Addiction Vulnerability and the Neolithic Transition:

 Abstract -  

Contemporary addiction research increasingly recognizes that vulnerability to addictive behaviors is shaped not only by neurochemistry and individual psychology, but by deep social, environmental, and evolutionary factors. This monograph proposes a transdisciplinary conceptual framework exploring whether aspects of modern addictive vulnerability may be better understood in light of long-term changes in human social organization that began during the Neolithic transition.

Drawing on archaeological evidence from early Neolithic sites in Anatolia, the Fertile Crescent, and the central Mediterranean, alongside evolutionary anthropology, population genetics, neuroscience, and mental-health research, the work examines how the shift from mobile, kin-based societies to increasingly settled, ritual-centered communities may have altered patterns of social regulation, belonging, sensory stimulation, and reward. It argues that monumental ritual spaces and early forms of social intensification may have contributed to enduring psychological dynamics related to meaning-making, attachment, and behavioral regulation: dynamics that remain relevant in contemporary discussions of addiction, compulsive behavior, and technological overuse.

Rather than advancing deterministic claims, this synthesis offers a hypothesis-generating framework that situates addiction vulnerability within a long historical arc of human adaptation and mismatch. The paper also introduces experimental forms of public-facing scholarship, including guided sensory narratives, as potential tools for fostering embodied understanding of social and psychological transitions that are otherwise difficult to access through conventional academic discourse.

This work is explicitly exploratory and interdisciplinary, aiming to stimulate debate, invite correction, and encourage collaboration across addiction research, anthropology, and the humanities. By reframing addiction vulnerability as partly rooted in long-standing human social transformations, it seeks to expand current models of prevention, resilience, and recovery.

 

Keywords: addiction vulnerability; addictive behavior; behavioral regulation; evolutionary mismatch; social cohesion; Neolithic transition; ritual; meaning-making; mental health; interdisciplinary framework