Fifteen thousand years of bioarchaeological data reveal life history trade-offs among Europe’s first farmers

This paper examines human life history evolution across the transition to agriculture in Europe through an integrated analysis of growth, diet, activity, and demography. Life history theory considers how organisms allocate energy toward defense, reproduction, maintenance, and growth, and how such functions trade-off against each other in response to ecological constraints and is therefore fundamental to understanding human adaptation to social, economic, and cultural change. Through analysis of large datasets of estimated body size (n = 3007 individuals), long bone robusticity (n = 2150 individuals), carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) stable isotopes (n = 30,937 individuals), and radiocarbon dates (n = 60,197) to directly test: 1) whether the demographic expansion associated with early farming coincided with a decline in body size; 2) whether long-term patterns in demography, skeletal growth, and diet differ between southern and northern Europe in ways that reflect region-specific life history trade-offs. The results reveal 1) that a population “boom” among early farmers (~8,500 BP) coincided with reduced body size, consistent with a shift in life history strategies that prioritized reproduction over skeletal growth; 2) divergent trends in body size and diet between northern and southern Europe suggest region-specific adaptations, with a growth–reproduction trade-off more evident in the south. Framed within broader patterns of human health, physical activity, and genetic turnover, the work underscores how early farming in Europe is best understood as a complex process of trade-offs that can be elucidated through analysis of bioarchaeological data within a life history framework.