Historical population question

[Null Boundry]

An army interested in land would KEEP as many of the able bodied workers around as they could. Land does no good if there's no one there to work it.

Rome had a population well over 100,000 before the Christens came to town. And many towns up through the middle ages had over 100,000 people as well.

The population of classical Rome is thought to have been in excess of 1 million. The lowest figure I have seen is 750,000. Its fairly safe to say that it was still around that size atleast until the 3rd century.

 

[Turjan]

where are you getting these figures from? they don't match anything i've read about the time period.

for example, just using one of the links Joe B. gives above, in 1483 (pretty close to 1500), Florence, Genoa, Milan, Naples, Paris, and Venice are all listed in the 50,000 to 125,000 category. in the 23,000 to 49,000 category, it lists Antwerp, Barcelona, Bologna, Brescia, Bruges, Brussels, Cologne, Cordoba, Cremona, Ferrara, Ghent, Lille, Lisbon, London, Lubeck, Mantua, Moscow, Nuremburg, Padua, Palermo, Rome, Rouen, Seville, Toulouse, Valencia, and Verona.

and here's another site here which gives Paris' population in 1500 as 185,000. i also read somewhere else recently (but can't find the link again) that Florence's population in the mid 1300s was already up to 100,000.

Where do you see the problem? My list matches this list of Joe B. (and this is also the list you cited) perfectly. You have, first, to consider the area (just read my post; I had only Central and Western Europe listed, not Spain, Italy, Russia, North Africa or Middle Asia) and, second, the population size intervals in the categories differ in both sources.
My numbers are taken from Putzger's Historical World Atlas, from a map about population and economy in Central and Western Europe around 1500 (time of early capitalism). That book is pretty accurate.
As far as the numbers of the population of Paris goes, this is a question of definition. The number of 185,000 does not match the other links either; in that link where you took your city lists from Paris is found in the 50,000 to 125,000 group, so no 185,000 either. Maybe they just added some of the surrounded cities which belong to today's "Greater Paris" metropolitan area. I think the number of 80,000 is a better match for Paris' population around that time.

The population of classical Rome is thought to have been in excess of 1 million. The lowest figure I have seen is 750,000. Its fairly safe to say that it was still around that size atleast until the 3rd century.

That's right for the classic period. In the early middle ages, the population went down to about 50,000 inhabitants, and the people of Rome was living between the maginificent ruins of better days. Quite nice a scenario for a fantasy setting .

 

[Brother MacLaren]

RangerWickett -
By my count, that's 80 legendary characters in one city. (11th or higher according to there Legend Lore spell) I tried the 3e guidelines once and in my opinion they give way too many spellcasters and high-level characters. YMMV.
I have trouble conceiving of a single 20th-level commoner, let alone four of them alive at one time and living in the same city.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Saw this today...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4098809/

Teotihuacan, one of the largest cities in the world around the time of Christ, had an estimated 150,000 inhabitants, and influenced art and architecture as far away as the Yucatan Peninsula. However, it had been abandoned and crumbling for centuries by the time of the Aztecs.

 

[jmucchiello]

I can't believe no one's posted a link to The midieval city spreadsheet. This amusing little spreadsheet is supposed to answer the very question you asked.

 

[D+1]

I've heard that there are more people alive now than have ever lived.

True or false?

True.

 

[RangerWickett]

Wait, are you saying that the 6 billion people now is more than the 6 billion people alive yesterday plus all the dead people who aren't alive anymore? Or are we only counting people who were alive, but are now dead? In that case, you're saying that there are more people alive today than people who have ever died? I find that statement ridiculous.

Then again, I once heard someone say, "There are more people dead today than have ever died." That one really injured by brain.

 

[orsal]

In that case, you're saying that there are more people alive today than people who have ever died? I find that statement ridiculous.

I'd call it surprising, but certainly not ridiculous.

(Mathematics alert! Stop reading if you are allergic to mathematics.)

To simplify the estimate, let's pretend everybody lives for the exact same length of time. (I'll get rid of this assumption later.) It doesn't matter what that length of time is; let's just call it "one lifetime", and use lifetimes as our time unit. Then if we take a serious of snapshots of the world today, one lifetime ago, two lifetimes ago, three lifetimes ago, etc., then everybody who has ever lived was alive at exactly one of those times. So if we take a census at each of those times, and add up the total, we have the number of people who have ever lived. Add up all the censuses except the current one, and we have the total number who have lived and died already.

Suppose the world population doubles in exactly one lifetime. Then our current census gives us the current world population (a little over 6 billion, but that number doesn't really matter). One lifetime ago the population was half the current total; two lifetimes ago, one quarter the current population; three lifetimes, one eigth; and so on. Add all those past hypothetical censuses together, going back infinitely far, and you get exactly the current total. (In fact, homo sapiens doesn't go back infinitely far, but close enough. )

What if the time for the population to double isn't exactly one lifetime? If it's less than one lifetime, then there are more people alive today than dead; if more than one lifetime, then fewer are alive today than dead.

No we get to the complication: given that actual lifetimes vary considerably, we want to use some sort of "average" lifetime. I'm not sure offhand what the right sort of average to use is -- some kind of mean -- but the details don't matter. If we use some sort of mean lifetime as our time unit, then some people will have been alive for two of our hypothetical censuses, and some for none; with the right mean, these errors will balance each other.

So the question then becomes, is the doubling period more or less than the mean lifetime?

World population passed 6 billion a couple years ago, and passed 3 billion (I think) some time in the 1960s. So count on a doubling period under 40 years. That seems likely to me to be less than a current average lifetime. (Again, that's hard to say for sure, without figuring out what the appropriate average to use would be. On the other hand, it wasn't always this way; the doubling period used to be much longer, and the average lifetime rather shorter.

So on the basis of this analysis, I wouldn't be surprised to learn either way. Now I have read the claim, made earlier in this thread, that there are in fact more people currently alive. I can't vouch for it; I don't know how reliable the data on which it was based are. But I don't see any reason to disbelieve it, since it is (on the basis of the above) plausible, and I've never seen anybody make the contrary claim.

 

[RangerWickett]

Well yes, but you're forgetting that time is circular, so we've already all lived before in a slightly similar universe, so any notion of present time is irrelevant.

 

[jgbrowning]

Assuming there's been 5 million people in the world since 8000BC and that a generation is 25 years that would be 1.6 Billion from 8000BC to 1AD.

Assuming there's been 150 million people in the world since 1AD to 2000AD with again a 25 year average lifespan, that's 13.6 Billion.

So since 8000BC (according to this caluculation) there's been 15.2 Billion people who've died. Even if you double lifespan to 50 years, that's 7.6 Billion--- More than are alive today.

Of course people have been around before 8000BC. At least for a hundred thousand years. This example is far from scientific and is vastly undereporting the real populations.

joe b.