This is a skeleton page for the Masters Project:

The spread of Neolithic Farming

by

Markus Signitzer

Abstract:

This project tries to model the competing processes involved in the migration of Neolithic farming techniques: The
displacement of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers by Neolithic farmers and the adoption of farming by hunter-gatherers. The used
model extends the "wave of advance" - model originally introduced by Fisher to describe the spread of advantaged genes in
a population. The project investigates the suitability of computer simulations based on physical principles (Diffusion) to scientific
areas outside physics, by comparing the simulation results with archeological, linguistic and genetic evidence.

 

The project report can be found here: Report

The puplication at PNAS can be found here: PNAS puplication

A number of movies (unfortunaltly only in the windown .wmv format) can be viewed/downloded, please follow the links below:

Europe

India

Africa