Introduction
The question of where mankind originated from has been of peculiar interest for generations. In 1871, Charles Darwin argued that the origin of anatomically modern humans, such as homo sapiens, is located in Africa.
As great apes, e.g., chimpanzees and gorillas, are known to be human relatives and live in Africa, this assumption seems obvious. However, Darwin could not provide any evidence for this assumption. Therefore, numerous researchers refused Africa as an origin of mankind and proposed Asia instead. This theory received further support as Dubois found fossils of the so called Java Man. In the following decades, further archaeological excavations provided even more evidence for Asia being the origin of mankind (Anton and Swisher III2004).A change of thinking was achieved in 1924, when fossils—found in Southafrica— were accepted as human ancestors by leading researchers in paleoanthropology. From that point of time the Out-Of-Africa-Hypothesis obtained acceptance (Stringer 2000).
Nowadays, the discovery of numerous fossils supports the existence of waves of early dispersal from Africa to Eurasia, too. According to this, homo erectus initiated the migration process towards Eurasia 1.8 million years ago. Yet, the reason as well as the concrete route of migration are still controversially discussed by experts.
Modern geochronological methods enable researchers to date fossils by measuring end products of radioactive decay occurring in findings. As a result of this, evidence concerning the stay of hominins at certain points of time was provided. However, a detailed and complete reconstruction of the path taken cannot be achieved using current methods. Likewise, further archaeological excavations are not promising as well due to the huge size of the area. Thus, four competing hypotheses (Abbate and Sagri 2012; Armitage et al.
2011; Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 2001; Derricourt 2005) concerning possible routes of human dispersal out of Africa have been established:• Along the Bad-el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden,
• the Levantive Corridor located between the Mediterranean Sea and the deserts connecting Africa to Eurasia,
• the Strait of Sicily, nowadays separating Tunisia and Sicily,
• and the Strait of Gibraltar, separating the Atlantic and the Mediterranean Sea.
When comparing the scenarios mentioned above it becomes obvious that a combination of several different factors was responsible for the dispersal processes. Each scenario provides conditions making it suitable for migrating from Africa to Eurasia. Among other things ecological variations and demographic pressure likely influenced the dispersal of hominins (Abbate and Sagri 2012).
The increasing number of members may have required tribes to split up in to smaller tribes in order to keep group sizes manageable. Furthermore, changes in climatic, geographical or sea-level conditions may have been responsible for hominins to move towards Eurasia, too. They either made habitable tracts of land uninhabitable or vice versa. Especially when considering potential routes of dispersal, changes of the sea-level may have supported migration or even provided new possibilities (Abbate and Sagri 2012; Blain et al. 2010; Leroy et al. 2011; Van der Made 2011).
But also changes of physical abilities increasing the hominin’s stamina as well as the absence or occurrence of diseases outside their former habitat may have caused migration. Finally, other carnivores hunting the same prey might have caused hominins to move to other areas providing a sufficient amount of food (Turner 1992). There is a scientific consensus that a conjunction of the local circumstances and interactions mentioned above caused the global effect of hominins migrating to Eurasia. In order to understand these emergent phenomena and to validate different hypotheses concerning reasons and motivations causing hominins to move to Eurasia, the dispersal processes need to be reproduced.
During the last decades, computer simulation has been established as standard means for reproducing and analyzing the behavior of complex systems. Based on abstract models describing relevant environmental conditions and characteristics of the object to be examined simulation experiments can be conducted. Considering the influencing factors mentioned above, a variety of differentiated yet independent domain models is available. Therefore, this article aims at proposing a method for integrating a set of models representing different factors influencing hominin dispersal processes into a holistic simulation platform. By enabling paleoanthropological researches to formulate hypothesis and assumptions concerning routes hominins may have chosen on their way to Eurasia, the simulation platform proposed in this article provides a tool for validating these theories by simulating the dispersal processes with regards to scenarios created by the researchers.
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