Population Year 1

[Viggen]

The population two thousand years ago is estimated to have been 231 million. At this time North and South America were sparsely populated, as was Asia Pacific. The estimated population of New Zealand was zero. Southern Asia, Northern Africa, China and Southern Europe (parts of the same land mass) had relatively high populations. Colder Northern latitudes tended to have lower populations. The territories that now encompass the Ganges, Tigris, Yangtze, Nile and Po rivers were the most populous...

via

Worldmapper (PDF)

....your thoughts?

[Melvadius]

Well the underlying statistics are apparently based on work by Angus Maddison (2003) The World Economy: Historical Statistics, who was leading Economist/ Economic Historian rather than an archeologist. As his book is only available by subscription, which I am unwilling to fork out just for this, I am not certain how he derived his Economics based data and have no way of telling how good an indicator it may really be for ancient populations.

 

I do know that the archaeological record is incomplete for the period and there is a lot of continuing 'debate' about how large a population there was in Rome let alone the rest of the World.

 

The one exception is New Zealand where the datable archeological records only seems to start around AD 1285-1300 as this article from American Scientist - based on work by Wilmshurst et al, indicates, when the first evidence for a particular type of rat (the commensal Pacific rat) being present has been found. The assumption is that humans could not have arrived without bringing the rat with them - QED they probably did not arrive until some time after AD 1200 so New Zealand's human population in Year 1 was, as indicated above, zero.

[Ursus]

... I don't think this was a major revelation, was it? People might quibble over the figure a little bit, but it sounds roughly in line with what I had always heard about populations and population distributions around this time frame. Or maybe I am missing the significance?

[Melvadius]

I suppose the 'revelation' is the fact they have tried to indicate the population densities by appropriately swelling or shrinking different parts of the map.

[caesar novus]

At this time North and South America were sparsely populated, as was Asia Pacific.

In the last few years I believe the Brazil interior has been suggested to have once supported large populations with elaborate stoneworks for diverting water visible by remote sensing of some kind. Not sure of the prehistoric timeframe, but I believe it was characterized as such intense activity to bring the ecosystem near point of collapse along with the populations. I don't see a trace of this on the web now - maybe the theory was shot down?

Edited February 8, 2011 by caesar novus

[Guaporense]

These statistics are almost certainly wrong, as least regarding the provinces of the Roman Empire. They put Egypt with 4 million people and Turkey with 6 million, Italy has a lest minimalist figure of 7 million, with is the lower point for the estimates on the population of Italy. Greece doesn't register on the map, while it was one of the most densely populated regions in the world during classical times.

 

Overall, since this work is based on Angus Maddison estimates, and his estimates tend to be low for classical times, so that if fits his whig view of history: as process of continuous growth in direction of the modern world. Maddison estimated the total population of the Roman Empire as 45 million people in the second century, the lowest estimate that has ever been produced for that time frame. Other less minimalistic estimates put the population of Italy at 12 million, the population of Egypt at 8 million, Turkey at 15 million, the population of the Empire at 70-90 million.