Ancient levantine demography follows ecological stochasticity.

Unraveling the driving forces behind human colonization, settlement and abandonment throughout history has been a prominent research avenue for centuries. While social, political, technological, or environmental factors are commonly identified as the driving forces behind these processes, in this paper we explore a different factor - demographic stochasticity. Through an analysis based on the metapopulation theory, we assess whether demographic processes of a stochastic nature are the likely cause behind settlement abandonment and colonization within past human societies. We implement the analysis for a geographical region in the Levant and compare the results with historical and archaeological evidence. In all case studies tested but one, we show that our null hypotheses cannot be rejected. This suggests that, similarly to other species' metapopulations, demographic stochasticity holds a significant role in shaping human settlement dynamics. We thus claim that this approach should serve as a null hypothesis for the assessment of settlement dynamic and the role of social and cultural processes.