Space Competition and Time Delays in Human Range Expansions. Application to the Neolithic Transition
Isern, Neus (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament de Prehistòria)
Fort, Joaquim (Universitat de Girona. Departament de Física)
Vander Linden, Marc (University College London. Institute of Archaeology)

Data:	2012
Resum:	Space competition effects are well-known in many microbiological and ecological systems. Here we analyze such an effect in human populations. The Neolithic transition (change from foraging to farming) was mainly the outcome of a demographic process that spread gradually throughout Europe from the Near East. In Northern Europe, archaeological data show a slowdown on the Neolithic rate of spread that can be related to a high indigenous (Mesolithic) population density hindering the advance as a result of the space competition between the two populations. We measure this slowdown from a database of 902 Early Neolithic sites and develop a time-delayed reaction-diffusion model with space competition between Neolithic and Mesolithic populations, to predict the observed speeds. The comparison of the predicted speed with the observations and with a previous non-delayed model show that both effects, the time delay effect due to the generation lag and the space competition between populations, are crucial in order to understand the observations.
Ajuts:	Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2009/SGR-374 European Commission NEST-028192 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CSD-2010-00034 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia FIS-2009-13050
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Publicat a:	PloS one, Vol. 7 núm 12 (december 2012) , ISSN 1932-6203

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0051106
PMID: 23251430

9 p, 546.9 KB

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