  Sedentism was a decisive moment in the history of humankind. In a review
article Kay and Kaplan quantified land use for early human settlements and
found that sedentism and the emergence of farming go hand in hand. For these
settlements two primary land use categories, farming and living, can be
identified, whereas for hunter gatherer societies no distinct differences can
be made. It is natural to search for this in the behavior of two different
groups, settlers and farmers. The development of two distinct zones and the two
groups lead us to the hypothesis that the emergence of settlements is the
result of diffusion-driven Turing instability. In this short communication we
further specify this and show that this results in a regular settlement
arrangement as can still be seen today in agricultural regions.

Pattern Formation and Solitons;Physics and Society;Populations and Evolution