Climate Teleconnections Synchronize Human Population Dynamics

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Climate variability can significantly constrain the population dynamics of ancient agrarian societies, although its direct influence is often mediated by a complex interplay of social, ecological, and technological factors. Untangling these relationships in the archaeological record is challenging due to the scarcity of spatially continuous paleoclimate data and the paucity of theoretical models that can capture the spatial dimension of these various influences. Here, we address this challenge by integrating archaeological data with spatially explicit paleoclimate reconstructions in a spatial metapopulation model. Our model shows how recurring spatial modes of climate variability, climate “teleconnections,” can synchronize population dynamics and mobility over extensive geographical scales and allows us to explore the sensitivity of this relationship to social and technological variables. Understanding how climate variability induces spatial synchrony in human populations offers fresh insights into cycles of human population expansion and recession and has broader implications for our understanding of long-term trends in social interaction, cultural evolution, and biodiversity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Global Perspectives on Human Population Dynamics, Innovation, and Ecosystem Change   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40335.0