Τhe Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Southeastern Mediterranean and Their Contribution in the Neolithisation of the Aegean

The excavations in the Aegean since the 1990s onwards have revealed a new cultural stage, starting from the beginning of 9th millennium down to the end of 8. A network of sites extends from the northern to the southern Aegean Sea and from the West to the East, having as reference points the obsidian sources of Melos and Yali, Nissiros. In recent years, we have an increase of Mesolithic sites in the insular Aegean, the mainland Greece as well as in the western Asian coast, Cyprus and Crete. Recent research changes the data and shows that, along with the navigation capability and the specialization in fishing, an early Neolithisation in the Aegean began already in 9 millennium BC. It means that active Mesolithic groups from the early 9 mill. till the end of 8could have been able to travel to the East, interact with local populations of the PPNA and PPNB and transfer plants and animals, domesticated or not to the Aegean and the Greek mainland, contributing to the full Neolithisation of the area.


Introduction
They've been twenty five years since the excavation of the Cyclops Cave on Youra Island revealed undisturbed Mesolithic layers, hither to unknown in the Aegean islands (Sampson 1998(Sampson , 2008(Sampson , 2011. Then, by revealing a Mesolithic settlement of the beginning of 9 th mill BC at Maroulas on Kythnos island and locating several contemporaneous sites (Sampson et al., 2010), the characteristics of this cultural stage were defined, such as the architecture, the burial customs and the stone industry. The same question can be posed in the case of a person using wild forms of barley, oat and lentils in the Mesolithic (Hansen, 1991, pp. 53-54) while subsequently deciding for the domesticated variants; are they considered still gatherers or farmers already?

Cyclades
Maroulas on Kythnos is the only example of a large-open site (Figure 3), a settlement with dozens of structures in round plan and 26 burials, primary and secondary (Fig. 4),under the floors (Sampson et al. 2010). Some similarities can be noted in oval semi-dug structures of the early phase of Lepenski Vir culture (e.g. Vlasac, layer I, house no 2a), which are mainly over-ground constructions with circular base and a rectangular hearth inside (Srejovic, 1969;Radovanovic, 1996).
The four islands of the Cyclades that have presented Mesolithic occupation along with Kythnos are Naxos, Sikinos and Melos ( Figure 5). The site Roos in Naxos (Sampson et al., 2016) is particularly important because, besides presenting all the features of a typical Mesolithic site, it seems to expand to an area of dozens of acres, much greater than those of Maroulas on Kythnos and Kerame 1 on Ikaria.
The stone industry includes Melian obsidian and flint from Stelida quarry of Naxos. At Stelida, recent surveys and excavations yielded Palaeolithic and Mesolithic artefacts of undefined date .
Another site, presenting Mesolithic industry, had been located few years ago by a team of the Aegean University on Sikinos, a small island in the southern Cyclades (Sampson, 2006, pp. 169-171;Sampson et al., in print). At the western edge of the island on the promontory Kara Pountafacing to the south, huge quantities of Melian obsidian cover an area of half an acre. The thousands of tools and fragments of debitage show an Aegean Mesolithic industry mostly based on splintered technique.

The Eastern Peloponnese
Franchthi Cave was till the 90's the only excavated Mesolithic site in the Aegean since the 60's.
Mesolithic occupation starts from phase VII (9340±160 and 9060±110BP) and there is a settlement hiatus of 600-650 radiocarbon years between Palaeolithic (phase VI) and Mesolithic (phase VII).

Last Glacial Maximum
Phase X at Franchthi, attributed to the Initial Neolithic, has given radiocarbon dates around 7.9-7. production, with minor components of a microblade technology, and a production of a small number of microliths from flakes (triangles, trapezes, crescents). In the Upper Mesolithic layer, the number of flakes was greater, while in the lower one the microliths were more.

Eastern Aegean
A survey conducted on the island of Ikaria revealed, apart from the site of Kerame 1 (Sampson et al., 2012;Sampson, 2014), five more sites bearing the same characteristic Mesolithic stone industry. It is about an indication of a network of sites and not just a casual usage of the area. Kerame1 is put forward as the major site ( Figure 6), while the others seem to be of limited extent. Indeed, the settlement spans over an unusually large area, much more extensive than Maroulas (Sampson et al., 2010). The Mesolithic Ikarian model bears similarities to Kythnos' settlement model. It is strikingly odd, that the stone tools found in Kerame 1 (Figure 7) consist of white patinated flint and obsidian from Melos and Yali bearing remarkable similarities to the ones found at the site of Maroulas on Kythnos.Αt small distance across the Kerame 1 at Fourni island complex, another Mesolithic site with the same lithic industry was identified (Sampson, 2014).

