How much did farming yield per acre in the neolithic age ?

Hunting/foraging was always a secondary strategy for farmers everywhere in the world. The farmers got more and more land and competed with hunters for game and other resources in the remaining wildlands. Because of their village life they were organized in bigger units that could easily outcompete the scattered hunter bands that can't organize in larger units because local resources don't suffice. So, foragers slowly adopted farming or intermarried with farmers and became extinct as a distinct culture.

Agriculture provides more food per unit area of land, compared to foraging. That is, you get more food per acre by farming it than by collecting the wild foods on it. This allows more people to live in a given area. That is, it allows a higher density of people. Of course, it takes more labor to farm an acre of land than to collect the wild foods that are naturally there. This process of putting in more labor per acre to get more product per acre out is called "intensification". Agriculture is more "intensive" than foraging in that it produces food more per acre, but requires more labor per acre to do so agricultural practices themselves can be more or less "intensive". Just scattering seeds or diverting floodwaters to wet some land does not take much labor, and is not a very "intensive" form of agriculture building and maintaining canals to irrigate the fields is more "intensive" than just depending on rainfall because they are getting more crops per acre at the cost of building and maintaining the canals.


As well as growing plants their economy (subsistence strategy) was based on the animal husbandry (meat, milk)and also fishing or hunting (small mammals). That means that (at least in starting phase - lets say 2-3 generations) depending on the number of the villagers growing plants need may vary. Another important issue is the crop failure which was quite commom, just like today. We can see this from the table 2 where we see that they grew a whole range of plants from Emmer wheat and grass pea to the Cornelian cherry.


I know that P. Halstead as well as Jack Harlan did some research into this. Harlan was interested in the amount of wild grain that was available in the ancient near east. A biography and list of his publications is here: http://www2.bioversityinternational.org/publications/Web_version/47/ch13.htm

It all depends on few factors like: used techniques, land quality (fertility), seed quality etc. Some estimates are around 800 - 1000 kg per acre.
Generally speaking 1 kg of wheat has around 3000 calories and whit 1 tone of it we can feed 3 persones for a whole year.

I'll use Danilo - Bitinj and Pokrovnik site as an example (Figure 1).




The results of the excavations may be summarized briefly.

Pokrovnik was occupied from the Early Neolithic, or Impressed Ware, phase continuously through the Middle Neolithic, or Danilo, phase. Closely spaced trenches revealed that occupation was intense throughout. During the Impressed Ware phase substantial terrace walls were built of stone to support sectors of the village. In the Danilo phase we found evidence of rectangular houses. Towards the edge of the site, bounded still by terrace and other walls, habitation gave way to spaces that were heavily trodden by domestic animals. The site was occupied from the initial stages of farming in Dalmatia through to the later Neolithic, based on the artefacts recovered. This is confirmed by the seven AMS dates obtained by the Oxford Laboratory, all on single grains of domestic wheat. They range from 6999 ± 37 bp (OxA–17194) to 6170 ± 35 bp (OxA–17223) or ca. 5900 to 5100 BC. Thus, the site appears to have been inhabited for at least the entire sixth millennium BC.

Danilo has yielded deposits mainly of the Middle Neolithic, or Danilo, phase, although a little material of other periods was recovered. Each trench that was excavated contained structures of different kinds, basal pits from which clay for building had been excavated, deep ditches, stone pavements, open yards, and traces of rectangular houses constructed of poles, brush and clay. These remains suggest that widely different activities were carried out across the site. We have 13 AMS dates for Danilo, on individual domestic wheat grains, other charred seeds, and a sheep calcaneum. The earliest is 6284 ± 40 bp (OxA–14449) and the latest 5987 ± 35 bp (OxA–15680). These dates indicate a shorter span of occupation than at Pokrovnik, at least in the areas we excavated, from perhaps 5300 to 4800 BC. Many of the various activities that were documented would have taken place at approximately the same time. The dates support provisional interpretation that the village at Danilo was more complex in its range of activities and spatial arrangements than excavations at other Neolithic sites in the region would have suggested.

The results confirm that at least three species of domestic wheat and one of barley were cultivated at Danilo, as well as an array of pulses and other plants. Some wild fruits and nuts were also collected.

