The growth of human settlements during the Neolithic, clustering and food crisis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stochastic model of Neolithic human settlement growth, linking migration, land use, and crop production, explaining settlement clustering and its eventual decline due to land degradation.

Contribution

It develops a coupled non-linear model connecting population dynamics, land degradation, and crop production during the Neolithic transition, providing insights into settlement patterns.

Findings

Farmers tend to form clusters and settlements along river valleys.

Large-scale settlement patterns are transient and fade due to land degradation.

The model explains the emergence and decline of settlements during the Neolithic.

Abstract

We present a stochastic two-population model that describes the migration and growth of semi-sedentary foragers and sedentary farmers along a river valley during the Neolithic transition. The main idea of this paper is that random migration and transition from sedentary to foraging way of life and backward is strongly coupled with the local crop production and the associated degradation of land. We derive a non-linear integral equation for the population density coupled with the equations for the density of soil nutrients and crop production. Our model provides an explanation for the formation of human settlements along a river valley. The numerical results show that the individual farmers have a tendency for aggregation and clustering. We show that the large-scale pattern is a transient phenomenon which eventually disappears due to land degradation.