Population history

Past and present. You can't make this stuff up.
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Apollonius
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Population history

Post by Apollonius »

There has been some discussion of population history, in particular, the population of the pre-contact Americas.


This is always a contentious subject, because of what it implies for just how advanced or sophisticated Native American cultures were and also for what it implies for just how devastating the effects of European and African* immigration were.



There are two most widely cited works on the subject:


Atlas of World Population History by Colin McEvedy and Richard Jones (Penguin, 1978)


A Concise History of World Population by Massimo Livi-Bacci (4th ed., 2006)


From the dust jacket:
This book describes and explains the history of human population. It examines the changing patterns of its growth, and the effects upon it of migrations, wars, disease, technology, and culture. Since its publication in 1992 it has become the most widely read account of the subject...

It's an outstanding book, however, it does not cover the same territory as the earlier volume. As the little blurb tells us, it is largely a compendium of various theories of population growth and decline with special reference to Malthus, but also including many other points of view.

This work is so cautious in interpretating the data that Livi-Bacci can only bring himself to quote the work of others when giving them. For example, the most widely used table for population figures turns out not to be the author's, but rather, is lifted from the work of J.N. Biraben's Essai sur l'evolution du nombre des hommes in the journal, Population, 34 (1979).

There is very little detail, so if you're looking for population figures for a particular country at a particular time, this work will not be very helpful.





McEvedy and Jones' work, though written some years ago, is still the most widely cited work on the subject. As far as that goes, no other authors that I'm aware of have even attempted to duplicate their work. Other scholars have studied the problem in specific areas or time periods and those few who have attempted something more general don't actually disagree with the McEvedy and Jones book that much anyway. But the purpose of this thread is to share information. If someone has come across other sources that need to be examined, by all means, list them.







* Effects of immigration are usually thought of exclusively in terms of European colonization, but many of the diseases brought to the New World were from Africa, and as any cursory examination of the history of the Caribbean reveals, these were often as devastating to Europeans as to the indigenous population, and go a long way towards explaining the population make-up of the region today, largely descended from Africans, who had more natural immunity to these tropical diseases.
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Apollonius
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Disclaimer

Post by Apollonius »

Moderns love to talk about ancient peoples in awe struck terms. We hear all sorts of fantastic claims about the wonderful technology and great cities of the past. Usually these claims turn out to be wild exaggerations which have more to do with making a name for the author than anything to do with actual history.

Colin McEvedy notes this tendancy and compares typical descriptions with what they really mean:


Major new civilization = a particularly disappointing dig

History will have to be rewritten = confirms an existing footnote in the standard work on the subject

A great city = a few hovels, maybe a village

The Venice of its day = any site that has produced a few articles from somewhere else

Earliest known = undated






These posts were inspired by discussion of pre-Columbian populations in the Americas, but this discussion is not intended to be limited to that. I'm interested in all sources relevant to population history.
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Apollonius
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A sceptic speaks

Post by Apollonius »

This examination of population figures gives you an idea of the kind of scepticism that needs to be applied to exaggerated claims about great populations in the past:



The population of ancient Rome
Calculations of ancient Rome's population depend on four bits of information. The first is the result of a survey of the city's housing taken in Constantine's day. It gives the number of houses as 1,790, and the number of apartments as 46,000. On the basis of ten persons to a house and four to an apartment, this yields a population of 1,790 x 10 + 56,000 x 4 = 201,900. The second is the number of people who got a free wheat ration from the state. When the rosters were monitored properly, as they were by Julius Caesar and Augustus, they totalled 150,000 and 'a few more than 200,000' respectively. The third is the census of AD 1526 when 45,178 people lived in the 220 hectares of the abitato, the inhabited quarter of the city. Applied to the walled area of ancient Rome (1380 ha.) this yields a population figure of 283,000. However, something of the order of a third of the classical city was public space of one sort or another (gardens, temples, baths) which brings us back to 200,000 again. Finally, there is the size of the city when it did reach the million mark in AD 1931. At 6,780 ha. it was bigger than ancient Rome by a factor of 4.9, suggesting a population of 204,000 for the classical city.

