Demographic Regulators in Small-Scale World-Systems

This paper presents a simulation of world-systems theory’s iteration model of early human societies. The polities modeled are composed of sedentary foragers and/or simple horticulturalists that rely upon basic subsistence technologies and display low levels of internal differentiation. World-systems theory’s iteration model integrates several processes of demographic regulation: environmental constraints, migration, intra-polity conflict, and inter-polity warfare. Computer simulation of this model reveals that different degrees of resource richness, land area, and initial population size have important effects on the average population levels and the behavior of