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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Nishinihon / Higashinihon
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Annexus Quam
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Closer To The Bone
Apr 22, 2004, 16:21
It's possible. There were so many deliberate movements of humans, animals and plants during the neolithic that it turns quite a lot of the European flora and fauna we know of today into 'imported' goods. One of the rarest endemic Mallorcan animals (extinct today) died out during the Neolithic, after attempting to domesticize it...

I've bothered to find the name of the eastern Swedish culture I gave as an example: Vra-Culture. They became *agriculturalists* (to use a less lazy word than 'farmers' as suggested above) around 4,000 BCE; after conditions became too damp they gave up on it (3,000 BCE). I'm sure it happened all over the place in Europe and at various stages in Prehistory.

I've seen megalithic centres today which used to be fertile edens converted into deserts at around the same time. And I am the kind of believer that the fall of most civilizations is due to environmental problems, as indeed many remains have shown.

As for a culture using sheep alone with very little agriculture, it is far more common than it is given credit. As I said, many of the places I have seen up and down the Western Atlantic which are dolmenic paradises could not have supported much plant growing since the ground is so full of granite, outcrops and rocky tors!

In any case, the borders between being an agriculturalist and a pastoralist are incredibly blurred.
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Soay Sheep (Kammer)
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