Technology from half a million years ago

[Ziggy Stardust]

Would there have been a bump at all from agriculture? I was under the impression that while the adoption of agriculture allowed for larger populations, sedentary living, stratification, and other things that would make a society stronger, it actually made things noticeably worse for the individuals involved.

In some senses, yes. Population density and sedentary living allowed for diseases and parasites to spread more readily. However, in addition to the various obvious social benefits, it generally allowed for a steadier and more diversified diet than hunter-gatherers would traditionally get, which is beneficial (if only just for future generations ... remember, there is plenty of epigentic evidence that the lifestyle of the parents affects the health of the offspring).

[Lord Zentei]

I've heard similar things. Like before European colonization of North America started, there may have been up to 100 million people living on the continent. 90+ percent of them died so rapidly(and continent-wide) to European diseases that the colonists basically had to do diddly but move in. There were already fields cleared, livestock predators were at manageable levels, and there were paths inland for expansion. And, of course, the native population was a post-apocalyptic shadow of its former self. The very first explorers of North America's coast wrote that there were people everywhere they went, and early settlers remarked that what should have been virgin, untouched forest was serene and park-like.

While no doubt disease was the main killer of the North American native population, I can't help but think that 100 million is rather too high. The population of the United States during WW2 was only 150 million, and that was generations after the Industrial Revolution took place.

[Broomstick]

Agriculture may have allowed a steadier diet, but until the 20th Century it was not a more diversified diet. Hunter-gatherers were forced to utilize a wide range of food resources, many of them highly seasonal. Agriculturalists tended to specialize in just a few domestic plants and animals. Yes, you could probably find exceptions on both sides, and there have long been cultures that weren't purely one or the other that both planted/herded and utilized wild foods/game (very common in the pre-European contact Americas) but on average while agriculturalists tended to have a steadier source of calories they also suffered from various chronic deficiency problems more often than the HG types.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

I've heard similar things. Like before European colonization of North America started, there may have been up to 100 million people living on the continent. 90+ percent of them died so rapidly(and continent-wide) to European diseases that the colonists basically had to do diddly but move in. There were already fields cleared, livestock predators were at manageable levels, and there were paths inland for expansion. And, of course, the native population was a post-apocalyptic shadow of its former self. The very first explorers of North America's coast wrote that there were people everywhere they went, and early settlers remarked that what should have been virgin, untouched forest was serene and park-like.

While no doubt disease was the main killer of the North American native population, I can't help but think that 100 million is rather too high. The population of the United States during WW2 was only 150 million, and that was generations after the Industrial Revolution took place.

The evidence for 100m pre-Columbian population is for the Americas as a whole, not just the lands of the United States. Remember also that medieval Europe, a far smaller landmass, could sustain populations of 100m, with 20m in France alone.

[Lord Zentei]

That may be, but Canada doesn't contribute much to the total; the main contributors are going to be the lands of Mexico and the US. The point on Europe is fair, but the majority of America's surface area was not inhabited by agricultural societies, so their population density would have been much lower.

[Guardsman Bass]

While no doubt disease was the main killer of the North American native population, I can't help but think that 100 million is rather too high. The population of the United States during WW2 was only 150 million, and that was generations after the Industrial Revolution took place.

100 million is a bit on the high end of population extrapolations, but not impossible. I think the scholarly consensus (such as there is - the subject is controversial and changing) is for 50-60 million, which would fit with the 95% death rate from the wave of diseases that swept the Americas and give an estimated population among the Mexica/Aztec Empire of at least 10 million people.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to the 100 million estimate, though, even with some of the North American societies' populations being negatively affected by the Little Ice Age. The staple crops - corn, beans, squash, potatoes - all allow for high-density populations.

[Academia Nut]

That may be, but Canada doesn't contribute much to the total; the main contributors are going to be the lands of Mexico and the US. The point on Europe is fair, but the majority of America's surface area was not inhabited by agricultural societies, so their population density would have been much lower.

