Equilibrium dynamics of European pre-industrial populations: the evidence of carrying capacity in human agricultural societies.

ABSTRACT: Human populations tend to grow steadily, because of the ability of people to make innovations, and thus overcome and extend the limits imposed by natural resources. It is therefore questionable whether traditional concepts of population ecology, including environmental carrying capacity, can be applied to human societies. The existence of carrying capacity cannot be simply inferred from population time-series, but it can be indicated by the tendency of populations to return to a previous state after a disturbance. So far only indirect evidence at a coarse-grained scale has indicated the historical existence of human carrying capacity. We analysed unique historical population data on 88 settlements before and after the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), one the longest and most destructive confl

SUBMITTER: Fanta V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5805945 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature