Balkan Transition to the Upper Palaeolithic
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Palaeolithic period or literally the “Old Stone Age” is an ancient cultural level of human development, characterized by the use of unpolished chipped stone tools. The transition from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic is directly related to the appearance of anatomically modern human around 100,000 years BP. This dramatic shift or leap from Middle to Upper Palaeolithic is sometimes called the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution to denote the great significance and degree of change.
According to Douglass W. Bailey, it is “…important to recognize that the Balkan upper Palaeolithic was a long period containing little significant internal change.” Thus, the Balkans transition was not as dramatic as in other European regions. Crucial changes that define the earliest emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens are presented at Bacho Kiro at 44,000 BCE. The Bulgarian key Palaeolithic caves named Bacho Kiro and Temnata Dupka with early Upper Palaeolithic material correlate that the transition was gradual.
In the late Pleistocene the various components of the transition–material culture and environment features (climate, flora, and fauna)–indicate the evidence for the course of a continual change, differing from contemporary points in other parts of Europe. The aforementioned aspects make us have some doubt that the term the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution is appropriate to the Balkans.
In general outline, continual evolutional changes are the first crucial characteristic of the transition to the Upper Palaeolithic in the Balkans. The notion of the Upper Palaeolithic Revolution that has been developed for core European regions is not applicable to the Balkans. What is the reason? This particularly significant moment and its origins are defined and enlightened by other characteristics of the transition to upper Old Stone Age. The environment background–contemporary climate, flora and fauna–corroborate the implications.
During the last interglacial and the most recent glaciation of the Pleistocene (from 131,000 till 12,000 BP) Europe was very different from the Balkans. The glaciations did not affect the southeastern Europe as seriously as they did in the north and centre regions. Existence of forest-steppe and steppe enforces that the influence was not so drastic. Some species of flora and fauna survived only in the Balkans, because of the aforementioned. Nowadays nature of the Balkans abounds in species endemic only to the part of Europe.
The notion of gradual transition (i.e. evolution) best defines the Balkan Europe from about 50,000 BP. In this sense, material culture and natural environment of the Balkans of the late Pleistocene and the early Holocene were distinct from other parts of Europe. Therefore Douglass W. Bailey writes in Balkan Prehistory: Exclusion, Incorporation and Identity, “Less dramatic changes to climate, flora and fauna resulted in less dramatic adaptive, or reactive, developments in material culture.”
Thus, speaking about the southeastern Europe, many classic conceptions and systematizations of the Palaeolithic (and then as implication of the Mesolithic) human development should not be considered correct in all cases. In this regard the absence of the Upper Palaeolithic cave art in the Balkans does not seem to be surprising. No civilization growth can be without adaptive need to respond successfully to challenges.
[edit] References
- Balkan prehistory By Douglass W. Bailey ISBN 0415215978