The majority of the Americas were not inhabited by agricultural societies after the Europeans showed up. The Mesoamericans and Andean civilizations were engaged in incredibly intensive agricultural efforts. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city that eventually became Mexico City, had a population of about 200,000 people or more, which was as great as the largest European cities of the time. The entire Mississippi Valley was covered in farms that then had their farmers wiped out by plague, to the extent that European explorers found the place spooky with how abandoned it was. The survivors of the plagues often had to switch back to hunting-gathering lifestyles because they didn't have the populations to sustain agriculture.

Basically, if not for the plagues that the Europeans brought with them, they would have been incapable of simply displacing the local populations and colonization would have gone much differently, if at all.

[Lord Zentei]

100 million is a bit on the high end of population extrapolations, but not impossible. I think the scholarly consensus (such as there is - the subject is controversial and changing) is for 50-60 million, which would fit with the 95% death rate from the wave of diseases that swept the Americas and give an estimated population among the Mexica/Aztec Empire of at least 10 million people.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was closer to the 100 million estimate, though, even with some of the North American societies' populations being negatively affected by the Little Ice Age. The staple crops - corn, beans, squash, potatoes - all allow for high-density populations.

I would easily have guessed 50 million for both Americas, though OTOH there's a lot of surface area to spread that population into. But that means the plague epidemic must then have been not only disastrous enough to decimate 90% of the population, but it must have been disastrous enough to have kept the population very low for multiple generations afterwards.

That may be, but Canada doesn't contribute much to the total; the main contributors are going to be the lands of Mexico and the US. The point on Europe is fair, but the majority of America's surface area was not inhabited by agricultural societies, so their population density would have been much lower.

The majority of the Americas were not inhabited by agricultural societies after the Europeans showed up. The Mesoamericans and Andean civilizations were engaged in incredibly intensive agricultural efforts. Tenochtitlan, the Aztec city that eventually became Mexico City, had a population of about 200,000 people or more, which was as great as the largest European cities of the time.

I'm well aware of the scope of the Andean and Mesoamerican civilizations; but they accounted for a minority of the total area.

The entire Mississippi Valley was covered in farms that then had their farmers wiped out by plague, to the extent that European explorers found the place spooky with how abandoned it was. The survivors of the plagues often had to switch back to hunting-gathering lifestyles because they didn't have the populations to sustain agriculture.

That's interesting, indeed - I had thought they were hunter-gatherers before the European arrival. Do you have links to more info?

[Broomstick]

There is the Cahokia complex, a group of monumental earthworks that were the center of a large city on the banks of the Mississippi. It's probably the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico, but not the only one.

Even among the supposed hunter-gatherers of North America at the time of the European Invasion, most of them practiced at least casual agriculture. That might be no more than distributing seeds prior to leaving winter camps, to return in the fall and harvest what weeds and animals had not gotten to first, but cultivation was widely known and practice throughout the Americas. This, too, makes sense if you're looking at a post-apocalyptic society that has retreated from former technologies but has not entirely forgotten them.

[Ziggy Stardust]

There is the Cahokia complex, a group of monumental earthworks that were the center of a large city on the banks of the Mississippi. It's probably the largest pre-Columbian city north of Mexico, but not the only one.

Indeed, although obviously this is pretty subjective, the few surviving accounts of Europeans who visited the Mississippi Valley civilization before its collapse were known to marvel at the size and scope of the cities. I believe it was in "1491," though I could be getting my sources confused (and those books are all at my parents house 1000 miles away so I can't check), but those early Europeans rather specifically noted that the cities they saw there were larger than any they had seen back across the pond. Not particularly conclusive evidence, of course, but it must tell us something that the visitors were literally awe-struck.

I would easily have guessed 50 million for both Americas, though OTOH there's a lot of surface area to spread that population into.

