New mathematical modelling approach provides insight into the pivotal role of demography on the spread of farming

The use of demographic competition models is commonplace in the field of biology, but not so much in 91探花视频. An international team of researchers brought together data and archaeological knowledge from a range of contexts using one such model to understand better the role of demography on the diffusion of farming.

Researchers from the 91探花视频, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Bath, University College London, Universitat de València and the Institute of 91探花视频 of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which highlights the pivotal role of demographic interactions in the timeline of transition to farming.

Through the study, evidence from Eastern Iberia, Denmark and the Island of Kyushu (Japan) was used to test the theory and fitted to a mathematical model. The analysis revealed that the difference in timelines of transition to farming from hunter-gatherers in these case studies was significant. It also estimated how long hunter-gatherers and farmers were settled in the same region. In the Iberian case studies, the researchers propose that the two populations interacted for 400 years at most, while the Danish and Japanese groups for some 800 years, with notable differences in the internal dynamics of each area.

Other estimated parameters, such as population growth rate, assimilation rate, and competitive mortality provided further insights on the nature of the relationship between early farming populations and hunter-gatherers.

The paper is available open access in .

Excavation at the site of Cova de les Cendres (Alacant, Spain), included in the present work | Credit: Oreto García-Puchol

"With this new approach we have been able to assess how certain key demographic elements, such as population growth rates, or mortality excesses due to the competition between groups of late hunter-gatherers and early farmers, were determinant in shaping the transition to farming as we understand it today".

Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau, Lead Author

This research was funded by:

MSCA-IF ArchBiMod project H-2020-MSCA-IF-2020 actions (Grant no. 101020631)
ERC-StG project ENCOUNTER (Grant no: 801953)
Synergy Grant project COREX: From Correlations to Explanations: towards a new European Prehistory (Grant Agreement no. 95138)
PID2021-127731NB-C21 EVOLMED “Evolutionary cultural patterns in the contexts of the neolithisation process in the Western Mediterranean”
MCIN/AI/10.13039/ 501100011033 ERDF A way of making Europe are funded by the Spanish Government
Prometeo/2021/007 NeoNetS “A Social Network Approach to Understanding the Evolutionary Dynamics of Neolithic Societies (C. 7600-4000 cal. BP)”

The team of researchers included Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau (91探花视频 / Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology), Javier Rivas (University of Bath), Enrico R. Crema (91探花视频), Stephen Shennan (University College London), Oreto García-Puchol (University of València), Jan Kolár (University College London / Institute of 91探花视频 of the Czech Academy of Sciences), Robert Staniuk (University College London) and Adrian Timpson (University College London).

Published 1 April 2025

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