Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, April (2006)
Abstract
Demography, the study of the size, structure and development of human populations, is finally beginning to receive more attention among ancient historians (Scheidel 2001b). Yet we still have a long way to go, not only in establishing even the most basic features of ancient populations but even more so in applying this information to our interpretations of all aspects of the Greco-Roman world. Concerned with birth, death and migration and desperate to measure, model and quantify, populations studies may seem both forbiddingly technical and safely remote from the humanistic interests and skills of most students of antiquity. Moreover, usable evidence is scarce, and generally requires comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to make any sense at all. At the same time, however, we must bear in mind that demography is much more than just numbers, and relevant to much of what we seek to know and understand about the distant past.
In pre-modern societies, population size was the best indicator of economic performance; the distribution of people between town and country was instrumental in the creation of collective identity and may reflect the scale of division of labor and commerce; human mobility mediated information flows and culture change; mortality and morbidity were principal determinants of well-being and determined fertility (and thus gender relations), investment in human capital, and economic productivity, and more generally shaped people’s hopes and fears. The same is true of marriage customs and household structure. Classical civilization was the product of a thoroughly alien environment of frequent pregnancy and sudden death. Along with technological progress and scientific discovery, it was demographic change that separated the modern world from the more distant past. Archaic patterns of marriage, reproduction and death seemed as natural and immutable then as they are exotic to us, and we cannot hope to approach ancient history without a solid understanding of what these conditions were and how they permeated life. This is the true challenge of demography. All I can do here is provide a short road map of recent progress, abiding problems, the principal areas of controversy, and the broader historical implications of ancient population studies.
Population and demography
Walter Scheidel (Stanford University)
Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, April (2006)
Abstract
Demography, the study of the size, structure and development of human populations, is finally beginning to receive more attention among ancient historians (Scheidel 2001b). Yet we still have a long way to go, not only in establishing even the most basic features of ancient populations but even more so in applying this information to our interpretations of all aspects of the Greco-Roman world. Concerned with birth, death and migration and desperate to measure, model and quantify, populations studies may seem both forbiddingly technical and safely remote from the humanistic interests and skills of most students of antiquity. Moreover, usable evidence is scarce, and generally requires comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to make any sense at all. At the same time, however, we must bear in mind that demography is much more than just numbers, and relevant to much of what we seek to know and understand about the distant past.
In pre-modern societies, population size was the best indicator of economic performance; the distribution of people between town and country was instrumental in the creation of collective identity and may reflect the scale of division of labor and commerce; human mobility mediated information flows and culture change; mortality and morbidity were principal determinants of well-being and determined fertility (and thus gender relations), investment in human capital, and economic productivity, and more generally shaped people’s hopes and fears. The same is true of marriage customs and household structure. Classical civilization was the product of a thoroughly alien environment of frequent pregnancy and sudden death. Along with technological progress and scientific discovery, it was demographic change that separated the modern world from the more distant past. Archaic patterns of marriage, reproduction and death seemed as natural and immutable then as they are exotic to us, and we cannot hope to approach ancient history without a solid understanding of what these conditions were and how they permeated life. This is the true challenge of demography. All I can do here is provide a short road map of recent progress, abiding problems, the principal areas of controversy, and the broader historical implications of ancient population studies.
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