Was the spread of agropastoralism from the Fertile Crescent throughout Europe influenced by rapid climatic shifts? We here generate idealized climate events using palaeoclimate records. In a mathematical model of regional sociocultural development, these events disturb the subsistence base of simulated forager and farmer societies. We evaluate the regional simulated transition timings and durations against a published large set of radiocarbon dates for western Eurasia; the model is able to realistically hindcast much of the inhomogeneous space-time evolution of regional Neolithic transitions. Our study shows that the inclusion of climate events improves the simulation of typical lags between cultural complexes, but that the overall difference to a model without climate events is not significant. Climate events may not have been as important for early sociocultural dynamics as endogenous factors.

Dataset format is zipped NetCDF-file with the following Parameters:(1) Time - Unit: simulation years since 0001-01-01, Range: -8500 to -3500(2) Latitude - Unit: degree_north, Range: 31 to 57(3) Longitude - Unit: degree_east, Range: -10 to 42(4) Region - Description: Unique integer index of land region, Valid range: 1 to 685(5) Farming - Description: fraction of agriculturalist and pastoralist activities in population, Range: 0.0 to 1.0(5) Timing of farming - Description: Time when >=50% are devoted to farming, Units: simulation years since 0001-01-01(6) Technology - Description: Relative factor of improved efficiency over Mesolithic(7) Economies - Descriptions: Number of diverse agropastoral economies(8) Natural fertility - Description: climatically disturbed relative utility of the land for subsistence(9) Population density - Description: population density, Units: km**-2This data set contributes to the Project: Integrated History and future of People on Earth (IHOPE).

Supplement to: Lemmen, Carsten; Wirtz, Kai W (2014): On the sensitivity of the simulated European Neolithic transition to climate extremes. Journal of Archaeological Science, 51, 65-72