Description
Before the Pre-Boreal, Eurasia was locked in the chill of the Younger Dryas and was a mostly continuous tundra belt, with regions of taiga, covered with a blanket of grasses, shrubs and other low plants typical of open land. Large numbers of herbivores wandered in herds over vast distances. The blanket teemed with small, rapidly reproducing species, which supported food chains of larger predators. The largest predators and humans hunted the mammals of the open tundra.
The Pre-Boreal began with a sudden rise in temperature that abruptly changed this ecosystem. Forest replaced the open lands in Europe, and forest-dwelling animals spread from southern refugia and replaced the ice-age tundra mammals; new climax ecosystems developed. The old fauna persisted in Central Asia, but were soon hunted out, as they were not replenished by the larger areas formerly nourishing the ecosystem.
The sea brought additional isolation by rising rapidly and drowning the entire coast. Ireland was cut off early in the Boreal, suffering an impoverishment of species. It is home to only two-thirds of the species present in Britain. Britain was cut off by the end of the Boreal. Forest had closed over the former European tundra.
Humans had to adapt to the encroaching forest or move east with the large mammals. Those who stayed became hunter-gatherers of the forests and fishers of the numerous bays, inlets and shallow waters around the thousands of islands that now spangled the seas of Europe. They lived richly and were encouraged to enter the pre-productive phase that we call the Mesolithic. Those who moved east hunted out the last of wild big game and turned their best efforts into learning to herd what was left. In the Americas, humans had left the Paleoindian phase and were now in the Archaic.
Meanwhile humanity toward the south of the north temperate zone had already turned to food production in a number of widely separated locations and were on the brink of civilization. There is no evidence of any extensive contact with the cultures of the north during the Boreal. The producers tended to live in dense centers without any interest in moving from there except when motivated to find new lands. The gatherers ranged widely over their lands, building only temporary settlements in which to spend the winter.
Read more about this topic: Boreal (age)
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