How did the incumbent Mesolithic hunter-gatherers respond to the arrival of Neolithic agro-pastoralists in the Central Mediterranean Basin, as documented in the archaeological record?

Abstract

The transition from the need for humanity to live in symbiosis with nature, to being able to change and control it through agriculture and animal husbandry, is the seminal moment when demographic growth was no longer constrained by the carrying capacity of natural resources obtained from hunting, fishing, and gathering. Over a little more than ten thousand years, the rupture of these constraints has engendered the exponential growth of humanity and the consequent changes to the natural habitat to which we are witnesses. This article presents case studies of the varying responses from Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities at four sites and in three regions on the north side of the Central Mediterranean basin, when confronted with the immigrant Neolithic agro-pastoralists originating from the Fertile Crescent, in the Aegean Basin, the Balkans, Sicily, and the Adriatic, as far as the Adige Valley in the foothills of the Southern Alps.