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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Brother MacLaren" data-source="post: 1344910" data-attributes="member: 15999">Assuming a stable population, life expectancy rather than generation length is the defining quantity for "how many deaths are there in a period of X years" - roughly, it will be the length of time divided by the life expectancy times the steady-state population.  So a population of 10,000 with a life expectancy of 40 will have 100,000 deaths over a period of 400 years.Generation length, reproductive rate, and average life expectancy (including deaths from infant mortality, which are often a substantial drag on life expectancy) are all needed to determine the rate of growth.  But we have side-stepped that by assuming a steady-state population for simplicity.</blockquote>