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Seminar: Predicting surprises: the application of simple models of hominids demographies and culture to prehistoric observations | The Institute of Archaeology

Seminar: Predicting surprises: the application of simple models of hominids demographies and culture to prehistoric observations

Date: 
Tue, 27/12/201616:30
Location: 
prehistoric Room 300

 

Lecturer: Dr. Oren Kolodny, Dept. of Biology, Stanford University

Explaining large-scale pre-historical processes is challenging, because they frequently leave limited material evidence and they rarely provide direct evidence as to the ecological and evolutionary dynamics that were their drivers. I use simple model simulations to test whether dynamics that incorporate biological insights may explain major patterns that are observed in the archaeological record. I will discuss two topics:

  1. I will show how simple principles regarding the invention and maintenance of cultural knowledge can give rise to abrupt punctuated change in material culture, such as seen in the transition between the middle and upper Paleolithic.
  2. I will demonstrate that a simple model of population dynamics predicts that, given the demographic state of affairs at the end of the middle Paleolithic, modern humans were determined to replace the Neanderthals regardless of whether the moderns had a selective advantage (biological or cultural). I further suggest that the assertion that the rapidity of the species’ replacement points to selective advantage may be unwarranted.

Reading:

Kolodny, O., Creanza, N., Feldman, M.W., 2015. Evolution in leaps: The punctuated accumulation and loss of cultural innovations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, 6762-6769.