Dodecanese-SW Anatolia
Recent surveys in the southern Aegean yielded the lithic-rich site Areta on Chalki Island (Sampson et al., 2016) in a rocky environment at the northern part of the island (Figure 1, 8). Thousands of stone implements come from Melos and Yali islet near Nissiros, the second obsidian source in the Aegean.
Close to the site, there is a cave which was used for a long time as a pen for animals.

Crete
The other site at Livari in SE Crete  fits the Aegean Mesolithic site-location model forwarded by Runnels (2009, pp. 60-62) at the "intersection of woodland and aquatic habitats", and is ultimately better viewed as part of the "Early Holocene Aegean Island lithic tradition" (9000-7000 cal B.C.).
The material presents similarities with the lithics of Knossos layer X (c. 7000-6500/6400 cal BC), which are contemporary to those of Phase X at Franchthi Cave (Table 1). The study on the Knossos lithic material by Kaczanowska and Kozłowski (2011) led them to downplay the similarities with Mesolithic Franchthi and instead, locate Knossos within the "Early Holocene Aegean Island lithic tradition". The lithic industry co-occurs with the "Aceramic Neolithic" (or the "Initial Neolithic",8.0 and 7.7 kyr BP) from layer X at Knossos (Evans, 1971;Efstratiou, 2005)  The tool groups from the sites Damnoni and Plakias in the western Crete (Strasser et al., 2010Carter et al., 2018) that the authors claim to be diagnostic for the Mesolithic, namely backed pieces, burins and geometrical microliths, predominantly from quartz, are questionable for the moment while they do not answer to the definition of geometrical microliths. According to Kaczanowska and Kozlowski (2015, p. 50) "the sites from the Plakias region area exhibit some features in common with flake industries made on quartz from the Cyclades (notably from the island of Kythnos), but they have not provided diagnostic forms that would allow to ascribe them to the Mesolithic".
A scenario could be a social interaction in Knossos or Franchthi between populations that have remained hunter-foragers and populations that have been transformed into farmers. In the middle of the 7th millennium Mesolithic, stone industry disappears and macroblades that originate from the East appear, possibly resulting in some movements from the East to the Aegean or from the Aegean to the East.

Navigation in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic
In recent decades, several researchers have dealt with the prehistoric navigation and occupation of the Mediterranean islands and especially of the Aegean, such as Evans (1973Evans ( , 1977, Cherry (1981Cherry ( , 1982, Cherry and Leppard (2017), Broodbank (2000Broodbank ( , 2006, Agouridis (1997), Vigne (1987), Sampson (2006), Maxwell and Sampson (2018) and Simmons (2014 p. 220) that "until the end of Pleistocene Mediterranean people were reluctant sea-goers and the sea itself a largely empty expanse, still a de facto barrier far more than a bridge". However, after the recent years' dubious findings of Palaeolithic presence in western Crete (Strasser et al., 2010;Runnels et al., 2015), However, in the case of the Northern Aegean, the seafaring from Middle Palaeolithic seems more reasonable because there is a visual contact between the islands and the mainland. In the Middle Paleolithic, most islands were not connected to the continent but there was a visual contact between Ag.
Efstratios, Lemnos, Imbros, Kallipolis and the Asian continent ( Figure 9); MP sites of this period have been located in all these areas (Özbek & Erdoĝu, 2016;Sampson et al., in print). We are certainly not talking about the Last Glacial Maximum period when the sea level has descended and the islands of the Northern Aegean were united to the continent. At the same time, sites of the Middle Palaeolithic have been identified at the Northern Sporades in the northwestern Aegean (Sampson, 1996;Panagopoulou et al., 2001). Although the distances between NW and NE of the Aegean Sea are great, there is a visual contact of the deserted islands of Northern Sporades from Lemnos and Agios Efstratios.

