Does Environmental Knowledge Inhibit Hominin Dispersal?

Wren, Colin D.; Costopoulos, André

doi:10.13110/humanbiology.87.3.0205

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…The model includes the analysis of mobility strategy patterns and resource availability [53,54]. We previously defined a place of origin where hominins initially arrive and a second place where humans migrate.…”

Section: Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of cooperation under climate constraints: an Agent-Based Model for exploring Paleolithic behavioral adaptations in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor

Coto-Sarmiento,

Namen,

Varis

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Modern humans dispersed throughout the entire world during the Pleistocene, completing an important part of our evolutionary history. One of the most difficult territories to be colonized by humans was Central Asia, a region characterized by cold and arid climates and by stark geographic contrasts, such as high mountains flanked by deserts. Central Asia therefore offers an ideal context for testing hypotheses about the role of human behavior in dispersals under adverse conditions. We introduce here an evolutionary theoretical Agent-Based Model exploring the effect of cooperation on dispersal under different climate constraints in two study sub-regions, the Altai and Tian Shan Mountains. The model uses an evolutionary framework to test cooperation dilemmas within four theoretical climate scenarios. These are based on the average temperature during glacial and interglacial periods. We compare how extreme climate scenarios affect human cooperation depending on the regions and climates in which hominins are found. We show that: a) population size can significantly influence pressure on the group, such that a higher population implies more pressure to cooperate; b) cooperative behaviors are needed for survival in the harshest conditions and c) if the initial probability of non-cooperation is higher, then human groups will tend to be non-cooperative even if a cooperative subgroup pushes them to cooperate.Our results demonstrate that the degree of cooperation significantly impacts survival during periods of extreme climatic deterioration. This finding provides valuable insight into the settlement patterns of ancient civilizations, potentially shedding light on why Central Asia might have been settled later than some other regions in Asia.

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Section: Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of cooperation under climate constraints: an Agent-Based Model for exploring Paleolithic behavioral adaptations in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor

Coto-Sarmiento,

Namen,

Varis

et al. 2023

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The experimental design aligned the populations as a set of highly related, longitudinal studies. This made the Clans research an experiment whose methodology the reader may want to contrast with, for example, Premo and Kuhn, 2010 , Premo, 2012 , Wren et al., 2014 , Shook et al., 2015 , Wren and Costopoulos, 2015 , and Hölzchen et al. (2016) .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A computer simulation to investigate the association between gene-based gifting and pair-bonding in early hominins

Rouly

2018

Journal of Human Evolution

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This article describes simulation research based on the Hamiltonian theory of gene-based altruism. It investigates the origin of semipermanent breeding bonds during hominin evolution. The research framework is based on a biologically detailed, ecologically situated, multi-agent microsimulation of emergent sociality. The research question tested is whether semipermanent breeding bonds (an emergent homoplastic social construct) might emerge among primate-like agents as the consequence of a mutation capable of supporting involuntary prosocial behavior. The research protocol compared several, single independent-variable longitudinal studies wherein hundreds of generations of autonomous, initially promiscuous, biologically detailed, hominin-like artificial life software agents were born, allowed to forage, reproduce, and die during experimental intervals lasting several simulated millennia. The temporal setting of the experiment was roughly contemporaneous with, or slightly after the time of, the Pan-Homo split. The simulation investigated what would happen if, within a population, a single gene for prosocial behavior (the independent variable in the experiment) was either switched on or switched-off. The null hypothesis predicted that, if the gene was switched off, then semipermanent breeding bonds (the dependent variable) would nonetheless emerge within the population. The results of the simulation rejected this null hypothesis, by showing that semipermanent breeding bonds would reliably emerge among the experimental populations but not among the control groups. Moreover, it was found that, across all experimental settings having constrained population numbers, the portion of each population having no prosocial trait would die out early, whereas the portion with the prosocial trait would survive. Large control populations had no discernible loss. The results of this research imply that, during the early stages of hominin evolution, there might have been a set of initially gene-based, altruistic excess forage-sharing social traits that contributed to the onset of morphological and additional complex social changes characteristic of this group. This work also demonstrates that modern computational technologies can extend our ability to test ‘what if’ hypotheses appropriate to the study of early hominin evolution.

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What’s it like out there? Landscape learning during the early peopling of the highlands of the south-central Atacama desert

Loyola

Núñez

Cartajena

2019

Quaternary International

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Does Environmental Knowledge Inhibit Hominin Dispersal?

Cited by 5 publications

References 60 publications

The impact of cooperation under climate constraints: an Agent-Based Model for exploring Paleolithic behavioral adaptations in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor

The impact of cooperation under climate constraints: an Agent-Based Model for exploring Paleolithic behavioral adaptations in the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor

A computer simulation to investigate the association between gene-based gifting and pair-bonding in early hominins

What’s it like out there? Landscape learning during the early peopling of the highlands of the south-central Atacama desert

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