miércoles, 30 de mayo de 2012

Migration pressures on Neolithic Norway

The oldest surviving indication of human activity in Norway dates to around 10,000 years ago when the Glaciers at last began to retreat. But today’s Scandinavians are not direct descendants of these early hunter-gatherers.

It is becoming clearer that dramatic external changes formed the basis of present-day Norwegian culture and one of the most important of these occurred around 4,400 years ago.

Christopher Prescott, a professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo, with a flint dagger from the late Neolithic. These flint daggers were important status items associated with the introduction of agriculture to Norway. (Photo: Asle Rønning)
Christopher Prescott, a professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo, with a flint dagger from the late Neolithic. These flint daggers were important status items associated with the introduction of agriculture to Norway. (Photo: Asle Rønning)

We  can see how groups communicated over large distances and traded everything from ideas and languages to combs and spouses. Radical social changes occurred within just a few years but to see where this begins, “We have to go back to ca. 2400 BC,” says Christopher Prescott, of the University of Oslo..

Agriculture had already spread its way through Europe and taken root in Norway, but the hunter-gatherers in the far north did not immediately join this development. They maintained much of their own culture and lived side by side with early farmers as well as with certain groups belonging to the so-called battle axe culture for nearly a thousand years.
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Migration pressures on Neolithic Norway

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