Figure 10. Summercurrents in the Central and Southern Aegean (After Papageorgiou, 2008)
In the central and southern Aegean Basin, hundreds of islands lie at short distances to each other; the area looks like a lake with many islands inside which at different times were joined ( Figure 5).
However, despite the relative ease of communication between the islands in the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic period, Aegean remains a sea with particular sailing conditions. Τhe short ripple is different from that of the ocean and becomes dangerous during the winter and also during July and August when the strong northern winds prevail; hence the name «ετησίαι» (annual) winds, in the antiquity.
Furthermore, the wind power is getting bigger in the narrow channels between the islands.
Also, the sea currents which facilitate the sailing become dangerous in some cases. For the Aegean region, the importance of currents in navigation ( Figure 10), especially in prehistoric times, has been studied and emphasized in recent years (Papageorgiou, 2008). There is a complex network of currents that changes during the winter and summer months, but there are also currents throughout the year in the Mediterranean (Simmons, 2014).
During the Upper Palaeolithic, the majority of the Cycladic islands, with the exception of Kythnos, Melos and few others, formed a huge island (Cycladia), equal to 2/3 of the extent of Cyprus ( Figure 5).
This enormous island would have offered rich fauna and flora, enough to support the needs of Palaeolithic hunters and food gatherers.Τhe site of Stelidaon Naxos, being identified by Seferiades (1983) and Sampson (2006), while recently excavated by Carter  In Mesolithic, a network of sites in Cyclades, Dodecanese and the western Asian coast shows an intense mobility of a dynamic population originating from mainland Greece or the Asian continent, which uses an Epigravettian industry.

Means of Navigation
If we estimate that in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, people have not yet polished tools such as axes to cut large trees easily and process the required wood, their potential is greatly reduced and it seems unlikely that they would make wooden boats with many oars and sails such as those shown in incised figures on rock from the Aegean of the early Cycladic period.

Figure 11. The Experimental Trip of "Papyrella" Boat to Melos (after Tzalas, 1995)
There are ethnographic parallels in the Aegean from the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century by residents of the islands of the Northern Sporades that traveled with small boats without sails crossing open seas such as those between Skopelos-Alonessos and Chalkidiki or Skopelos-Alonessos and Lesvos or Chios in order to work there seasonally or to exchange agricultural products. During the last world war, the lack of agricultural products forced the islanders of the Sporades to cross the open sea by rowing for many days in periods of stillness as there was no possibility of using sails. Similar movements were also taking place from Ikaria to Mykonos or Naxos in order to buy the necessary cereals or exchange products.
In Corfu, there was a tradition in constructing boats with mats so as to cover small distances around the island. The remains of such a boat made in 1965 were found in Palaiokastritsa by Tzalas (1995, p. 442), and constituted the model for building a similar craft called "papyrela". It would be interesting to know how their early builders called these tarry boats in Corfu. The frame was made out of six cypresses that were cut and bent while still green. They were bundled together by rope at their thinnest points and bent in such a way so as to form a raised stern. The length of these boats was approximately 2.5 m.
Tzalas, after cooperating with two elderly manufacturers of similar vessels, built within three months a "papyrela" with a length of 5.50 m and a width of 1.50 ( Figure 11).
The original crew of the boat did not have experience of rowing and became exhausted after a distance of about 2 km (Tzalas 1995, p. 447). Ultimately, he looked for "kayak" athletes as volunteers for the crew; the voyage started from Lavrion with direction to Melos via the western Cyclades in early October of 1988. The crew consisted of four paddlers and one steersman. The predominant wind was north-northeastern and the current flowed from the north-eastern direction, which often caused the craft to drift off course. Weather conditions forced the crew to park in Serifos for several days; eventually, the trip to Melos lasted 7 days in total. The conclusion that came out of this experimental journey showed that the crew should have been specially trained to get a very good knowledge of navigation and behavior of the boat and the crew. It was also understood that crossing such distances with this speed of the boat was time consuming, also demanding great physical and mental strength.

Τhe Aegean Mesolithic in Cyprus
Reingruber ( (2008) emphatically considered the recent discoveries of Mesolithic sites in the Aegean Basin as a confirmation of the eastern immigration of peoples with nautical knowledge and specifically, they linked them with the "exodus" of the population of PPNA from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to Cyprus!  Probably, those hunter-gatherers should have penetrated to the interior of the island while it is likely that they had created other shelters on the coast of Cyprus. The above researchers believe that other higher-lying sites with similar industry will be found in the western and southern coasts of Cyprus and that sites 2 and 3 in the Akrotiri area (Simmons, 2014) confirm this assumption.

