The study suggests that warfare was responsible for the boom-bust cycles of Neolithic societies

A new study from the Complex Science Complex concludes that social disintegration and violent conflict played an important role in shaping the population dynamics of early agricultural societies in Neolithic Europe.

Complexity scientist Peter Turchin and his team at CSH, working as part of an international and interdisciplinary collaboration, may have added a meaningful piece to a long-standing puzzle in archeology.

Scientists have long tried to understand why Neolithic farming groups went through boom-bust cycles, including “crashes” when entire regions were abandoned. According to one popular explanation, climate variability is the main driver, but experimental testing does not fully support this claim. In a new paper published in the latest issue of Scientific reportsTurchin and his team seem to have come up with a new piece of information.

“Our study shows that periodic outbreaks of war – not climatic fluctuations – can explain the observed boom and bust patterns in the data,” says Turchin, project leader at the Center for Complex Sciences (CSH).

The team tested the two competing theories trying to explain these dynamics – climate change and social conflict – in a computer simulation and compared the results to historical data.

“This is the first time that an agent-based model has been applied to this scale for this period in pre-state and pre-imperial history. The model covers most of the European continent and works with small units, such as independent villages. Previous simulations for this period were done by Divide the area into a few large areas, but we wanted to examine the interactions at the village level,” explains CSH scientist Dániel Kondor, first author of the study.

change of heart

Turchin was applying mathematical models of social integration and disintegration to analyze the rise and fall of complex societies, such as the agrarian empires of history or modern nation-states. He admits that he was not convinced that such ideas would also apply to prehistory, such as the European Neolithic, where most of the time people lived in small-scale agricultural societies with no deep social inequalities and limited political organization outside of local settlements.

“I confess that until recently I believed that such societies were quite resilient and not prone to disintegration and social collapse. There is no state or nobility against which one can rebel, and in any case, what can ‘collapse’?” Torshin says.

However, Torchin now holds a different view. Mounting evidence suggests that “simple” Neolithic farming societies also collapsed. In fact, such cases run much deeper than the social and political collapse of modern societies, because archeology indicates that large areas were depopulated.

Computer simulation

In the study, the researchers focused on the period from the first evidence of agriculture in Europe to the beginning of the Bronze Age — between 7,000 B.C. and 3,000 B.C. The simulation begins with each small unit of the map either empty or occupied by a village of independent farmers. The simulation combines two components: population change per unit based on climate variability over the time period; and interactions, which include populations in each unit that divide, migrate, or conflict with each other.

The patterns generated by computer simulations were then compared to real-world data. The team used a radiocarbon dating database. “Archaeological data on settlements and Carbon-14 dating suggest boom-and-bust cycles. Because settlement data is limited to a few regions and periods, we rely on Carbon-14 data for our model predictions,” explains Condor.

Based on the study findings, climate change cannot explain the boom-bust dynamics over the time period. In contrast, simulations that account for social conflict produced similar patterns to those observed in radiocarbon dating.

“Of course, we can’t prove that this is the only mechanism behind a population decline over that time period. There may be another mechanism [mechanisms]However, we demonstrate that the population cycles that result in internal conflict are consistent with real-world data,” says Condor.

tough times

The study assumes a complex social landscape in this time period. This concept is consistent with the findings of extensive archaeological research in Europe over the past century. “This period was really much more dynamic than non-specialists might think,” adds Condor.

“Since we do not see a large-scale political organization that is consistent during this time, it would be easy to imagine that things were static, such that people settled in a village and lived there for three or four thousand years without much happening in between. That does not appear to be the case. Sadly It also means that this period was much more violent than previously thought.

“Numerous case studies have shown that early agricultural societies underwent cyclical social and political dynamics from consolidation to disintegration. These social cycles more or less run parallel to population cycles with significant violent conflict erupting during periods of disintegration,” explains archaeologist Detlev Grunenborn, from the Leibniz Center of the ruins in Mainz, Germany, one of the study’s co-authors.

“With this supraregional study, we were able to show that the former can be applied to a much wider area and over a much longer period of time. Disintegration and war seem to be a general behavioral pattern,” assesses Gronneborn.

“In addition, the study indicates that humans and their interactions, whether friendly or violent, form a complex system, regardless of their political or economic organization. It doesn’t matter if you don’t want to organize into a state, you are still influenced by your neighbors and their neighbors too,” he adds. condor.