Abstract
Symbolic and technological complexity of human artifacts increased drastically around 45,000 years ago.
Powell, Shennan and Thomas (2009) explained it using a computer simulation of a demographic model
through an increase of the population density. We have simplified the computer demographic model to be
similar to standard physics models (percolation, random walks) for a large square lattice. Demography is a
major determinant in the maintenance of cultural complexity and its variation in regional subpopulation
density and/or migratory activity results in spatial structuring of cultural skill accumulation. Computer
simulations have been used to facilitate information spread by random walkers over dozens of distances
between human bands (extended families) of stone-age humans, distributed randomly on a large square
lattice such that each lattice site is randomly occupied with probability p and empty with probability 1−p,
and random walkers move among the occupied sites only.
In this paper we allow also these bands to move randomly on the lattice. This improvement has been done by
letting the communities perform slower random walks on the lattice such that no sharp percolation threshold
exists for the random walks of the walkers within groups of occupied neighboring sites..
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