There is a lot of variation in scholarly estimates of population size pre-Columbus. In the 1970s, the estimate was around 54 million for both Americas. Some have proposed as many as 100 million. Most of this was concentrated in Central and South America (the estimates for North America range anywhere from 2-18 million).

But that means the plague epidemic must then have been not only disastrous enough to decimate 90% of the population, but it must have been disastrous enough to have kept the population very low for multiple generations afterwards.

Well, the plague epidemic was disastrous and far-reaching because the Amerindians had elaborate trade networks (more elaborate than many people realize ... there is a reason that some Pacific Northwest tribes had artwork depicting crocodiles ...). It is hard to say anything about how it could have kept the population low for multiple generations afterwords, because in less than a generation from the onset of this plague the Europeans began to settle, which involved more disease, mass killings, slavery, and displacement. So you can't really point to that as evidence one way or the other, confounded as things became. In the Caribbean, for example, the populations were more directly affected by European encroachment than disease, as the Tainos/Caribs did not extensively trade with the mainland, but were wiped out by a series of famines caused by European destruction of their agricultural fields..

[amigocabal]

This relates to an important revelation about human development which most people refuse to make peace with: that much of our ability is not born into us, but rather, given to us as a gift of society. Few want to accept that the cumulative learning effect of human society far supersedes any individual effort, and without it, we would be little better than any other animal.

Uh, who has trouble making peace with this?

Nobody is asserting that we were born knowing how to raise corn, wheat, and cattle (something that was necessary for Neil Armstrong to land on the moon in 1969).

[Ziggy Stardust]

Uh, who has trouble making peace with this?

Nobody is asserting that we were born knowing how to raise corn, wheat, and cattle (something that was necessary for Neil Armstrong to land on the moon in 1969).

Most people intuitively believe that modern humans are more intelligent than our ancestors. However, in terms of actual cognitive ability, this was most likely not the case. The cumulative knowledge of civilization accounts for the fact that we apparently "know" more on an individual basis; that is, if you were to take a human born in 5000 B.C. and raise them now, they wouldn't be that much different than anyone else. Certainly not stupider.

[ArmorPierce]

This relates to an important revelation about human development which most people refuse to make peace with: that much of our ability is not born into us, but rather, given to us as a gift of society. Few want to accept that the cumulative learning effect of human society far supersedes any individual effort, and without it, we would be little better than any other animal.

Indeed. There is a growing school of thought in evolutionary psychology/anthropology circles that modern humans really are not significantly more intelligent than Homo sapiens from 200,000-300,000 years ago. Certainly, there would have been some post-agricultural revolution "bump" as a result of better nutritional standards, but in general it is becoming increasingly obvious that our ancestors were amazingly intelligent. Cumulative social learning in and of itself is a fascinating and understudied phenomenon.

School of thought is that post agricultural revolution actually resulted in decreased nutritional standards. This is evidenced by average human height actually decreasing post agricultural revolution. Agricultural revolution resulted in narrowing of the diet relative to hunter-gatherer life style.

[ArmorPierce]

That may be, but Canada doesn't contribute much to the total; the main contributors are going to be the lands of Mexico and the US. The point on Europe is fair, but the majority of America's surface area was not inhabited by agricultural societies, so their population density would have been much lower.

It should be pointed out that tenochtitlan was at it's time one of the largest cities in the world in terms of population comparable in size to paris and constantinople. Given that, I don't think 100 million for all of the americas combined is outlandish.

[Imperial Overlord]

That may be, but Canada doesn't contribute much to the total; the main contributors are going to be the lands of Mexico and the US. The point on Europe is fair, but the majority of America's surface area was not inhabited by agricultural societies, so their population density would have been much lower.

It should be pointed out that tenochtitlan was at it's time one of the largest cities in the world in terms of population comparable in size to paris and constantinople. Given that, I don't think 100 million for all of the americas combined is outlandish.