At this site survey of the area was taken (area covered by the site) and its vicinity using the standard method of field walking, complemented by the mapping techniques. Survey demonstrated that the archaeological site was much more extensive than we had anticipated, covering an area of perhaps 9 ha. This makes it one of the most extensive Neolithic sites in southern Europe (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Location of the Danilo-Bitinj and Pokrovnik

Figure 2: Look at the Danilo valley. The area covered by the site is within the

dashed line

Table 1: Charred seeds recovered in flotation during excavation at Danilo-Bitinj site

Table 2: During excavation, there was extensive sampling by water flotation of all archaeological deposits as excavated. This work, and the task of analysis, has been done by Ms Kelly Reed of the Institute of Archaeology, University College, London

Table 3

Table 4: Domestic species

My question to all of you is:
How much did (could) farming (Triticum dicoccum for example as it is the most common in my example site - Danilo-Bitinj and Pokrovnik) yield per acre in the neolithic age ? When I say neolithic age I mean early neolithic in sence of technology.
How much people could be sustained by 9 ha of arable land during this time ?


It looks to me that if we could find way to calculate some parameters like for example 1 ha of ariable land sowned by Triticum dicoccum seeds in 6 months time will give 300 kg of wheat. That means that by calculating meat production or milk (here I dont talk about exchange - for example villagers gave 300 kg of wheat every 6 months to the local guther-gatehrer group to stay in peace) particulare village (Danilo-Bitinj for example) could have population of 150 indivuduals.

Writte your comments and references as well so tomorrow we can answer questions we ask today.


Please post some references for further reading as well.

References:

Legge A. J. and Moore, A. M. T. (2011) Clutching at straw: the Early Neolithic of Croatia and the dispersal of agriculture. Dynamics of neolithisation in Europe: studies in honour of Andrew Sherratt / eds. A. Hadjikoumis, E. Robinson and S. Viner. Oxford: Oxbow Books. pp. 176 – 195

Fadem, C. (2009) Geoarchaeology of the Danilo Bitinj and Pokrovnik sites, Dalmatia, Croatia. August 2009, http://digital.wustl.edu/e/etd/pdf/Fadem_wustl_0252D_10080.pdf . (12.09.2011.)

Moore, A. et al. (2007) Project “Early farming in Dalmatia” Danilo Bitinj 2004-2005. Vjesnik arheološkog muzeja u Zagrebu. pp. 15 – 24

Halstead, P. (2006) Sheep in the garden; the integration of crop and livestock husbandry in early farming regimes of Greece and southern Europe. Animals in the Neolithic of Britain and Europe / eds. D. Serjentson and D. Field. Oxford: Oxbow Books. pp. 42 – 55

Halstead, P. (1996) The development of agriculture and pastoralismin Greece: when, how, who and what. The spread of agriculture and pastoralism / eds. Haris, D. R. London: UCL Press. pp. 296 – 309

Pryor, A. (2008) Following the fat: food and mobility in the European Upper Palaeolithic 45,000 to 18,000 years ago. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 23(2), pp. 161–79

Complete Mitochondrial Genomes Reveal Neolithic Expansion into Europe

Recently, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from skeletal remains of European early farmers and late hunter-gatherers has been retrieved. The frequency of mtDNA haplogroups, defined by substitutions shared by related mtDNA types (Phylotree.org-mtDNA tree build 12), in early farmers across Europe was found to be overall similar to those in modern Europeans (Figure 1, Figure S4, Figure S5), while pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers appear to be quite distinct (Figure 1). In particular, 83% (19 out of 23) of hunter-gatherers analyzed to date carry mtDNAs belonging to haplogroup U and none of the hunter-gatherers fall in haplogroup H. In contrast, haplogroup U has been found in only 13 of 105 (around 12%) individuals from early farming cultures of Europe and it occurs in less than 21% of modern Europeans, while haplogroup H comprises between 25% and 37% of mtDNAs retrieved from early farming cultures (Figure S4) and is in about 30% of contemporary Europeans (Figure 1). The mtDNA data thus suggest that the pre-Neolithic populations in Europe were largely replaced by in-coming Neolithic farming groups, with a maximum mtDNA contribution of around 20% from pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers.


