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Papers from the 2008 CECD conference on 'Demography and Cultural Macroevolution' appeared as a special issue of Human Biology, and are now freely available to download under an Open Access agreement: Human Biology April-June 2009. Now this may sound like a topic so arcane that you can safely give it a miss. But the ups and downs of past population help to explain how the Y-DNA haplogroups of comparative late-comers could end up dominating present populations.
A key article here is by Professor Stephen Shennan, "Evolutionary Demography and the Population History of the European Early Neolithic". It improves on his seminal article with Kevan Edinborough in 2007: "Prehistoric population history: from the Late Glacial to the Late Neolithic in Central and Northern Europe", Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007). They charted population peaks and troughs in Denmark, Germany and Poland. The study revealed that the early farmers of the LBK were initially highly successful, showing great bursts of population growth, but eventually failed - no-one is too sure why.
Stephen Shennan's new chart covers the British Isles, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. I have added in colour some of the various cultures mentioned in the Peopling of Europe. I am frankly bemused by Belgium, which seems to have been positively crowded with hunter-gatherers in the early Mesolithic. The British Isles, by contrast, were not remotely populous until a strange burst of growth in Scotland and Ireland just before the first farmers arrived. Farming accounts for the big peaks though, as expected.
[Added]
A similar study for Fennoscandia was published earlier this year: Miikka Tallavaara, Petro Pesonen and Markku Oinonen, Prehistoric population history in eastern Fennoscandia, Journal of Archaeological Science 37 (2010) 251–260.
The prehistoric peak there comes in a sudden dramatic growth c. 4000 BC, dropping just as suddenly c. 3500 BC. After that the population declined more gradually down to Mesolithic levels at the end of the Stone Age c. 1700 BC. Growth starts slowly after that, but accelerates in a burst during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. After a stable period, the last rise in their data starts around 700 AD.
[Added 13 June]
Another paper in the special volume of Human Biology which I recommend to those interested in methods of calculating prehistoric population sizes is Andreas Zimmermann, Johanna Hilpert, and Karl Peter Wendt, Estimations of Population Density for Selected Periods Between the
Neolithic and AD 1800. They point out a useful way of cross-checking the system:
A key article here is by Professor Stephen Shennan, "Evolutionary Demography and the Population History of the European Early Neolithic". It improves on his seminal article with Kevan Edinborough in 2007: "Prehistoric population history: from the Late Glacial to the Late Neolithic in Central and Northern Europe", Journal of Archaeological Science 34 (2007). They charted population peaks and troughs in Denmark, Germany and Poland. The study revealed that the early farmers of the LBK were initially highly successful, showing great bursts of population growth, but eventually failed - no-one is too sure why.
Stephen Shennan's new chart covers the British Isles, Belgium, Denmark, and the Netherlands. I have added in colour some of the various cultures mentioned in the Peopling of Europe. I am frankly bemused by Belgium, which seems to have been positively crowded with hunter-gatherers in the early Mesolithic. The British Isles, by contrast, were not remotely populous until a strange burst of growth in Scotland and Ireland just before the first farmers arrived. Farming accounts for the big peaks though, as expected.
[Added]
A similar study for Fennoscandia was published earlier this year: Miikka Tallavaara, Petro Pesonen and Markku Oinonen, Prehistoric population history in eastern Fennoscandia, Journal of Archaeological Science 37 (2010) 251–260.
The prehistoric peak there comes in a sudden dramatic growth c. 4000 BC, dropping just as suddenly c. 3500 BC. After that the population declined more gradually down to Mesolithic levels at the end of the Stone Age c. 1700 BC. Growth starts slowly after that, but accelerates in a burst during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. After a stable period, the last rise in their data starts around 700 AD.
[Added 13 June]
Another paper in the special volume of Human Biology which I recommend to those interested in methods of calculating prehistoric population sizes is Andreas Zimmermann, Johanna Hilpert, and Karl Peter Wendt, Estimations of Population Density for Selected Periods Between the
Neolithic and AD 1800. They point out a useful way of cross-checking the system:
Quote
In this context the estimation of Roman population density is of special importance. The estimation based on archaeological evidence corresponds well with the results based on written sources. This is true for the Rhineland values as well as for Roman Italy, where density is nearly twice as high.
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J Man
13 June 2010 - 02:57 AM
Jean this may apply well also to the reduction of mtDNA haplogroup U5 in Europe to present day levels of around 7%% except for in the far north and northeast where agriculture was not as deeply rooted until fairly recently on a time scale.
JAFarris
13 June 2010 - 14:23 PM
Shennan's is a type of article I find most frustrating, but I'll refrain from commenting on that further. Jean, I suppose a more direct issue I'm curious about is how exactly is the vertical axis of the chart you reproduce measured--I see in the article it is labeled P (rel): apparently relative population, but the hatches are presumably measuring a specific unit--do you know what this is?
Jean M
13 June 2010 - 15:53 PM
The database is radio-carbon dates. Each vertical line at the bottom represents a dated site. This method can only provide us with an approximate idea of population at any given time, but the strength of it lies in the opportunity to gauge rises and falls in population.
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