The diet and health status of the early neolitihic communities of the Central Balkans (6200-5200 BC)

With climatic improvement at the beginning of the Holocene, small human groups across the world experienced important changes that over the following several millennia significantly impacted their lifestyles. The process began of the transition from mobile foragers to sedentary agro-pastoralists and, in a few thousand years, the world population increased. This process is known as the Neolithic Demographic Transition and represents one of the major events in human prehistory which significantly influenced human biology, dietary choices and health patterns. The new, Neolithic way of life spread from the Near East through western Anatolia to central Europe. The Balkans represents one of the key areas for studying the process of Neolithisation, as it is located at the crossroad between the Near East and central Europe. However, biological and cultural mechanisms behind the process of Neolithisation in the central Balkans are poorly understood. This thesis gives the first direct insights into how the process of Neolithisation in the Central Balkans influenced human lifestyle, particularly the diet and health. For the first time, the data from the Central Balkans and from Europe are compared, which helps better understand the dynamics of the Neolithisation process across the continent. This research focuses on examination of the diet and health status of 267 humans whose skeletal remains were recovered from 14 Mesolithic and Neolithic sites across the Central Balkans. The study focuses on two geographic regions: 1) the Danube Gorges (sites Padina, Lepenski Vir, Vlasac, Hajdučka Vodenica and Ajmana), where Mesolithic-Neolithic continuity of occupation has been attested for the period 95005500 cal BC; and 2) the regions to the west from the Danube Gorges, the territory of the Central Balkans (Golokut-Vizić, Klisa, Sremski Karlovci, Perlez-Batka, Obreţ-Baštine and Starčevo) and the southern part of the Great Pannonian Plain (Vinča-Belo Brdo, Grivac and Rudnik Kosovski) where Early Neolithic period lasted from 6200 to 5200 cal BC. Over this period, the inhabitants of these areas underwent Neolithic transformations which included major changes in the lifestyle. The changes included the beginning of a fully sedentary way of life, cultivation of domestic plants and breeding of animals. Many scholars hypothesized that these changes, seen not only in the Central Balkan region but also across whole Europe, had a positive effect on female reproductive system and that, as a result, within few thousand years the world population significantly increased. In fact, one of the key explanations for the causes of Neolithic Demographic Transition emphasises the changes in female nutrition – from protein-based diet to diet dominated by carbohydrates. Thus the aim of this thesis was to determine whether the Early Neolithic in the Central Balkans saw changes in human diet which could have had impact on fertility rates and the overall population health. Therefore, the first hypothesis underlying the study is that Neolithic people in the study region had less protein and more carbohydrates in their diet. This assumption is tested through the stable isotope and starch grain analysis, as well as through macroscopic examination of dental caries and calculus deposits. The rise in fertility was also followed by a general decline in health status in the Neolithic which is reflected in the higher occurrence of various skeletal and dental pathological conditions. Thus, the second hypothesis is that the transition to food production resulted in the overall health decline. This is tested through macroscopic analysis of non-specific stress indicators (cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, dental enamel hypoplasia), as well as through the analysis of ante mortem tooth loss and the presence of caries and dental calculus. Since this study focuses on two geographic regions that differ in subsistence economy, the third hypothesis is that the Neolithic groups occupying the Gorges and the groups who lived to the west from the Gorges differed in their dietary choices and health patterns. The stable isotope analysis showed that, at the beginning of 7 th millennium, the Danube Gorges hunter-fisher-gatherers, which were strongly reliant on aquatic resources and wild game, experienced a change seen in the increase in consumption of terrestrial resources (which entailed smaller intake of aquatic proteins and possibly more carbohydrates in the diet); this was noted at some sites from the Neolithic period. However, in the Danube Gorges, this was a gradual process since many Neolithic individuals remained reliant on aquatic products. In contrast, the stable isotope values of the Neolithic communities outside the Gorges, as well of the Early Neolithic groups in Europe, point at a predominantly terrestrial diet with only a little input of aquatic resources. Overall, the results for the study region show that