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The emergence of Portugal's Muge Mesolithic, with its characteristic shell middens and human burials, is widely seen as a response to the formation of a highly diverse terrestrial and aquatic ecotone in the Tagus basin by the Flandrian transgression. Recently, some have suggested that this was an adaptive response to the 8200 cal yr BP event. Using the available radiocarbon data for the shell middens, paleoclimatic data, and paleoceanographic data we present a new model for the appearance of the Muge Mesolithic shell middens and changes in settlement between the Boreal and Atlantic phases for central Portugal. Coastal ecosystems were altered due to diminution in upwelling and the occurrence of the 8.2 kyr cold event, with declining availability of marine resources, rapid sea level rise, and changes in coastal morphology. The result was that the previous coastal setting was no longer suitable for the hunter-gatherer-fishers causing a settlement shift to the new, large, and stable estuary of the Tagus Valley.

Numerous studies along the northern Mediterranean borderland have documented the use of shellfish by Neanderthals but none of these finds are prior to Marine Isotopic Stage 3 (MIS 3). In this paper we present evidence that gathering and consumption of mollusks can now be traced back to the lowest level of the archaeological sequence at Bajondillo Cave (Málaga, Spain), dated during the MIS 6. The paper describes the taxonomical and taphonomical features of the mollusk assemblages from this level Bj19 and briefly touches upon those retrieved in levels Bj18 (MIS 5) and Bj17 (MIS 4), evidencing a continuity of the shellfishing activity that reaches to MIS 3. This evidence is substantiated on 29 datings through radiocarbon, thermoluminescence and U series methods. Obtained dates and paleoenvironmental records from the cave include isotopic, pollen, lithostratigraphic and sedimentological analyses and they are fully coherent with paleoclimate conditions expected for the different stages. We conclude that described use of shellfish resources by Neanderthals (H. neanderthalensis) in Southern Spain started ∼150 ka and were almost contemporaneous to Pinnacle Point (South Africa), when shellfishing is first documented in archaic modern humans.