[Little Bill]

I remember when our ancestors were pictured as a bunch of slavering knuckle draggers, long of tooth and short of life, Hobbes.

The Neolithic explosion has always mystified me, from smelly subhuman hunter gathers to settled smelly farmers is a mystery.

[hinckley buzzard]

The Neolithic explosion has always mystified me, from smelly subhuman hunter gathers to settled smelly farmers is a mystery.

Most leaps in civilization have occurred in the presence of a warming climate. Check the correlation of the neolithic age with paleoclimate change.

[MetaThought]

I doubt the hunter gatherers would have been subhuman.

They would have been happy and healthy compared to the farmers, but overwhelmed by the larger numbers.

[SunkenCiv]

The Neolithic explosion has always mystified me, from smelly subhuman hunter gathers to settled smelly farmers is a mystery.

That problem may be one of perception, but that's just MHO. There is scarce but reasonable evidence of settled living (as blam notes) 100s of 1000s of years ago, and most of the area where they would have been living at that time is now submerged. When the ice was piled up inland, what we know as the continental shelf was teeming with life, and due to lower altitude was warmer, well watered everywhere, etc.

In Anatolia, Catal Huyuk ("chattel hoy yook" approximately) appears to have sprung up fully formed (from a cultural standpoint) as if the people came from nowhere. A reasonable suggestion was made that their cultural development had all taken place below what is now sealevel. CH itself existed about 3000 years, and was abandoned about 7500 years ago. Hmm, seems like it was 7450 years ago, because after the primary site was burned (by intruders? someone smoking in bed?) a smaller site sprang up nearby and existed for perhaps 50 years.