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Comment by slickrick216 | Hacker News Reader

One theory I didn’t see listed but maybe I missed it is migration and scorched earth. If a settlement had exhausted Hunter gatherer resources in an area they would move to another. However leaving structures behind would offer easy options to would be invaders for shelter which is after all a human need. So possibly they would burn the settlement as it could not be transported.

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The "demolition" argument notes that "the archeological record shows that houses were rebuilt directly on top of the pre-existing foundations of the destroyed buildings." Presumably this wouldn't be so if the inhabitants were migrating away from an area. (Though I guess a new tribe could have come in and built on the same foundations.)

The reason why a settlement was built in that place could still be valid a few years after the burn, such as proximity to water sources or useful materials.

It’s not clear but it sounds like they didn’t just build the settlements there but that each house would be rebuilt exactly where the old one was. If that’s the case, it would be really strange if it was built by different people or at different times.

Yeah foundations maybe or as another poster said it was still viable and likely enviable.

Migration doesn't square with the fact that valuable objects were found entombed in the burnt houses.

That’s true.

They would presumably do the same thing at the next area, as they move on, so you’d have multiple patches where this occurred, presumably with an offset-but-similar lifecycle at each location, as they rotated between viable lands

The region was beyond the hunter-gatherer age for a few thousand years when the practice started. The Balkans are a few months lazy travel by foot from Zagros.

Agriculture exhaust would've been viable theory if the houses weren't built immediately on the same place.

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