Page 263 - Encyclopedia Of World History

economic growth, extensive and intensive 613

The first concentrated burst of intensive and extensive equality, which both reflected the accumulation of goods
growth, then, was probably the Neolithic Revolution: our and served as a spur to further accumulation. While no
name for a cluster of innovations that includes settled good numbers for economic growth exist for this period,
farming, the domestication of animals, and the con- estimates of human energy consumption are a useful
struction of permanent settlements. Controversy contin- (though very inexact) proxy.A very rough estimate is that
ues about how and why this process occurred—and it in the era of hunter-gatherers, perhaps 6 million humans
seems to have occurred independently in at least six each directly or indirectly used about 5,000 calories per
places in the world. In the short run, these developments day, for a total of 30 billion calories per day worldwide;
did not make life easier for individuals. Early farmers by 5,000 years ago, perhaps 50 million people burned an
lived no longer than their nomadic ancestors, and they average of 12,000 calories per day, for a total of 600 bil-
almost certainly worked much harder. Skeletal remains lion calories. Including improvements in the efficiency
suggest they were shorter (which usually means less well- with which energy inputs were turned into output of
nourished) and suffered more injuries of various sorts. human goods, economic growth in this period exceeds
They certainly suffered more from contagious diseases, as 2,000 percent; but since this was achieved over perhaps
people occupied large enough settlements for various dis- 5,000 years, the annual growth rate was still minuscule.
eases to become endemic, and as they stayed for long From perhaps 5,000 years ago to roughly 500 years
periods in proximity to their own waste, to animals that ago, economic growth was primarily a matter of slow
hosted diseases, and so on. extensive growth—mostly clearing forest or jungle to cre-
On the other hand, settled societies could achieve far ate more farmland and accompanying population
higher population densities, because each acre of land in growth.The global population reached perhaps 500 mil-
settled areas was now devoted only to plants useful to lion by 1500 CE, for a growth rate of less than 0.1 per-
humans, and human activity—weeding, watering, etc.— cent per year. Technical and institutional innovations
increased the yields of these favored species. Staying in also continued, but slowly. Not only was the rate of inven-
one place also made it easier for women to have more tion slow compared to the last century or two, but the rate
children, since children did not need to be carried as at which new techniques spread across the world was
much as they did in migratory bands. For the same rea- very slow, due to limited communications. Iron plows,
son, settling down also facilitated the accumulation of paper, and other very useful innovations took centuries to
material possessions. The overall result was substantial spread from China, where they were invented, to the
economic growth: more people and more output per per- other end of Eurasia, not to mention to the Americas or
son resulted from both an increase in inputs (more labor- Australia; the manufacture of paper, for instance, is noted
ers, each working more hours on average) and eventually, in China in 100 CE, but not in Europe until after 1200.
from greater efficiency. Permanent settlement also facili- Productivity-enhancing institutional innovations, such as
tated the storage of food and thus the feeding of people the growth of markets in land and labor, were often even
who themselves might not produce food. This made slower to spread, since they threatened the vested interests
greater occupational specialization possible, which in of those who controlled these resources by force. It was
turn facilitated the discovery and diffusion of knowledge, also probably common for useful innovations to be lost
manifested in the rise of advanced construction, metal- periodically, since small societies were easily disrupted
working, cloth-making, and many other skills. and much of their knowledge was never written down.
Thus, intensive growth encouraged extensive growth, Innovations occasionally came in clusters, as in Song
and vice versa. Within a few thousand years of the first China (960–1279 CE), when breakthroughs in water
agricultural settlements there grew up cities, govern- control, rice growing, silk reeling and weaving, naviga-
ments, and writing—as well as far greater human in- tion, and time keeping were all invented in a relatively