Route selection and number of exits: Quantifying “Out of Africa”

The 'Out of Africa'-theory states that the earliest hominins originated in Africa and from there expanded across Eurasia. The fossil finds in Dmanisi point to a latest initial exit around 2 million years ago. But what happened afterwards remains under debate. On the one hand, it is unclear which route they took out of the African continent. Although the Levante is proposed as a most favoured corridor, other routes were also possible. On the other hand, we do not know how many times the earliest hominins left Africa. The hypotheses range from at least one, two or more exits. The answer to these questions has implications on our species definition of the genus Homo and the subsequent role of Homo sapiens in comparison to other hominin species such as Neanderthals, Denisovans or Homo floresiensis. We use agent-based modeling to quantify the effects of 'Out of Africa' dispersal hypotheses on output variables, such as route selection and number of exits. In our talk, we present how we implemented the measuring of routes and the number of exits in an actual 'Out of Africa'-agent-based model. We show simulation results of different dispersal hypotheses on these output variables. We intend this talk, to open up a discussion about how and why using a certain output variable to quantify hominin dispersal events such as the earliest expansions out of Africa.

(Ericson Hölzchen, Christine Hertler)

archaeology,