Modeling modern and ancient hunter-gathering behavior

The Palaeo-Agulhas Plain in South Africa is an important archaeological location in the evolution of modern humans and formed an important habitat exploited by Pleistocene hunter-gatherer populations. An agent-based model is in development to understand the human foraging system. The model is based on optimal foraging theory to model human foraging decisions designed to optimize the net caloric gains within a complex landscape of spatially and temporally variable resources. The model was initially tested on modern hunter-gatherers, the Ache in Paraguay, for which there is a wealth of ethnographically observed behavior. The model shows a close match for daily harvest rates, time allocation, and species composition of prey. The model allows us to explore the implications of social living, cooperative hunting, variation in group size, and mobility, under Ache-like ecological conditions.