MdM Keynote Speaker Series 2023: "The Neolithic transition in the oceans - marine fisheries and human exploitation at the dawn of agriculture"

We are pleased to announce that Richard Norris, professor of paleobiology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, will be giving a keynote on "The Neolithic transition in the oceans--marine fisheries and human exploitation at the dawn of agriculture". You can also follow the seminar online by using the zoom link below. 

MdM Keynote Speaker Series 2023

Title:  "The Neolithic transition in the oceans--marine fisheries and human exploitation at the dawn of agriculture"

Speaker: Richard Norris, professor of paleobiology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego

Date: Wednesday, July 5th 2023
Time: 12h
Venue: Room Z/022 & Z/023, ICTA-UAB and online Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87405217821?pwd=U3JaTVV4c09yc1I1NXU2OTlZWUVQQT09

People established settled communities around the Mediterranean about 7000 years ago as farmers and pastoralists replaced the older hunter-gatherer economy in the "Neolithic revolution".  This talk explores some of the environmental factors related to this change in human social structure. I will show that there was a change in the fish available to people as the climate system switched from a relatively wet period, called the African Humid Period, to the modern pattern of seasonal aridity. Marine sediment cores from the Aegean and the Adriatic record a sharp rise in fish remains between ~6-10 thousand years ago, and a subsequent crash in fish abundance just before the spread of agricultural society into Europe. Archaeological records and human isotopes suggest that this bounty of fish was utilized by coastal people. While fish were only part of the human economy, their decline in abundance during the Neolithic revolution suggests that people adjusted their economic system in favor of more control over production as natural resources became seasonally scarce. 

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY and RESEARCH INTERESTS 
Richard Norris is a professor of paleobiology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on the evolution of life in the oceans, with particular emphasis on the mechanisms of extinction and speciation of plankton and the processes of assembly of marine ecosystems. I use ecological, genetic, and biogeographic studies of living plankton and pelagic fish as well as the extensive fossil record of marine plankton and fish preserved in deep sea sediments.