Showing papers by "Bernard P. Zeigler published in 1979"

Concepts for advanced simulation methodologies

Abstract: Conventional simulation techniques have three short comings when applied to large-scale modelling : They provide an inadequate man-machine interface, they provide a poor conceptual framework, and they lack needed tools for managing data and model. These shortcomings may be ameliorated by developing new simulation languages that differentiate the function aZ elements of simulation programs and by recognizing the goals of these functional elements. This paper provides concepts for the design and implementation of such advanced simulation methodologies.

A Formal Mathematical Model for the Operation of Consensus-Based Hunting–Gathering Bands

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter explores a formal mathematical model that helps to show that consensus-based, egalitarian hunter-gatherers, especially those living in mosaic environments such as those of the Near East, highland Mesoamerica, or the Andes, could not have maximized resource exploitation even had that concept been part of their ideology. Many models for the origins of agriculture view it as a way of increasing energy per unit of land, often as the result of some postulated human population pressure. In the mathematical model described in the chapter, suggestions that agriculture could have arisen in some areas as a solution to the predictable problems of resource search and scheduling encountered by any group without a decision-making hierarchy can be made. Results obtained from the model suggest that the size of the region in which resources may be maximally exploitable by hunter-gatherer groups that do not possess centralized decision making is strictly limited by the individual's abilities to gather information.