Dispersal distances and cultural effects in the spread of the Neolithic along the northern Mediterranean coast

Abstract

We estimate a spread rate of 7.5-10.6 km/year for the Neolithic expansion along the northern shore of the western Mediterranean. Comparing to theory and numerical simulations of demic-cultural waves of advance, we find that the length of coastal jumps was 240 ≤ Δ ≤ 427 km. We also derive what we believe are the first analytical equations for spread rates of waves of advance along a coast, and they agree with the simulation results. We show that the importance of cultural diffusion in this Neolithic spread was less than 21%, so demic diffusion was responsible for at least 79% of the observed spread rate. We argue that these results suggest that the spread took place using boats, and also a limited interaction between the incoming farmers and the autochthonous hunter-gatherers

Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. This work was partially funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (grant PID2019-104585 GB-I00) and the Institució Catalana d'Estudis Avançats (ICREA Academia Grant 2022–2026)