Figure 14. Τhe Hypothetical Route from the Aegean to Cyprus and Near East
However, one would not expect a real migration to have taken place by the fishers-gatherers of the Aegean, because migration according to Albrecht (1972, p. 279) "is an interactive process and can be the source for fundamental changes in social organization". Individual teams of experienced pioneering sailors could travel eastward looking for contacts with locals as in the case of the Nissi Beach in Cyprus. Interactions between newcomers and autochthonous populations should also be studied and in our case, between the native populations and the migrating hunter-gatherers.
It would not be necessary, the travel from the Aegean to Cyprus to start from the Northern Aegean (Youra), Kythnos or Franchthi; it could start from a southern Mesolithic site such as Chalki, or Kirmeler, a cave site in Adalyaopposite Rhodes. The route to Cyprus would follow the coastline of SW Asia Minor (Antalya) having as background Kastellorizo and other surrounding islets (Figure 14). It should be noted that this small island complex, a short distance from the Antalya peninsula, is the only one on the southern and southwestern coast of Anatolia; it would have probably been a challenge for the early prehistoric groups, since the late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic times, for making trips to the sea and getting the acquisition of experience.

The Neolithic Package
Even today, this alternative proposal for the launch of Neolithic in Greece continues to be overshadowed by conservative and unrealistic perceptions, rendering this research field a characteristic example of scientific subjectivity, in which different sides adduce the same "evidence" as arguments to support diametrically opposed views. It becomes clear how timely it is today to discuss the theoretical framework for the beginning of the productive economy in Greece. The international bibliography took into little account the formulation of alternative proposals declared for the first time by Theocharis (1967) for over 50 years ago, while expanded and maintained theoretically by Kotsakis (1992Kotsakis ( , 2000Kotsakis ( , 2003 and others (Halstead, 1993;Zvelebil, 1986;Sampson, 2005Sampson, , 2006Sampson, , 2014aSampson, , 2015Seferiades, 2007;Reingruber, 2018).
This exoriente settled Neolithic "package", that renewed its power with the demic diffusion theories of Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza (1984), has for decades degraded the importance of Greek Mesolithic in the context of mainland Greece and the Aegean, emphasizing in the occupation of these regions from Eastern populations (Runnels 1995;van Andel & Runnels, 1988;Broodbank & Strasser, 1991;Perlès, 2001 For the first time, social mobility (motility) has been included in the theories of Neolithisation processes in the Aegean (Reingruber, in press). Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza (1973) based their wave of advance-model on the supposition of population pressure. As sociologists argue, overpopulation is not an exclusive cause for migration. In sociology, a reason for social disequilibrium is that of population surplus, since a reduction in overcrowding shows only short-term relief effects (Franz, 1984, p. 63); indeed, in present-day archaeological studies, this constitutes the generally accepted cause.
However, as Reingruber says, "in order to prove that a mass-migration from Anatolia to the Aegean took place, one would have to also analyze the following: -Who was moving ( The Mesolithic navigators must have been aware of the transformations happening further east in order to be led to their own decision-making process. The transformations of the mid-seventh millennium BC are probably supported by small mobile groups (individuals together with their families) from both the east (Anatolia) and the west (Aegean), who exchanged knowledge, also intermarried, and over many decades or even centuries, enlarged the basis of their economic, cultural and social lives.
We can assume that a person or persons who have been distinguished in distant journeys would have been the basic characters for creating a myth similar to that of Homeric Odysseus. Perhaps, the myth of this hero was based on an earlier legend that echoed the accomplishments of distinguished person or persons who acted in the Mediterranean. It is very likely that some people have been in the spotlight since the end of Pleistocene or the Holocene either because they discovered the obsidian deposits of Melos or Yali, which was of immense importance for the technology of the time, or because they had should not only be related to pirate raids on the coasts of Anatolia and Syropalestine but also to the supply of raw materials, exchanges of goods having also social impacts. Thus, archaeological material gives us more evidence of movements from west to east than the opposite. Unfortunately, for the supporters of the "Neolithic package", the movements from the east to the west and the Aegean in particular, are purely theoretical and are not evidenced in the archaeological record.

