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Sunday, June 8, 2008

European Upper Paleolithic


I was just re-reading
J.P. Bocquet-Appel's work on UP European demography and used his maps to make some anotations that you may find interesting:



I think it's pretty clear but just in case some notes:

1. The origin of Aurignacian and Gravettian is not fully solved. Both cultures appear in their finished form first in Central Europe and expand westward from there. Gravettian also expanded eastward from Central Europe (not shown) and, in the Epipaleolthic (epi-Gravettian) to the Zagros Mountains area as well.

2. Solutrean is likely original from Dordogne (in the Franco-Cantabrian region) but the Mediterranean Iberian site of Les Mallaetes has also very old dates, so it's impossible to tell from sure. In any case, the Mediterranean Iberian region soon after experienced a process of intense gravetizattion leading to a very unusual Solutrean facies, if the name epi-Gravettian is not more adequate. Hungary and nearby areas also had some form of Solutrean, of later dates than the Western one in any case.

3. Magdalenian is certainly a Franco-Cantabrian developement and it spawned a number of Epipaleolithic cultures in all Western and Northern Europe.

Compare the last map with the distribution of the main European mtDNA clades:



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