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New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe
The distribution of the first domesticated animals and crops along the coastal area of Atlantic NW Europe, which triggered the transition from a hunter-gatherer-fisher to a farmer-herder economy, has been debated for many decades among archaeologists. While some advocate a gradual transition in whic...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7676240/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33208792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77002-4 |
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author | Crombé, Philippe Aluwé, Kim Boudin, Mathieu Snoeck, Christophe Messiaen, Liesbeth Teetaert, Dimitri |
author_facet | Crombé, Philippe Aluwé, Kim Boudin, Mathieu Snoeck, Christophe Messiaen, Liesbeth Teetaert, Dimitri |
author_sort | Crombé, Philippe |
collection | PubMed |
description | The distribution of the first domesticated animals and crops along the coastal area of Atlantic NW Europe, which triggered the transition from a hunter-gatherer-fisher to a farmer-herder economy, has been debated for many decades among archaeologists. While some advocate a gradual transition in which indigenous hunter-gatherers from the very beginning of the 5th millennium cal BC progressively adopted Neolithic commodities, others are more in favor of a rapid transition near the end of the 5th millennium caused by a further northwest migration of farmers-herders colonizing the lowlands. Here, radiocarbon dated bones from sheep/goat and possibly also cattle are presented which provide the first hard evidence of an early introduction of domesticated animals within a hunter-gatherer context in NW Belgium, situated ca. 80 km north of the agro-pastoral frontier. Based on their isotope signal it is suggested that these first domesticates were probably not merely obtained through exchange with contemporaneous farmers but were kept locally, providing evidence of small-scale local stockbreeding in the lowlands maybe as early as ca. 4800/4600 cal BC. If confirmed by future in-depth isotope analyses, the latter testifies of intense contact and transmission of knowledge in this early contact period, which is also visible in the material culture, such as the lithic and pottery technology. It also implies direct and prolonged involvement of farmer-herders, either through visiting specialists or intermarriage, which follows recent genetic evidence demonstrating much more hunter-gatherer ancestry in early farmer’s genes in western Europe compared to central and SE Europe. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7676240 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-76762402020-11-23 New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe Crombé, Philippe Aluwé, Kim Boudin, Mathieu Snoeck, Christophe Messiaen, Liesbeth Teetaert, Dimitri Sci Rep Article The distribution of the first domesticated animals and crops along the coastal area of Atlantic NW Europe, which triggered the transition from a hunter-gatherer-fisher to a farmer-herder economy, has been debated for many decades among archaeologists. While some advocate a gradual transition in which indigenous hunter-gatherers from the very beginning of the 5th millennium cal BC progressively adopted Neolithic commodities, others are more in favor of a rapid transition near the end of the 5th millennium caused by a further northwest migration of farmers-herders colonizing the lowlands. Here, radiocarbon dated bones from sheep/goat and possibly also cattle are presented which provide the first hard evidence of an early introduction of domesticated animals within a hunter-gatherer context in NW Belgium, situated ca. 80 km north of the agro-pastoral frontier. Based on their isotope signal it is suggested that these first domesticates were probably not merely obtained through exchange with contemporaneous farmers but were kept locally, providing evidence of small-scale local stockbreeding in the lowlands maybe as early as ca. 4800/4600 cal BC. If confirmed by future in-depth isotope analyses, the latter testifies of intense contact and transmission of knowledge in this early contact period, which is also visible in the material culture, such as the lithic and pottery technology. It also implies direct and prolonged involvement of farmer-herders, either through visiting specialists or intermarriage, which follows recent genetic evidence demonstrating much more hunter-gatherer ancestry in early farmer’s genes in western Europe compared to central and SE Europe. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC7676240/ /pubmed/33208792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77002-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Article Crombé, Philippe Aluwé, Kim Boudin, Mathieu Snoeck, Christophe Messiaen, Liesbeth Teetaert, Dimitri New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe |
title | New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe |
title_full | New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe |
title_fullStr | New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe |
title_full_unstemmed | New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe |
title_short | New evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in Atlantic NW Europe |
title_sort | new evidence on the earliest domesticated animals and possible small-scale husbandry in atlantic nw europe |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7676240/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33208792 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77002-4 |
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