the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition was not a simple linear process, but that it encompassed significant regional differences related to environmental factors, cultural traditions, and/or the dietary habits of the Neolithic newcomers. The results of starch grain analysis lend weight to the argument that Neolithic people based their diet on terrestrial resources and probably consumed significant amounts of carbohydrates. The appearance of new foods (cereals and milk), combined with novel food preparation techniques (cooking in pots), enabled central Balkans Neolithic mothers to reduce the length of the period during which they breastfed their children since they had a good replacement for their own milk and a possibility to make porridges. This could have positively affected female fertility rates and, together with the increase in the energy-rich food intake and decreased sedentism, may have allowed women to have more children and stay pregnant more often; the consequence of this was the increase in the number of people on Earth. Concerning the assessment of the macroscopic dietary indicators, the results are different for the two study regions. Although slight changes in the diet toward greater consumption of carbohydrates left evidence on the teeth of the Danube Gorges people, detected as the higher occurrence of caries in the Neolithic compared to the Mesolithic, this rate of occurrence here is still lower than in other Early Neolithic populations, including the Neolithic communities from outside the Gorges. The diet rich in animal proteins served as a buffered whilst, in contrast, the higher consumption of terrestrial food by the Neolithic groups outside the Gorges led to, in their case, the higher frequency of caries. However, although more common in the Mesolithic due to the protein-based diet, dental calculus was also frequent in the Neolithic groups in both of the studied regions, but had a different aetiology, probably linked to the introduction of dense, sticky, cooked carbohydrate-rich food. Furthermore, the highest record of premortem tooth loss was observed in the Neolithic humans from outside the Danube Gorges, which is in accordance with the prevalence of caries rates, suggesting that the presence of caries was the probable cause of the tooth loss. Although the high occurrence of ante mortem tooth loss was also noticed in the Mesolithic, the causal factors are different and probably connected with severe attrition and high calculus deposits. Regarding the evidence of non-specific stress indictors, there are also some regional differences. The distribution of cribra orbitalia and enamel hypoplasia is similar in the Mesolithic and the Neolithic sequence of the Danube Gorges, albeit more stress episodes of linear enamel hypoplasia were observed in the Neolithic. In human groups outside the Gorges, these two stress indicators are much more common, similar to the other European Mesolithic-Neolithic transitional populations. Concerning the presence of cribra orbitalia and porotic hyperostosis, the main difference between the periods, and in both study areas, is in the activity of lesions which show that many Neolithic people failed to heal. Overall, the result suggests different origins of these non-specific stress indicators. While the causes for cribra orbitalia and enamel hypoplasia could, inter alia, lie in the nutritional imbalance, reduced food diversity and the low food quality, the extremely high percentages of porotic hyperostosis were more likely caused by infectious diseases (e.g. treponemal infections were detected in the Danube Gorges) or cultural habits (e.g. making hairstyles with intensive use of comb or wearing ribbons around head can form lesions). Various diseases coupled with the shorter breastfeeding period and the consumption of new food that had negative effects left multiple consequences for human health. This is also evident in the decrease in the average stature and body mass in the Danube Gorges Neolithic human groups compared to the Mesolithic. This could also have been influenced by the arrival of non-local people with small body proportions. However, the decrease seen in the Gorges was not as dramatic as that documented in other Early Neolithic populations in Europe. Although humans in the Gorges were more affected by physiological stress and were less mobile than the Mesolithic groups, their diet rich in aquatic resources could have had positive effect and precluded a significant decrease in the stature characteristic of other Early Neolithic populations. Further, in the Danube Gorges there was no sex-specific trend toward greater decrease in the female stature compared to males – contrary to was observed in other Early Neolithic populations in Europe. The females from outside the Danube Gorges were short and small in comparison to females in the Gorges and they resemble Early Neolithic women from Europe. For these females it is impossible to suggest whether their stature and weight decreased over time, since their geneti