In the lecture “When humans were scarce” (2009) presented at University of Yale by Robert Wyman, he explains human demographics divided in three eras: hunter-gathering period, surge of agriculture and after the industrial revolution. He also illustrates how fertility can be incentivized and limited by culture, and the consequences of human behavior in the world’s population.
According to Wyman, humans were hunter-gatherers until almost ten thousand years ago. There were approximately two million people in the world and the amount of humans on earth had been nearly invariable until the invention of farming. At first scientists thought that, the stagnation in population growth was due the lack of food, climatic tragedies and various diseases …show more content…
Eventually a human population growth occurred, affecting the amount of land available. With intensive use of soil, approximately eleven thousand years ago, farming was invented, on what is nowadays known as the Republic of Turkey. Although early agriculturalists produced more food on absolute terms, they needed more hours of work when compared to hunter-gatherers (Kennedy, 2014), and their average lifespan of 35 years was much shorter than the 55 years from foraging societies. It can be explained by the lack of some vitamins and amino acids in their diet, since they usually specialized on only one or two crops to sustain their food intake. Cultivation also caused changes in the society’s structure, creating a stratification system based on food surplus appropriation. Wyman also points out that “as societies progresses, death rate from infectious diseases also grows”, what would explain the huge death rate of that period. In fact, there was a stagnation in population count until the 18th century. Wyman estimates that, at pre-modern times, only 40% of baby girls born would live until they were
According to Wyman, humans were hunter-gatherers until almost ten thousand years ago. There were approximately two million people in the world and the amount of humans on earth had been nearly invariable until the invention of farming. At first scientists thought that, the stagnation in population growth was due the lack of food, climatic tragedies and various diseases …show more content…
Eventually a human population growth occurred, affecting the amount of land available. With intensive use of soil, approximately eleven thousand years ago, farming was invented, on what is nowadays known as the Republic of Turkey. Although early agriculturalists produced more food on absolute terms, they needed more hours of work when compared to hunter-gatherers (Kennedy, 2014), and their average lifespan of 35 years was much shorter than the 55 years from foraging societies. It can be explained by the lack of some vitamins and amino acids in their diet, since they usually specialized on only one or two crops to sustain their food intake. Cultivation also caused changes in the society’s structure, creating a stratification system based on food surplus appropriation. Wyman also points out that “as societies progresses, death rate from infectious diseases also grows”, what would explain the huge death rate of that period. In fact, there was a stagnation in population count until the 18th century. Wyman estimates that, at pre-modern times, only 40% of baby girls born would live until they were