ABSTRACT. The research described in this paper involved the development of a computer program designed to simulate population growth and migration patterns among hunter-gatherers, especially with respect to the Arctic. The program, which handles up to 200 discreet geographical locations, each with its own particular demographic and environmental characteristics, begins with an initial population and its vital statistics and simulates the events that occur through time. The fertility and mortality rates used in the simulations were those of modem and former Eskimo populations and other anthropological populations. The program was run under five different conditions. Condition 1 included high mortality and fertility rates and no female infanticide and resulted in extinction with little population dispersion. Condition 2, a situation of low mortality and high fertility with no infanticide, resulted in the occupation of nearly the entire Arctic in 1300 years. Condition 3 included the same mortality and fertility rates as condition 2, with the incorporation of a 30% rate of female infanticide. Under this condition, the population declined very slowly, while migration proceeded to some extent. Condition 4 represented a situation of very high fertility and mortality with 30% female infanticide and resulted in relatively rapid growth and migration rates. Condition 5, which incorporated the same high fertility and infanticide rates as condition 4 and lower mortality rates, produced very rapid population growth and migration. Anthropologists have long been concerned with the history of population movements and the relationships between population and environment. Methods developed to describe presentday human populations have been found useful in the description and analysis of prehistoric populations and communities of anthropological interest living in various parts of the world today (Weiss, 1973(Weiss, ,1975Zubrow, 1975;Storey, 1984). These methods provide quantitative descriptions of populations and of the processes that affect their size and composition. Acsadi and Nemeskeri (1970), Moore et al. (1975) and Hassan (1981) provide an extensive discussion of the history of paleodemographic research and analyses of therelationship between anthropology and demography. In order to study the various effects of disease, accidents, social mortality (infanticide, invalicide, etc.) and the other agents of natural selection in general, it is necessary to describe populations in terms of their rates of fertility, mortality and migration. These rates may be considered as discreet events that occur during the life cycle of individuals, as well as processes that apply to entire populations (Schrire and Steiger, 1974; Chapman, 1980).The development of modem high-speed computers has allowed for the incorporation of descriptive and analytic demographic methods into computer programs designed to simulate events that occur over time in actual populations (Arriaga et al., 1976). These computer programs are important because they can ...