Discussion
The recent discoveries in maritime Aegean, Crete, western Anatolia and Cyprus are quite enough to put on a new basis the debate for this intriguing theme of the pre-Neolithic movements in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean.
The "Early Holocene Aegean Islands Tradition" (Kozlowski & Kaczanowska, 2009;Sampson et al., 2012;Sampson, 2016) is distinct from both all the contemporary industries from the eastern Mediterranean and the blade-based industries using pressure-flaking of the western and eastern Aegean during the 7th-6th millennia cal BC. As such, the Aegean Mesolithic, c. 9000-7000 cal BC, displays anidiosyncratic character, with foragers exploiting marine and terrestrial resources both on the mainland and the islands and occupying seasonal, multi-seasonal or perhaps even year-round sites.
Since the beginning of 9th mill BC, for 2000 years, there has been a constant presence in the Aegean by populations familiar with the sea, navigation and geography, living in some areas in a mixed Mesolithic/Neolithic stage, participating in common networks of exchange of raw material and sharing common technological types during the whole period. The people of the Aegean Basin had in advance the possibilities for long-haul trips having experience at sea due to their temperament and also due to the peculiarity of the area. They could spread much faster by sea new ideas and over time to turn themselves or others into permanently installed farmers. Since the agriculture and animal husbandry were established in Greece, it was a matter of time that they would be spread to the Balkans and then the West. It is no coincidence that the earliest trips took place in the Aegean Sea and the rest of the Mediterranean by Greek seafarers as they reflect Odysseus' travels and later the large colonies originally on the coasts of Asia Minor, Syropalestine and then across the Mediterranean from the 9th century BC. At this point, we must not forget the early voyages of experienced Phoenician sailors who started at a later stage (beginning of the 1 st mill BC).
The intense mobility of Aegean populations, since the 9th millennium, shows that these populations were looking for new sources of food that would change or diversify the unpredictable and dangerous way of supplying food from the sea. It is certain that the transport of animals from the East to Northern Aegean (Youra) was not through their contacts with Mesolithic groups of southwestern Anatolia, since the finds of the caves in Antalya (Öküzini, Belbidi) have not given any evidence of domestication of animals during this period. Instead, it should have been taking place through Cyprus into which, have already been introduced animals such as goats, sheep and cattle, but also through the opposite coast of Anatolia (Uerpman, 1981).
It is very likely that this marine communication and the contacts were not unilateral, but reciprocal and stemmed from both directions, namely from the west to the east and vice versa (Sampson, 2014a(Sampson, , 2015; however, it's estimated that pre-Neolithic populations of Cyprus had not, by that time, acquired expertise in fishing and navigation similar to that of the Aegean and probably were not able to sail for such long distances. Unlike the Aegean, Cyprus and the continental coast of southern Anatolia and Syropalestine are deprived small neighboring islands opposite them, except Kastelorizo, which would have been a trigger for specialization in sailing and exploitation of their food resources.
ΑnintriguingissueistheinteractionbetweentheAegeanforagersandtheCypriot farmers and herders. The Aegean Mesolithic foragers, as evidenced, have settled on the southeastern coast of Cyprus, but their contact with local agro-pastoralists must be regarded as certain. It cannot be excluded that they were not limited to this point of Cyprus (Nissi Beach) and there are similar sites of the 9th millennium in other parts of the island that have not yet been found.
Two reasonable questions arise at this point concerning the movements of the Mesolithic populations.
Since the Μesolithic occupants of the Aegean had the skills to travel since the 9-8 th mill.BC to the Eastern Mediterranean and transfer caprids to the NW Aegean (Cyclops Cave) or some kind of cereals to anywhere else, why could not they spread the domesticated species to different parts of the Greek area like the Aceramic Knossos and Franchthi Cave, the lithic industries of which are of Aegean Mesolithic type and not of Eastern origin (Kaczanowska & Kozlowski, 2006, as it ought to be if occupants of the above two sites were settlers from the East?
And also why to ascribe the "Neolithic package" to asudden and uncertain "migration" of farmers and herders who came from the East (Broodbank & Strasser, 1991;Efstratiou, 2013;Horejs et al., 2015, Cherry & Leppard, 2017 around 7000 BC, a period during which an active Late Mesolithic population still exists in the Aegean Basin, capable of travelling everywhere and experiment in new patterns of productive economy?