STRESS THEORY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF RECONSTRUCTION OF NORTH-WESTERN PONTIC REGION POPULATION HISTORY ON THE PLEISTOCENE-HOLOCENE BOUNDARY
Journal Title: Записки історичного факультету - Year 2016, Vol 0, Issue 27
Abstract
The purpose of the current contribution is to discuss the principal points of general stress theory and theory of environmental stress as it is applied to the interpretation of human responses to global climate changes in the northwestern Pontic region at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary. Stress is regarded as a basic reason for the transformation of behavior as well as an important premise for the reshaping of cultural systems and the creation of new adaptations. Environmental stress is understood as a series of natural, social, economic, psychological, and physiological factors that cause tension in regulatory mechanismsand disturb society or the dynamic equilibrium of a social organism. Adaptation is interpreted as only one possible result of the stressors impact alongside with regulation, adjustment, and cultural system destruction. Comprehensive interdisciplinary studies of Northwestern Black Sea region paleogeography at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary allows distinguishing three basic sets of stressors influenced the human procurement system and social behavior. The first and most significant of them was the transformation of the faunal complex resulting from unsustainable human behavior in previous times. Replacement of bison herds by aurochs and smaller horses at the beginning of the Holocene implies a transition from collective procurement of large gregarious game toward hunting for small non-gregarious species conducted mainly by small groups or individuals. In its turn, it stimulated a re-shaping of traditional tool kits of North-Western Pontic steppes inhabitants and re-structuring of their social groups. The second set of stressors influencing human populations of the northwestern Pontic region at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary should be connected with the rise in the level of the Black Sea and coastline migration as well as with the formation and early activity of its estuaries (lakes and limans) and watercourses (rivers, springs, etc.). Their influence resulted in creation of new forms of living space which needed to be explored by the local population. Occupation system, choice of settlement space, possibility of contacts among groups inhabiting different niches, and other traits of human spatial behavior on the macro-level (living space exploitation system) were determined in many respects by these features. The third basic set of environmental stressors in the northwestern Pontic region at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary is the dynamic of floral complexes and species composition. Flora influenced human resource procurement strategies through being the basic food of the animals they hunted, that is, vegetation changes were stressors because they brought about faunal changes. Environmental stresses cannot be recognized as a catastrophic one for the North-Western Pontic steppes population on the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary: no signs of total desertion of the region as well as no traces of human failure to find suitable means to overcome the stressors are observed at Late Paleolithic and Early Mesolithic sites. Negative influences of global climate changes were successfully compensated already in the short-term perspective through a broad spectrum of adaptive strategies, most important among which were transformation of living space exploitation and modification of tool kits.
Authors and Affiliations
O. Smyntyna
Keywords
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