DE MENS IN HET PREBORALE, BOREALE EN ATLANTISCHE BOS

Samenvatting

A study was made of the chronological and geo­graphical distribution of radiocarbon dates of 230 charcoal samples from fireplaces on cover­sand soils between the rivers Rhine and Ems. At the beginning of the Atlantic period, man appears
to have left the higher uplands and to have moved to the lower courses of the rivers and their es­tuaries. By fishing and fowling, people compen­sated for the reduction in mammalfood sources at the Boreal-Atlantic transition. The changing of open pine forests into closed mixed oak forests must have led to a serious decrease in grazing op­portunities for the large herbivores which had formed mans major food source. Vera's thesis that the natural vegetation of the uplands in the Atlantic period formed an open park landscape with many herbivores cannot explain the observed occupation pattern and has to be rejected.­