Ayelet Shavit, Gonen Sharon (2023). “Can models of evolutionary transition clarify the debates over the Neolithic Revolution?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 378(1872): 20210413. DOI-10.1098/rstb.2021.0413.
Key takeaways
From the abstract, not read. After a century of study, the cause, tempo and role of intention in the Neolithic shift remain disputed. An ETI perspective shows “how different causes and conditions lead to the same result”, resisting reduction of the Neolithic to agriculture or to one climatic condition, inheritance system or model. It also poses a preliminary anomaly: “why and how could the Neolithic lifeway evolve at all, given the selfish interest of individuals in a hunter–gatherer group?” The authors “do not intend to solve the shift”.
Standing in the record
Registered on 2026-11-01 from the re-reading of LIT-188 (NOTE-173). LIT-188’s status note names it as the kind of worked case that could settle that paper: one that tells collection, conexus and community apart by measurable criteria. Its abstract promises a lens, not such criteria, so it may not. A reading should check whether it scores any Natufian or Neolithic site against the 3Cs.