The study of complex phenomena requires the contribution and cooperation of researchers from several fields. During the last decades, palaeontologists, palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists produced spatio-temporal and taxonomically organized datasets describing hominin distribution and databases containing quantitative palaeoenvironmental and palaeoecological data. In parallel, several conceptual models have been proposed to explain the dynamics of the human colonization of Europe, and other continents, in this period. However, too often those models reflect the actual data only loosely or are based on selected data provided by a specific research field. Thus, a subsidiary aim of METHOD is to promote an active collaboration among researchers interested in understanding the dynamics of the first human populations, the specialists with knowledge on the ecological and environmental scenarios where that dynamic occurred, and the people with the skill to set up mathematical models, including mathematicians, physicists or engineers with experience in the study of complex systems through mathematical modelling.
Since the MPR was a planetary event, the IFG has a worldwide scope, though it is initially focused on Europe because the quality and quantity of available data are significantly higher for the western Eurasia than for other regions.
