Answer:
The last Ice Age ended 10,000 radiocarbon years ago and saw the beginning of the Mesolithic period (Mithen, 1999). In Europe, the Mesolithic era was a transitional time between the ice ages and post-glacial environments and hunter-gatherers and farming societies. Europe entered into a period of intense climatic change; temperatures increased, ice-sheets retreated and sea levels rose.
Much of the European landscape changed from periglacial tundra to deciduous woodland.The proliferation of plant-life, and subsequently wildlife, forced the people of the Mesolithic to adapt to this new and unpredictable environment. Archaeological investigation shows the development and adaptations that occurred throughout the region, but as with today, post-glacial Europe was a vast area with variances in culture and environment that have led to a great diversity in the sites and artefacts that are discovered. The establishment of forest led to differences in the type and patterns of game available for hunting.
Whereas Upper Palaeolithic bands hunted predictable migratory game such as reindeer their Mesolithic successors had to create new subsistence strategies to deal with the multitude of species that faced them (Fagan, 2001). Legge and Rowley-Conwy (In Pryor, 2003) provides evidence of the variety in Mesolithic diets by analysing animal bones found at Starr Carr. They showed that wild cattle made up the majority of bones, followed by elk, red deer, roe deer and wild pig. Starr Carr also revealed evidence of domesticated dogs; it is probable that they would have been used for hunting and rounding up rather than as pets
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