Abstract
According to the Out-of-Africa-Hypothesis, the geographic origin of hominins known to be ancestors of anatomically modern humans, such as homo sapiens, is located in Africa. Due to the discovery of numerous fossils there is archaeological evidence on the existence of waves of early dispersal from Africa to Eurasia.
Yet, the reason as well as the actual route of migration are being discussed controversially among experts. However, there is a scientific consensus that a conjunction of several local factors, such as climatic changes or carnivore competition, caused the global effect of hominids migrating to Eurasia to occur. In order to understand these emergent phenomena and to validate different scientific hypotheses, the dispersal processes need to be reproduced. In this article we propose the use of agentbased modeling for developing a simulation platform which enables researchers to evaluate assumptions and hypotheses using artificial and customizable scenarios. Furthermore, potential fields are proposed as a first step approach for modeling and simulating environmental factors influencing migration processes.I.J. Timm (S) · F. Lorig
University of Trier, Business Informatics I, 54286 Trier, Germany
e-mail: ingo.timm@uni-trier.de
F. Lorig
e-mail: fabian.lorig@uni-trier.de
E. Holzchen · C. Hertler
Senckenberg Research Institute, ROCEEH, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany e-mail: ericson.hoelzchen@senckenberg.de
C. Hertler
e-mail: christine.hertler@senckenberg.de © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
J.A. Barcelo and F. Del Castillo (eds.), Simulating Prehistoric and Ancient Worlds,
Computational Social Sciences, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31481-5_2
2.1