This page provides you with specific information about the operation of the simulation you are about to play. We have tried to keep all variables as close as possible to the actual situation among the Gwembe Tonga. Because of the complexity of the calculations involved and the large number of players, this simulation may be unbearably slow on an SE or Mac Plus. We highly recommend playing on a Mac II or later machine.

The goal of this simulation is the same as the goal of subsistence farmers - to survive. If you die during the simulation, the simulation is over and you have failed. Try to stay alive as long as you can. The longer you can stay alive, and assist family members to stay alive, the greater your success. Note that you are not graded on whether you live or die in this simulation.

The simulation runs on two cards. The main card is the map card where you get a bird's-eye view of the territory in which you live, the layout of the fields, the level of the river, and what crops are growing in which fields. Blacked-in fields are your fields to do with as you wish. The rest of the fields are owned by relatives, and are solely controlled by them, you may not harvest their crops or plant their fields for them. You can click on any of the fields to get information about the field. The second card is a chart of your nuclear and extended family during the simulation. The chart is ego-centric, that is, whatever gender you pick to play the simulation, your symbol will always be at the center of the chart, and all relations are phrased in terms of those people's relationship to you. You can click on the symbols for each family member to get information about who they are, what their labor capacity is, what their consumption requirements are, and how much food they have in storage.

The simulation is based on the premise that in subsistence farming societies two elements help to ensure the success of individual farmers. The first is sound decision making by the farmer - that is planting the appropriate crop in specific soils and during specific seasons, and knowing when to harvest, when to hoard seed to plant for next season, etc. The second element is a secure network of other family members to call on for aid when uncontrollable environmental factors threaten your survival. Both of these premises are maintaned in this simulation. You are responsible for deciding when, where, and what to plant, and when to harvest. You must maintain your food supplies at a level high enough to feed yourself and your dependents, as well as keeping enough of each food type in stock for planting in the next year. You also have a dynamic family. They can assist you when you run out of food - if they have sufficient stores to aid you. You will also be asked to help some of them if they need assistance.

Basic Rules to Keep in Mind

• Adults consume 1 pound of grain per day every day
• Children consume proportionately less depending on their age.
• An adult can cultivate 0.5 acres of land effectively. In order to get the most use out of your land you need the help of wives, children, and other family members. Conversely, the larger your labor pool, the more food it takes to feed those people.
• The land can produce at most 400 pounds of grain per acre.
• You can add more fields either for yourself or for your wives if it appears that they have insufficient land to meet their needs.
• You should make a point to periodically check the progress of various family members by checking the Family Chart.
• The amount of food that is actually harvested when you decide to harvest a field takes into account 1) the size of the field, 2) the amount of grain you had to plant the field, 3) the number of people you have to weed and harvest the crop, 4) the length of time the crop has lain rotting in the field unharvested after it was ready to harvest, 5) the fertility of the field based on its age and the last time it was fallowed (only for Upland fields), 6) the amount of rain received during the rainy season for Upland fields, or whether the field was actually covered with flood waters during the rains for Riverbank and Floodplain fields.

To start the simulation, read the directions below. The program will take a few minutes to create an environment for you, create a family for you, create fields for the family, and intialize various variables. The game is gender and age specific. The size of your family is roughly correlated with the age you tell the program. There are certain operations, like creating new fields, that you cannot do if you tell the program that you are female - but you can ask your husband for a new field, etc.

As you play the simulation think about what factors are either allowing you to succeed or hindering your success. You may want to make some brief notes on the progress of the simulation, the size of your family, etc. to help you in figuring out what you did right or wrong. You may run the simulation as often as you like, but the scenario will be different everytime. Remember that this simulation can take a long time to run, so allocate at least an hour to running it. If you don't die within the first year, run the simulation for at least three years to see what happens. If you can survive for three or more years we may have to give you a special certificate indicating that you are a subsistence farmer firstclass! Have fun - but remember that for a substantial portion of humanity over the past 5,000 years this was no game.

Running the Simulation

Due to a number of unforseen technical problems with the new cross-platform version of this exercise, we have had to delay the uploading of that version. Realizing that you have substantial time constraints the following options are available for you to run the simulation in the old format until we can get the last of the bugs ironed out of the new version.

• If you have a Macintosh computer at home and are connected to the Internet, and hence reading this online from home, you can download a complete copy of the simulation by clicking on the button below. This will download a file called Gwembe.sit.hqx to your hard drive. Your web browser and Stuffit Expander should automatically convert the file from a binhex to a StuffIt archive and then to the two files that actually make up the simulation. The simulation has been repackaged as a standalone application, so once you see that you have a file named " Gwembe Tonga Simulation" on your harddisk you can double click on it to run the simulation. The application requires 7.5 megabytes of free RAM (Random Access Memory), so we suggest that you quit all other applications before running the simulation just to avoid runnng out of RAM.
  
  [CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MAC VERSION]
  
  
• If you do not have a Macintosh at home, you will have to go to the Anthro 3 Learning Lab in Kerr Hall to run this simulation. Starting Tuesday (Feb 17) by 9:00 am there will be a new icon on the At Ease panel named "Gwembe Tonga Simulation". You can run the simulation simply by clicking on the button. Again, because of the memory requirements, we recommend that you make sure that no other programs, like Netscape, are running at the same time as the simulation.
  
  
• The Shockwave version of the program should be running by late Tuesday or early Wednesday. You may check on the availability of the new version by clicking on the link below. Feel free to check back frequently, but remember to click the reload button on your browser to make sure that you are not looking at a chached version of the page, rather then the actual latest version of the page.
  
  [CLICK HERE TO CHECK on NEW VERSION]

Thank you for your patience and forebearance in this matter. The chipmunks are running as fast as they can to try to get this new version running in a stable manner.

	1. Contents 2. Introduction 3. Geography 4. Environment 5. Agricultural Cycle 6. Technology 7. Economic Dynamics 8. Agricultural Dynamics 9. Explanation 10. Conclusion Courseware Page
Comments to: george@id.ucsb.edu All contents copyright © 1990-2003, The Regents of The University of California. All rights reserved.