Inferring the Routes of Prehistoric Humans

Abstract

Prehistoric research is in high demand for 3D simulation to help validate hypotheses and enrich knowledge. While previous multidisciplinary studies focused on the reconstruction of ecosystems around excavation sites, this work takes up a new issue: deducing and visualizing the routes and the time taken by the hominids to reach the places where they harvested their resources, based on field data about raw material sources, the paleoclimate, and the surrounding ecosystem. We rely on the energy consumption of a simplified version of a walking character to compute the most likely locomotion speed and the best routes between input sites of interest, while taking into account local slopes, ground types and the presence of vegetation along the way. We show that this approach allows to evaluate the duration of the typical journeys of Homo heidelbergensis staying at the Caune de l'Arago (France) to collect lithic raw materials and to hunt - allowing archaeologists to deepen their knowledge of economic and territorial practices to the Lower Paleolithic and the Acheulean culture, 500,000 years ago.