Your path led trough the sea … The emergence of Neolithic in Sardinia and Corsica

The emergence of Neolithic in Sardinia and Corsica has more and more the aspect of a sharp rupture that led to the first permanent occupation of the islands through a process of diffuse and rapid territorialization. To date, any evidence of contiguity is still lacking between first Neolithic implantations and last Mesolithic frequentations that stretch sporadically over more than two millennia, until the 8.2 kyear cold climatic event. Besides, Mesolithic-Neolithic discontinuity is proved not only archaeologically, on the grounds of stratigraphy, settlement strategies, and technological systems. Indeed, new mitochondrial DNA genome sequences from Mesolithic Sardinia provide evidence of a substantial diversity between the two populations. The earliest stages (scouting phase) of Neolithic colonization of the islands are scarcely documented thus far, even if some clues would place them consistently in the flow of the Neolithic expansion towards the western Mediterranean. Around the central centuries of the 6th millennium cal BC, the following step (consolidation phase) corresponds to the formation and spread of the Cardial impressed ware facies along the coastal belt of the central and north Tyrrhenian shore. Since then, both Sardinia-Corsica and the Tyrrhenian strands opposite to this region reveal an almost symmetrical and synchronous rhythm of evolution. In the last centuries of the 6th millennium cal BC, new influences coming from the North of the Italian mainland, possibly through the mediation of the Tyrrhenian Linear Carved ware facies, acted as a push factor towards the recombination of the shared traditional traits into new original cultures. In the two islands, at the end of this trajectory, the process of neolithization was almost accomplished and the evolution of Neolithic cultures, although interlinked, went on separately afterwards.