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Could be, but check how long it took farming to overwhelm the Carpathian Mountains ~ with 7000 foot heights ~ so that means he's talking about "herding" ~ and that's where "other studies" also toss some monkey wrenches into his nice, neat analysis.

One study involving domestication of pigs reveals that they were domesticated NUMEROUS TIMES in NUMEROUS PLACES and even the original pig breed was eventually displaced by a European pig breed brought in at a later time.

Then there's this problem with Mt. Hekla ~ it spews fluorine compounds ~ and there's a nice neat swath across Great Britain, Pays Bas and Jutland suggesting some LONG PAUSES in occupation ~ like maybe they were waiting to repopulate the area while the plants grew back after a vigorous bubbling in Iceland.

Comparable disturbances along the Mediterranean coast are shorter in duration simply because there's no fluorine in the mix, it's warmer, and the worst of the lot, like Santorini, are UNDERWATER.

No doubt the farmers would have loved to have moved into Western Europe at a faster pace, but even in Julius Caesar's day, nearly the modern era given this chart's timescale, he found it necessary to REMOVE some of the more rambunctious tribes from around the Northern Adriatic and use them to settle Pays Bas.

Sure, he could do it, but these people were set to work farming and herding ~ where were those nests of Mesolithic hunters in those areas? In Caesar's view (and I've read him) there was no one worth fighting North of the new settlement areas for the Boii ~ it was like it'd not recovered from the events of the early 1800 BCE period ~ and whatever those events were they created a world depression.

The chart does show an agricultural/neolithic advance in the far North that's consistent with present conditions ~ take a good look at the Sapma ~ there's a zone on the Arctic Coast where grass grows sufficient to sustain sheep ~ but by the time you get much further West than Petsamo/Pechenga that's all replaced with moss since the winter climate is entirely too vigorous for grass.

Did the arrival of grass eaters from the South simply take advantage of empty land, or did they advance into an area already occupied by hunter/gatherers?

We know the great reindeer herds of the Fenno Scandian peninsula migrated along hillsides where a plant called "reindeer moss" grew ~ which appears to be NECESSARY for their existence. If the moss doesn't grow in an area, which is usually due to displacement by grass, there are no naturally occuring reindeer.

I cannot help but note here that outside of the use of tame reindeer that can be hauled back and forth in trucks from one type of forage to another, the mesolithic folks still dominate that particular countryside ~ and it's only in quite modern times they've had much trouble with the neolithic peoples and their warfare.