The Neolithic transition from hunting and gathering to farming and cattle breeding marks one of the most drastic cultural changes in European prehistory. Short stretches of ancient mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from skeletons of pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers as well as early Neolithic farmers support the demic diffusion model where a migration of early farmers from the Near East and a replacement of pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherers are largely responsible for cultural innovation and changes in subsistence strategies during the Neolithic revolution in Europe. In order to test if a signal of population expansion is still present in modern European mitochondrial DNA, we analyzed a comprehensive dataset of 1,151 complete mtDNAs from present-day Europeans. Relying upon ancient DNA data from previous investigations, we identified mtDNA haplogroups that are typical for early farmers and hunter-gatherers, namely H and U respectively. Bayesian skyline coalescence estimates were then used on subsets of complete mtDNAs from modern populations to look for signals of past population expansions. Our analyses revealed a population expansion between 15,000 and 10,000 years before present (YBP) in mtDNAs typical for hunters and gatherers, with a decline between 10,000 and 5,000 YBP. These corresponded to an analogous population increase approximately 9,000 YBP for mtDNAs typical of early farmers. The observed changes over time suggest that the spread of agriculture in Europe involved the expansion of farming populations into Europe followed by the eventual assimilation of resident hunter-gatherers. Our data show that contemporary mtDNA datasets can be used to study ancient population history if only limited ancient genetic data is available.

LINK (PDF)

Report on the symposium on Modern Human Genetic Variation

This image shows the chronology of the Neolithic wave of advance in Europe. The arrow corresponds to the Y-direction in the model. Credit: http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/12/123002/pdf/1367-2630_12_12_123002.pdf



The following text is taken from the http://dienekes.blogspot.com/


Joshua Akey summarizes the talks of a recent symposium at the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. Two bits of information stand out from his report. The first:

In another talk focused on demography, Mattias Jakobsson (Uppsala University, Sweden) presented novel data on the impact of the agricultural revolution on the genetics of contemporary European populations. Specifically, Jakobsson and colleagues obtained nearly 250 Mb of sequence from three 5,000-year-old remains of Neolithic hunter-gatherers and one Neolithic farmer excavated in Scandinavia. Analysis of these sequences in the context of the present day European gene pool suggests that the spread of agriculture involved the northward migrations of farmers. Thus, these data provide the most direct and compelling support for the demic diffusion model of agriculture (as opposed to cultural diffusion) described to date.

It seems I have my answer to the what's next question. Jakobsson has been doing some interesting work on the demography of human emergence and dispersal, so it will be interesting to see not only the novel sequences from these Neolithic Scandinavians, but also how they fit into existing models of demic diffusion.

The second bit of information:

Similarly, Jeff Wall (University of California San Francisco, USA) described a novel method for inferring archaic admixture, which he applied to publicly available whole-genome sequence data generated by Complete Genomics. Provocatively, he finds higher rates of introgression in Asians compared to Europeans. An advantage of Wall’s method is that it does not require an archaic genome to infer introgression, and thus he was able to also test the hypothesis that contemporary African genomes have signatures of gene flow with archaic human ancestors. Strikingly, Wall indeed did find evidence of archaic admixture in African genomes, suggesting that modest amounts of gene flow were widespread throughout time and space during the evolution of anatomically modern humans.

I guess that I shouldn't throw explanation #1 out the window yet. Wall was involved in the recent paper on archaic African admixture, which only looked at a small subset of the genome, so it is nice to see that he is now working with full genomes, and that the race to data mine complete genomes for archaic admixture is afoot.

The book of abstracts is online at the symposium site. The Jakobsson paper does seem to agree with our emerging picture of a non-local origin of northern European farmers as well as greater survival of pre-farming populations in the northern periphery of Europe, but it will be interesting to see where exactly extant populations fall on the farmer-hunter/gatherer continuum.


Origins and genetic legacy of Neolithic farmers and hunter-gatherers in Northern Europe
Mattias Jakobsson

Department of Evolutionary Biology, Evolutionary Biology Centre (EBC), Uppsala University, Sweden

The prehistoric spread of farming in Europe has garnered intense interest for almost a century, and was one of the first questions to which population genetic data was used to investigate demographic hypotheses. However, the impact of the agricultural revolution on the European gene pool remains largely unknown. We obtained 249 million base pairs of quality-filtered human autosomal sequence data from some 5,000 year-old remains of three Neolithic hunter-gatherers and one Neolithic farmer excavated in Scandinavia, the northernmost fringe of agricultural practice at the time. Applying novel methods to study population structure based on low genome-coverage data, we find that Northern European Neolithic farmers are most similar to modern-day southern Europeans, contrasting sharply to Neolithic hunter-gatherers who are most similar to extant individuals from northern Europe. With most extant European populations appearing genetically intermediate between the two Neolithic groups, our results suggest that migration from the south by a genetically distinct group of humans accompanied the spread of agriculture to geographic regions where hunting and gathering was the mode of subsistence, but that admixture eventually shaped modern-day patterns of genomic variation.