It is outlandish because Tenochtitlan was the exception, not the rule. It was a great city and there were other cities of respectable sizes in the Americas, but most of both continents was sparsely inhabited.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

It is outlandish because Tenochtitlan was the exception, not the rule. It was a great city and there were other cities of respectable sizes in the Americas, but most of both continents was sparsely inhabited.

Where's your evidence for that? Or do you mean it was sparsely populated after the mass die-off, which is a separate thing entirely?

And as I mentioned before, the Americas are 4x bigger than Europe or China and 10x larger than India, all of which were able to sustain populations greater than 100 million people at times with medieval technology. Most of Europe was sparsely populated, too, with a dense packing in France and Italy and most of the east and north barely populated.

[ryacko]

It is outlandish because Tenochtitlan was the exception, not the rule. It was a great city and there were other cities of respectable sizes in the Americas, but most of both continents was sparsely inhabited.

Where's your evidence for that? Or do you mean it was sparsely populated after the mass die-off, which is a separate thing entirely?

And as I mentioned before, the Americas are 4x bigger than Europe or China and 10x larger than India, all of which were able to sustain populations greater than 100 million people at times with medieval technology. Most of Europe was sparsely populated, too, with a dense packing in France and Italy and most of the east and north barely populated.

Yes, but much of the Americas are either jungle (Amazons), or in the case of North America, sparsely inhabited by tribes living in harmony with nature.

Saying there's a uniform population density... at any time period for any region the size of a continent... is a bit nonsensical.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

Yes, but much of the Americas are either jungle (Amazons), or in the case of North America, sparsely inhabited by tribes living in harmony with nature.

Saying there's a uniform population density... at any time period for any region the size of a continent... is a bit nonsensical.

If North America had been a sparsely-populated land inhabited by what I assume you mean are hunter-gatherers, why did early European colonists find large amounts of recently-unused cropland in New England or remains of cities along the Mississippi?

Forget Tenochtitlan with its hundreds of thousands, that's not even necessary for a dense population. Cahokia is estimated to have had tens of thousands of residents at its peak, higher than medieval London or Paris, and the Mississippi region isn't even thought to be one of the more densely-populated areas in the Americas.

I also never said the Americas had anything close to uniform density. What I said was that varying population density was the norm everywhere. If you extrapolate medieval France to all of Europe, you get 450 million people; extrapolate Russia or Scandinavia and you'd only have 10-20 million.

[Guardsman Bass]

Yes, but much of the Americas are either jungle (Amazons), or in the case of North America, sparsely inhabited by tribes living in harmony with nature.

Saying there's a uniform population density... at any time period for any region the size of a continent... is a bit nonsensical.

That's an old myth, as Jogurt pointed out. Far from being "sparsely inhabited tribes", much of North and South America consisted of agrarian societies ranging from the cities of the Mayans/Incas/Aztecs (and Cahokia) to the less dense but still populous Mississippi River Basin, Northeastern, and Southeastern Chiefdoms (as well as the odd ones like the Pacific Northwest Chiefdoms, who didn't use agriculture at first because the land and sea were incredibly productive in terms of food). Even the "Amazon jungle" has increasing archaeological evidence for agrarian societies that shaped significant parts of it (just look up "terra preta").

[madd0ct0r]

yeah - the time for the jungle to reclaim land is astonishingly short. A five year old tree in Vietnam was the size of a 20yr old on in the UK, and some of the vines we were dealing with had a growth rate of feet/day.

[Spoonist]

Lots of the false image of 'duh stupider' ancestors come from myths about Neanderthals, however we now know that Neanderthals had about the same or slightly more brain mass than homo sapiens sapiens. They also had comparatively the same tech level on stone tools and herding as their competition. Since Neanderthals had bigger muscle mass etc they had the genetic advantage over 'us', but they were mostly adapted to a habitat of dense foliage. So it is speculated that they were outcompeted by 3 factors 1) climate change in the habitat with less foliage and more steppes 2) social evolution in homo sapiens sapiens 3) of which one part is more sex and more offspring.

