, early cities and empires. Probably, the Paleolithic foragers confronting mini-scale climatic changes during the Pleistocene dealt more easily with the outcome of annual or decadal environmental hazards. As archaeologists we need to pay attention to the degree of resilience of every past society by recognizing its failure or success, and try to resolve how in such a context we interpret the macro and micro-gaps in the archaeological records.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to R. Kelly and N. Naudinot for their invitation to participate in the SAA session on climate change and culture. I thank R. Kelly for commenting and editing the first manuscript, D. Bar-Yosef Mayer and M.I. Eren for commenting on another version. I am grateful for A. Belfer-Cohen for skillfully copy editing the final manuscript. Needless to stress that all shortcomings are mine.

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Please cite this article in press as: Bar-Yosef, O., Facing climatic hazards: Paleolithic foragers and Neolithic farmers, Quaternary International (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.037