Re: Mesolithic/Neolithic Boundary (1) From Whence They Came.

prd wrote: news:OdhLg.24394$mY1.16012@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In sci.archaeology message
news:44fd6a03$0$23386$dbd45001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx by "Peter Alaca"
<P.Alaca@xxxxxx> . . . :

prd wrote:
news:9w5Lg.51687$5i3.22123@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[...]
The Iberian Refuge.
[...].
. The Mesolithic middens
suggest that coastal productivity in northern spain was not good,
densities appear to be lower than other sites, and the use of land
animal food sources appears to have been required. When we get into
the genetic argument this opinion should have some value. Oddly
however badger and other animals found the region about San
Sebastion a favored [Mammal Review 34 (2004) 249,284] plenigalical
habitat during the LGM, Western france should be appart of that
range, and numerous genera are found in the Late glacial period.

Why not given the full reference, or the authors?
Robert Sommer & Norbert Benecke (2004)
"Late- and Post-Glacial history of the Mustelidae in Europe"
Mammal Review 34: 249-248
For the abstract, see: http://tinyurl.com/zenk
(btw. the Mustelidae are the Martens, like Weasels,
Stoats, Polecats, Wolverines, Badgers, Minks, Otters)

The whole article is available free online. An expert
in ecology such as yourself would know that.

What has that to do with it?
And again it is too much trouble for you to
provide the link for the benefit of your readers?
I am not here to do your work for you.
(the pdf is 36 pp and 1 Mb)


A final thought on Iberia. Archaeological studies tend to
favor finds of sedentary peoples, lets face it, if you are going to
study
a site you would tend to put an effort into a site with many
inhumations, many middens, and depths of culture.
[...]

You seem to have strange ideas about
archaeologists and the way of living in
the mesolithic period.
Do you realy think the hunter gatherers
did nothing else than running around day
and night? And archaeologists are working
for years to unravel mesolithic (and paleolithic)
campsites, even if it are only daycamps.

And yet some suggest that many of these minor
sites in many places have gone undeveloped. At
least the archaeologist in Japan was honest. He stated that
there were 4500 known sites in Japan, most people are
interested in the post-Jomon sites because that
is where the public interest is, and because
that is what the public easily identifies and reports
to the authorities. When asked about ongoing
PL and 'ML' sites he said they where principally
interesting in the larger site.

To call iberia a refuge is a little bit euphemistic, there is no
great evidence to suggest people returned to iberia at the LGM, or
that they prevelantly left iberia. Iberia is more or less a corridor
of travel from africa in which people made unknown lengths of
pitstops before moving north.

Why is that when the livin in Iberia was good?
I is a waste of energie.

BTW.

Refuge:
1. A safe place
2. Something or someone turned to for
assistance or security
3. A shelter from danger or hardship
4. Act of turning to for assistance

Refugium:
An isolated area where extensive changes,
typically due to changing climate (such as
glaciation) but also due to large-scale
disturbances such as those caused by
humans, have not occurred and where plants
and animals typical of a region may survive.
Such a refuge is a center of relict forms from
which dispersion and speciation may take
place after environmental readjustment.
http://biology.usgs.gov/s+t/SNT/noframe/zy198.htm

If Iberia was a refugium for plants and animals,
as it appears it was, why not for people?

Because the notation that population collapsed into Iberia
and expanded from iberia is not supportable. If one, critically,
believes that western europe in the soluterian period had originated
from H/G that traveled up the Danube ~35 kya, the genetics and
nodes of Iberia does not show that this population collapsed into
iberia, proper. Nor if one looks at the haplotypes that have expanded
from iberia only the extreme northwest shows a potential pattern of
reoccupation.
The best evidence for collapse appears to have been for southern
or western france, both areas of potency are under sea level now.
IOW the across the mtns iberia may have been a refuge for iberians
already living in iberia, but no neccesarily for people living to the
north.
The only exceptions are:
The protoPasiegos, as a potential refuge population, that protobasque
but not neccesarily anything more than diffusive hybrids. If the
archaeology has any meaning the productivity of these northern
peoples would have placed them as an extreme minority even during the
mesolithic. This is not to argue that the LGM changed the pattern of
diffusion if not increasing the rate of diffusion of northern peoples into
iberia, but it does limit the overall extent.

Or let me put it this way, Iberia may have been a refuge for
expansion, if there was not a more northern refuge, such a refuge
would preferentially expand and competitively inhibit iberian expansion.
This appears to fit the genetic data. Therefore the iberian refuge despite
its productive capacity and multinodality was more of a long term
habitation area than a refuge.

The true refuges were probably in the S.France or SW.france or
even west central france outside of the peninsular region, proper.

But don't forget that human life during the last Ice Age
was not restricted to refugia or even southern Europe.
(Reindeer)hunters were living as far north as possible.
Remember e.g. Magdalenien, Gravettien, Hamburg,
Creswell, Federmesser/Tjonger, Ahrensburg.

--
p.a.


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