'Adaptive cycles' and climate fluctuations: a case study from Linear Pottery Culture in western Central Europe

According to the applied age model, the simple farming societies of the LBK (5600-4900 cal BC) in west-central Europe were not immediately and devastatingly affected by most climate fluctuations. Yet, they might have been one destabilising component within broader processes. However, periods of decreased or irregularly spaced rainfall are contemporaneous to periods of population decline, while periods of increased rainfall may have favoured population growth. Towards the end of the 6th millennium cal BC, the final years of LBK in western Central Europe are contemporaneous to a general trend to less rainfall punctuated by short-term increases in precipitation. During this climatically highly volatile period LBK reaches its highest population rates and at the same time experiences a period of warfare. Thereafter population rates decline and LBK gradually vanishes from the archaeological record, being replaced by Middle Neolithic societies.