Neolithic Forest Clearance

Abstract

IT is the first approximation of the ecologist to relate the control of distribution of major vegetational types to major climatic types: only later does he advance to consider how human activities have interfered with and complicated the pattern determined in the first place by climate. The same relationship has held for the study of palæo-ecology by the methods of pollen-analysis. We have firmly established the general picture of forest movement across north-west Europe under the compulsion of changing climate, and now comes the phase when for the first time we seek to recognize, by pollen-analysis, the role of prehistoric man in changing the natural forest cover of Europe. We are brought to recognize this new phase by a recent publication of Johs. Iverson in the series of the Danish Geological Survey*, on "Land Occupation in Denmark's Stone Age".