Neolithic decline

The Neolithic decline was a rapid collapse in populations between five and six thousand years ago (approximately 3000 BC) during the Neolithic period in western Eurasia. The specific causes of this broad population decline are still debated.^[1] While heavily populated settlements were regularly created, abandoned, and resettled during the Neolithic, after around 5400 BP, a great number of these settlements were permanently abandoned.^[1] The population decline is associated with worsening agricultural conditions and a decrease in cereal production.^[2] Other suggested causes include the emergence of communicable disease spread from animals living in close quarters with humans.^[1] Rascovan et al (2019) suggest that plague could have also caused the population decline.^[3] This is supported by the discovery of a tomb in modern-day Sweden containing 79 corpses buried within a short time, in which the authors discovered with fragments of a unique strain of the plague pathogen Yersinia pestis.^[1][4][3] Authors also discovered in this strain the "plasminogen activator gene that is sufficient to cause pneumonic plague", an extremely deadly form of the plague which is airborne and directly communicable between humans.^[5]

Conditions for the population increase that preceded this decline are generally ascribed to rapid population growth between 5950 and 5550 BP; the growth was catalysed by the introduction of agriculture^[2] along with the spread of technologies such as pottery, the wheel, and animal husbandry.^[1] Following the Neolithic decline, and unrelated to the transmission of plague, were massive human migrations from the Eurasian Steppe into eastern and central Europe approximately 4600 BP.^[6]

References

Sources

• Colledge, Sue; Connolly, James; Crema, Enrico; Shennan, Stephen (23 August 2019). "Neolithic population crash in northwest Europe associated with agricultural crisis". Quaternary Research: 1-22. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/quaternary-research/article/neolithic-population-crash-in-northwest-europe-associated-with-agricultural-crisis/11F405EB351C8A86020C17A647C1C001. Retrieved 13 November 2019. 
• Rascovan, Nicolas; Sjogren, Karl-Goran; Kristiansen, Kristian; Nielsen, Rasmus; Willerslev, Eske; Desnues, Cristelle; Rasmussen, Simon (10 January 2019). "Emergence and Spread of Basal Lineages of Yersinia pestis during the Neolithic Decline". Cell 176 (2): 295-305. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2018.11.005. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nicolas_Rascovan/publication/329456734_Emergence_and_Spread_of_Basal_Lineages_of_Yersinia_pestis_during_the_Neolithic_Decline/links/5c0a48f8299bf139c744d296/Emergence-and-Spread-of-Basal-Lineages-of-Yersinia-pestis-during-the-Neolithic-Decline.pdf. Retrieved 13 November 2019. 

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