Page 184 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

population 1485

Table 1.
Nonetheless, there is no doubt that population tended
Estimated Human Population
to increase across the millennia.To begin with, humans
Date Global population (millions)
were rare in the balance of nature, and confined to parts
300,000 BCE 1
of East Africa.There they were preyed upon by leopards
10,000 BCE 4
and other big cats in the savanna grasses where they for-
1000 BCE 50
aged for vegetable foods and ate grubs, insects, and
1 CE 200
meat, catching small animals and scavenging from dead
500 200
carcasses left behind by the big cats.
1000 270
Subsequent improvements in weapons, tools, and
1200 380
food-getting skills raised humans to the top of the food
1400 370
chain, with little to fear from rival predators, whereupon
1600 550
rapid expansion across most of the habitable globe
1800 820
between about 100,000 and 10,000 years ago demon-
1900 1,625
strated our ancestors’ unmatched adaptability to diverse
2000 6,000
landscapes, foods, and climates. Then, beginning about
Source: J. R. McNeill (2003). Population, human. In S. Krech III, J. McNeill, &
11,000 years ago, farming and herding multiplied food
C. Merchant (Eds.), Encyclopedia of world environmental history (Vol.3,p.
supplies, allowing farmers to become far more dense on 1010). New York: Routledge.
the ground than the foragers whom they supplanted as
they spread out from five or six different core areas Despite all risks, customary arrangements for marriage,
where farming began. More recently, since 1780, urban food finding,and infant care allowed human groups to sur-
industrialism, based on using inanimate forms of energy, vive most of the time.Defense of the home territory against
proved capable of sustaining even denser populations outsiders was necessary for survival, but so were peaceable
and started to spread from northwestern Europe, where encounters with neighbors, where precious items, news,
it initially emerged. That process is still going on, dis- and mates were regularly exchanged. Early human bands
rupting older agrarian societies everywhere, just as farm- were so small that inbreeding was biologically harmful,
ers once disrupted foraging bands. and out-marriage appears to have been universal.This per-
These successive waves of population growth are re- haps reflects an instinct that tends to inhibit children who
flected in recent estimates of total human numbers, shown grow up together from interbreeding. At any rate, genes
in Table 1. shared by dint of out-marriages allowed Homo sapiens to
remain a single species despite its worldwide expansion.
Foraging Bands Fluctuation of numbers probably meant that some
Before 10,000 BCE almost all humans lived in small for- bands died out or merged together, while others divided
aging bands that moved about within a well-defined ter- and formed separate bands. But such local instability did
ritory looking for food day after day. Population un- not prevent something close to a steady state from exist-
doubtedly fluctuated within each band, whenever more ing within fully occupied regions, while migration into
infants survived, or accident, disease, or violence killed new lands allowed overall human numbers to increase
more people than usual. Famine was uncommon since slowly. Even in long-occupied places, sporadic break-
foragers ate many different foods; when one kind failed throughs, such as the invention of new weapons to keep
others usually remained available. Still, extremes of predators at bay or the discovery of new kinds of food,
weather, especially drought, could deprive foragers of so allowed larger local populations to survive. One espe-
many foods as to provoke famine. Creeping increases in cially important breakthrough came when the invention
numbers might also put strain on, or even extinguish, of rafts, boats, paddles, oars, sails, and nets allowed peo-
important food sources. ple to cross open water, making possible the colonization