Demographic models predict end-Pleistocene arrival and rapid expansion of pre-agropastoralist humans in Cyprus

Abstract The antiquity of human dispersal into Mediterranean islands and ensuing coastal adaptation have remained largely unexplored due to the prevailing assumption that the sea was a barrier to movement, and that islands were hostile environments to early hunter-gatherers (Cherry & Leppard 2018; Leppardet al.2022). Using the latest archaeological data, hindcasted climate projections, and age-structured demographic models, we demonstrate clear evidence for early arrival (14,257 to 13,182 calendar years ago) to Cyprus, and predicted that large groups of people (~ 1,000 to 1,375) arrived in 2–3 main events occurring within < 100 years to ensure low extinction risk. These results indicate that the post-glacial settlement of Cyprus involved only a few large-scale, organised events requiring advanced watercraft technology. Our spatially debiased and Signor-Lipps-corrected estimates indicate rapid settlement of the island within < 200 years, and expansion to a median of 4,000–5,000 people (0.36–0.46 km− 2) in < 11 human generations (< 300 years). Our results do not support the hypothesis of inaccessible and inhospitable islands in the Mediterranean by pre-agropastoralists, agreeing with analogous conclusions for other parts of the world such as the Indo-Pacific (Birdet al.2019; Bradshawet al.2019). Our results also highlight the need to revisit these questions in the Mediterranean and test their validity in light of new technologies, field methods, and data. By applying stochastic models based on both temporally and spatially explicit data for the first time to the Mediterranean region, we are able to place Cyprus and large islands in general as attractive and favourable destinations for palaeolithic peoples.