Regarding "decreased nutritional standards" of the post agriculturalists. It does depend on the region but that doesn't really matter as much as survivability. Post agriculture we see a population boom and expansion. So the survivability of the tribe increased with a huge factor versus the hunter-gatherers, which means that the decrease in nutritional diversity might have made mattered for the individual but didn't mean any disadvantage at all for the tribe. A related note is that depending on geography you'd get more food out of a vegetarian diet in high fertile regions than first growing the food only to feed it to animals and then eating the animals. While low fertile regions sometimes had to rely more heavily on animals.
Lets take some examples of these points.
1) SouthEast Asia have relied heavily on rice as a staple food for much of recent history. When they in the modern times have started to switch to a more balanced diet we can see an increase in general height of 5-10cm over two generations. But that limited nutritional diversity has allowed a very high population density and huge civilizations leading to countless inventions etc.
2) Early Medieval Scandinavia (ie Viking age), you can see that due to the relatively infertile lands there is a dependency on livestock to graze whatever is there. So you see lots of goats, some sheep and swine being common everywhere, but that is because the animals could live off land that humans couldn't. So the residual effect was that yes scandinavians were taller & bigger than their continental counterparts. However when looking at tech and civ places like the highly fertile French regions excel in culture and education etc. This is simply a deduction from how much time on average you need to spend making enough food to survive.
So if we go back to the early days of man. Agriculture by its nature meant a bigger population with more free time. This is what drives the social advantage. More free time leads to not only more offspring but also a higher investment into that offspring. Then the idle time is also spent with curiosity on whatever is at hand. Hence why we see a veritable explosion in agricultural tech like pottery etc. Such things led to the storage of grain for bad times, which in itself was a huge advantage.
Hunter-Gatherers were simply outcompeted in all fields, pun intended.
Think of it like Elves, you live in 'hormaony' with nature but those cursed humans spread everywhere. Propagate like rabbits. Burn down everything wherever they go to plow new fields. And if you fight and kill them, they take twice the losses and still win the war of attrition. You are doomed, the dawn of man is here.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Yes, but much of the Americas are either jungle (Amazons), or in the case of North America, sparsely inhabited by tribes living in harmony with nature.

God, this has to be my least favorite "urban legend" or whatever you want to call it: the idea that the Amerindians were somehow living "in harmony" with nature. As other people have pointed out already, you are dead wrong on North America being sparsely inhabited. The Mississippi Valley and the south-western United States had rather large and sophisticated civilizations; the East Coast was fairly densely populated by standards of the time (in fact, most of the forests in New England and the mid-Atlantic were orchards and otherwise cultivated, not natural old growth). The Aztecs and Mayans were very large civilizations, already in decline by the time of European arrival. The pre-Columbian population of the Caribbean islands was so high that, after the European conquest and genocides/famines/epidemics/etc., it didn't reach those levels again until the 19th century! South America, too, had a deceptively large population: the Quechua of the coastal regions in the north-west and equatorial regions were probably almost a match for the Aztecs, and there is evidence of large cities, irrigation, and agriculture in the areas of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina (the Pantanal).

But, in any case, they weren't living "in harmony" with nature, anymore than Europeans were. Those animals and plants that were helpful were cultivated, and those that weren't were largely ignored, or wiped out. There is a reason that the Americas saw mass extinctions long before the arrival of Europeans, both of plant and animals species. Hell, the evidence seems to suggest that the primary impetus for the collapse of the Mayans was overuse of resources and misuse of land, leading to famine and other natural disaster (e.g. erosion of the top-soil leading to flooding, etc.). Similarly, many of the forests on the eastern seaboard of the United States were "sculpted"; they were a combination of parks and orchards that had been specifically cultivated that way, with non-desirable plants being eradicated. Same can be said for the forests in parts of Bolivia and Paraguay (I forget the name of the exact region); scientists discovered years ago that the pattern of jungle growth indicates they were used as "boundaries" between farmlands and agricultural fields, and as drainage.