HUMAN MIGRATION TRACKED IN STANFORD COMPUTER SIMULATION

Stanford University Medical Center ^ | 21 January 2004 | Amy Adams

[imintrouble]

Thanks for the link to the reference paper and your recommended book Guns, Germs and Steel (the title gets one curious doesn't it?) - I'll have a look see!

[imintrouble]

You said it! I wonder if they have a Master's Program in Freep!! lol

Keeps my head buzzing.

[Virginia-American]

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is a really fine book. One fact which I was particularly amazed to learn from it is that a lot of the genetic diseases are actually the result of being homozygous in a recessive gene, which if you only have one copy of, provides protection against infectious diseases:

Sickle-cell - malaria
Cystic fibrosis - cholera
Tay-sachs - tuberculosis

Of course, when you think about it, there has to be some reason why these particular genes are comparatively concentrated, but before I read Diamond I only knew about sickle-cell.

Another book I recommend is by the author of the posted paper, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza The Great Human Diasporas

I couldn't find an on-line copy to link to, but the book has the most interesting map showing the frequency of the rh-negative blood group. It's almost concentric circles centered on the Basque country.

[Doctor Stochastic]

When I retire, maybe.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Trust me on this- no computer program is anything more than what the programmers put into it.

And how is is this a limitation?

[Doctor Stochastic]

I could com eup with a completely different program tomorrow that achieved these same results...

Then please do so. It would be publishable. You must use their inputs of mutation rates and their equations. You may not fudge the known inputs. I'll check this thread tomorrow for your results and a copy of your program to verify that it does what you claim.

[Ichneumon]

Another book I recommend is by the author of the posted paper, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza The Great Human Diasporas

I haven't read that, but I was impressed with an online essay of his I ran across while looking for the original paper: Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza: A Panoramic Synthesis of My Research .

[Ichneumon]

Let's hope it stays on topic. A Crevo thread would actually be more civilized than an amnesty thread these days.

ROFL!

[jpsb]

[if a population has 10 mutations after 50,000 years of evolution from the common ancestor in Africa, then the fifth mutation probably arose 25,000 years ago.]

Absolutely no reason to believe the above is true. And lots of reasons to believe it's false.

[I got the rope]

LOL.

[balrog666]

I repeat, you're grossly misrepresenting the nature and use of computer modeling.

Yep. A good computer model is more than its output. And a bad computer model is just sh!t.

A long time ago in town very far away, I had a boss that thought of computer printouts as "truth paper". Once or twice I had it say whatever-the-hell-I-wanted and got a budget and staff increase. Later I had him predicting the equivalent of unicorns appearing in public. He never did catch on but I knew if I stayed I'd have him announcing the end of the world as we know it (and I'd feel fine).

[PatrickHenry]

I'll check this thread tomorrow for your results and a copy of your program to verify that it does what you claim.

Tomorrow has arrived. Here's a link to a well-known alternative model.

[Doctor Stochastic]

I'll look at this later. I first thought of throwing a big grid over the whole Earth (vide Puck in "Midsummer Night's Dream") then using a diffusion based movement from cell to cell. It's probably better just to choose interesting places and put population there. An incidence matrix gives the migration routes and these are where the population (and genetic and linguistic) movements take place. Places like Europe would have many nodes and the Atlantic Ocean very few.