The million men deal with this data in some pretty contorted ways. First they say that apartment (insula) is really an apartment block, which enables them to use any multiplier they fancy. This is not allowable. The minimum ground floor space of an apartment block is of the order of 300 m^2 (0.03 ha.). 48,000 of them would occupy the entire area within the Aurelian walls, leaving no space for streets between them, let alone the city's grander houses and the gardens and public buildings that figure so prominently among the city's amenities. As to the 200,000 or so who got the wheat ration: the million men say that they were adult males and need a multiplier of 4, plus a bit more for slaves. This won't do either: the only named recipient we know of is a woman, and reliefs on the Arch of Constantine show that the queues for imperial handouts included women and children (even infants). As to slaves, there must have been very few in Rome, because giving them their liberty made them eligible for the handout too: masters will surely have opted to be served by freedmen at the state's expense rather than by slaves maintained out of their own pockets. It may sound surprising but there were even cases of non-Romans voluntarily entering into slavery so they could be set free and thus, as Roman citizens, qualify for the dole. So 200,000 it is, as Augustus said, and indeed who ever heard of a dictator who put a smaller figure on his largesse than he needed to? If he had fed a million Romans, he would have said so.

-- Colin McEvedy, The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History (Penguin, 2nd ed., 2002)
Last edited by Apollonius on Sun Apr 15, 2012 7:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Apollonius
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The Americas

Post by Apollonius »

Here is a listing of some population estimates for the Americas:



http://www.allempires.net/native-americ ... 27325.html




For example, Massimo Levi-Bacci gvies a population of Mexico of 6.3M (1548) to 1.9M (1580) to 1M (1605)



This same web page also lists various estimates for the numbers of victims of human sacrifice in Mexico.




Some authors have invented wild numbers that been pulled from nowhere.

In American Holocaust, Stannard estimates the total cost of the near-extermination of the American Indians as 100,000,000.

The problem here (aside from the question of whether there were even this many people in hemisphere at all) is that Stannard doesn't differentiate between death by massacre and death by disease. He blames the Europeans for bringing new diseases which spread like wildfire -- often faster than than the Europeans themselves -- and depopulated the continent. Since no one disputes the fact that most of the native deaths were caused by alien diseases to which they had never developed immunity, the simple question of categorization is vital.

Traditionally we add death by disease and famine into the total cost of wars and massacres (Anne Frank, after all, died of typhus, not Zyklon-B, but she's still a victim of the Holocaust) so I don't see any problem with doing the same with the American genocides, provided that the deaths occurred after their society had already been disrupted by direct European hostility. If a tribe was enslaved or driven off its lands, the associated increase in deaths by disease would definitely count toward the atrocity (The chain of events which reduced the Indian population of California from 85,000 in 1852 to 18,000 in 1890 certainly counts regardless of the exact agent of death, because by this time, the Indians were being hunted down from one end of California to another.); however, if a tribe was merely sneezed on by the wrong person at first contact, it should not count.

Consider the Powhatans of Virginia. As I mentioned earlier, Stannard cites estimates that the population was 100,000 before contact. In the same paragraph, he states that European depredations and disease had reduced this population to a mere 14,000 by the time the English settled Jamestown in 1607. Now, come on; should we really blame the English for 86,000 deaths that occured before they even arrived? Sure, he hints at pre-Jamestown "depredations", but he doesn't actually list any. As far as I can tell, the handful of European ventures into the Chesapeake region before 1607 were too small to do much depredating, and in what conflicts there were, the Europeans often got the worst of it.

