Discovering the opposite shore: How did hominins cross sea straits?

Understanding hominin expansions requires the comprehension of movement processes at different scales. In many models of hominin expansion these processes are viewed as being determined by large-scale effects, such as changes in climate and vegetation spanning continents and thousands or even millio...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2021-06, Vol.16 (6), p.e0252885-e0252885
Main Authors: Hölzchen, Ericson, Hertler, Christine, Mateos, Ana, Rodríguez, Jesús, Berndt, Jan Ole, Timm, Ingo J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology and Life Sciences
Climate and vegetation
Climate change
Climate effects
Computer and Information Sciences
Earth Sciences
Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Environmental aspects
Hominids
Human mechanics
Informatics
Large-scale models
Medicine and Health Sciences
Physical Sciences
Physiological aspects
Research and Analysis Methods
Scale models
Simulation
Social Sciences
Success
Swimming
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Summary:Understanding hominin expansions requires the comprehension of movement processes at different scales. In many models of hominin expansion these processes are viewed as being determined by large-scale effects, such as changes in climate and vegetation spanning continents and thousands or even millions of years. However, these large-scale patterns of expansions also need to be considered as possibly resulting from the accumulation of small-scale decisions of individual hominins. Moving on a continental scale may for instance involve crossing a water barrier. We present a generalized agent-based model for simulating the crossing of a water barrier where the agents represent the hominin individuals. The model can be configured to represent a variety of movement modes across water. Here, we compare four different behavioral scenarios in conjunction with a set of water barrier configurations, in which agents move in water by either paddling, drifting, swimming or rafting. We introduce the crossing-success-rate (CSR) to quantify the performance in water crossing. Our study suggests that more focus should be directed towards the exploration of behavioral models for hominins, as directionality may be a more powerful factor for crossing a barrier than environmental opportunities alone. A prerequisite for this is to perceive the opposite shore. Furthermore, to provide a comprehensive understanding of hominin expansions, the CSR allows for the integration of results obtained from small-scale simulations into large-scale models for hominin expansion.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0252885