Archaic admixture in the human genome
Jeff D Wall

Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco, USA

We describe a method that uses patterns of linkage disequilibrium in extant human populations to identify regions of the genome that were inherited from ‘archaic’ human ancestors, such as Neandertals, Homo erectus or H. floresiensis. We validate this approach using two recently published archaic human genomes, and show that several ancient admixture events must have occurred, both within and outside of Africa. We also explore differences in the amount of archaic admixture across different contemporary human populations.


Finally, here is the meeting report:

Investigative Genetics 2012, 3:7 doi:10.1186/2041-2223-3-7

Understanding human evolutionary history: a meeting report of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences symposium of modern human genetic variation

Joshua M Akey

LINK (PDF)

Intro - Some general concepts

The position of the mesolithic and neolithic has evolved over time. A neolithic culture being one with refined stone tools, sedentary and agricultural practices, etc. The classic neolithic culture of europe is the LBK, which has the complete 'package' and there should be know arguement about whether this was a culture or not.

The problem is that during the late mesolithic across a much larger area of europe the transitional process was not so abrupt, and as the archaeological reports indicate you have situations where archaeologist argue

1. Abrupt neolithization, or sudden neolithic occupation.

2. A transition or replacement of a site where a definite
point is reached where neolithization is evident and largely
incontroverable.

3. A mesolithic/neolithic transition that the crossover point is not
definable with confidence


As it turns out improvements in archaeological sampling are seeing more of the 2nd and 3rd catagories. This should not be surprising since the Mesolithic was brought into archaeology as a sought after transtion between paleolithic and neolithic peoples and then the late paleolithic has been carved into epipaleolithic and
earlier periods. As soon as you see the mesolithic catagory widely accepted archaeologist start focusing more on this transitional period. Now we see a focus toward the middle and late transitions in the mesolithic to the neolithic. As a result you have authors tiptoeing around defining neolithic sites as they do not
have all the classical elements that are seen in other sites.


Problem with the boundary definition is proximity. Apriori proximity should not have to play, but human culture is not static, and a neolithic culture has its preferences, so that it might move into a place K and develope it, or it might move into an occupation region L and admix or displace, or move into a region M adjacent to L and over time spread and diffuse into L. One has to look at the various strategies over time. Some examples for example in Portugal and Iberia neolithization looks to me to be opportunistic. There is a neolithization process going on that is taking time some places are evolving faster than others, at the same time
there is the sudden appearance or transition at some sites to a neolithic people, and the reasoning by archaeologist is often to explain the opportunity as it presented itself. For example in the north of Spain, it is rationalized that the neolithizing peoples did not see much opportunity on the steep slopes of the mountains that are just off the coast, so that the focus stopped short of northern spain moved inland.
Whereas a slow process of overland trade brought neolithization to northern Spain with a protracted boundary. This example was chosen to get into an area of discussion where the genetic impact and classical neolithization argument is avoided and whose impact on the larger europe is not deemed, by me, to be important. When we talk about Southeast Europe, in this case east Adriatic coast, neolithic package appears suddenn with the element that were unknown to mesolithic populations of the area. Other problem is the lack of quality data and archaeological sites of the entire mesolithic period.

The other issue of proximity is technology and obstructions (or surmounting obstructions). The definition of cultural capability for transportation is hard to define, evidence is spurious, and implicit evidence is almost as common in primative peoples or more so than in neolithic peoples. Barriers can appear and disappear, opening of barriers is not neccesarily and exact science, interpretation of plausibility is a combination of assumptions of technology and assumptions of geological and oceanography. Who has proximity to do what is of concern and what seems likely genetically may seem impossible by other concerns or vice versa.


The critical issue of previous threads needs to be addressed in an open frame work of question answering. Namely who or what cultures neolithicized other cultures and by what processes?

The other issue is whether all mesolithic cultures were neccesarily transitional, or whether the transition resulted from unidirectional, by and large, cultural flow. Those that have read the literature pretty much know the answer, those that haven't should read the literature. There is too much information for me to post on
the matter and so the next thread will deal with information that supports my current points of view, there is alot more information that support other areas of concern and there is simply no means for me to deal with these, my concern as plainly stated has been the food, food storage, and genetics. Therefore the discussion will only be productive if questions are answered via a pre-reading of the literature.