[see http://www.mariner.org/baylink/span.html

and http://www.nps.gov/fora/roanokerev.htm

and http://coastalguide.com/packet/lostcolony01.htm]

Think of it this way: if the Europeans had arrived with the most benign intentions and behaved like perfect guests, or for that matter, if Aztec sailors had been the ones to discover Europe instead of vice versa, then the Indians would still have been exposed to unfamiliar diseases and the population would still have been scythed by massive epidemics, but we'd just lump it into the same category as the Black Death, i.e. bad luck. (Curiously, the Black Death was brought to Europe by the Mongols. Should we blame them for it? And while we're tossing blame around willy-nilly, aren't the Native Americans responsible for introducing tobacco to the world -- and for the 90 million deaths which followed?)
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Marcus
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Re: Disclaimer

Post by Marcus »

Apollonius wrote:. . I'm interested in all sources relevant to population history.
I recall reading somewhere that during an early World's Fair, native Alaskan Athabaskan Indians were astounded to find they could understand the Hopi Indians in attendance.
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
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Apollonius
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Re: Population history

Post by Apollonius »

They're probably exaggerating a little, however, it is true that the Athabaskan languages spoken in Alaska are very closely related to those spoken in the American southwest. Athabaskan peoples (Navajo, Apache, etc.) moved south in relatively recent times-- about a thousand years ago, which coincides with the introduction of the bow and arrow to the Americas. no doubt partly explaining their success at displacing the indigenous people (Hopi, etc.). There are Athabaskan tribes in B.C. that were still moving south, and displacing Salish speakers in the central parts of the province during the mid nineteenth century.
Ibrahim
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Re: Population history

Post by Ibrahim »

Apollonius wrote:This is always a contentious subject, because of what it implies for just how advanced or sophisticated Native American cultures were and also for what it implies for just how devastating the effects of European and African* immigration were.

It isn't relevant to either issue. Population does not equal sophistication, sophistication or lack thereof does not justify actions against a group or individual, and the effect of European colonialism was total destruction of the pre-contact civilization, regardless of how many there were then, or now, or if new syncretized cultures were created.


Not to say that trying to determine populations isn't interesting for its own sake.
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Marcus
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Re: Population history

Post by Marcus »

Ibrahim wrote:. . the effect of European colonialism was total destruction of the pre-contact civilization . .
More BS . . .

http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/sho ... r-Gather-r
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
******************
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
—John Calvin
Ibrahim
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Re: Population history

Post by Ibrahim »

Marcus wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:. . the effect of European colonialism was total destruction of the pre-contact civilization . .
More BS . . .

http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/sho ... r-Gather-r

You just linked me to a blog post to prove the continuity of pre-contact Native American civilization?

Different Native groups and individuals have made different accommodations with modernity, but the pre-contact civilization was destroyed.
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Marcus
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Re: Population history

Post by Marcus »

Ibrahim wrote:Different Native groups and individuals have made different accommodations with modernity, but the pre-contact civilization was destroyed.
Again, are you really this stupid?

All pre-contact civilizations, native and European, have made "accommodations" with modernity, and all that was then has been destroyed.

Go reread the link I posted . . sloooowwly this time and look at the pictures . . . duh . . . :?
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
******************
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
—John Calvin
Ibrahim
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Re: Population history

Post by Ibrahim »

Marcus wrote:
Ibrahim wrote:Different Native groups and individuals have made different accommodations with modernity, but the pre-contact civilization was destroyed.
Again, are you really this stupid?

All pre-contact civilizations, native and European, have made "accommodations" with modernity, and all that was then has been destroyed.

Go reread the link I posted . . sloooowwly this time and look at the pictures . . . duh . . . :?
I'll warn you Marcus, I have a pretty high sense of self-worth. You calling me stupid isn't likely to produce much in the way of results.


The guy in your linked article isn't living a pre-contact Native America lifestyle, he's living a modern approximation of that lifestyle. A bit like how being a Civil War reenactor isn't like fighting a Gettysburg.


My original point, which I don't want to get obscured, is that the numbers of people living in the Americas prior to European contact doesn't change a single thing about the nature of colonialism. If the Spanish visited their colonial system on a thousand Natives or a billion, there is no qualitative difference.
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Marcus
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Re: Population history

Post by Marcus »

Ibrahim wrote:I'll warn you Marcus, I have a pretty high sense of self-worth.
Who knew . . . :lol:
Ibrahim wrote:The guy in your linked article isn't living a pre-contact Native America lifestyle, he's living a modern approximation of that lifestyle.
Who knew . . . :lol:
"The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson's time."
--- Richard Nixon
******************
"I consider looseness with words no less of a defect than looseness of the bowels."
—John Calvin
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