Population regime· The columns of time

Cities and states

3,275 BCE → 1800

From 5,300 years ago to 1800, cities, states and trade networks took shape, and world population rose from a few tens of millions to about one billion.

Regime corresponding to the establishment of cities, state organisations and exchange networks. World population moves from a few tens of millions to about one billion inhabitants around 1800, according to the HYDE 3.2 reconstruction.

What the evidence shows

Five millennia separate a few tens of millions of inhabitants from the first billion, a threshold reached around 1800. The progression is not regular: it consists of a succession of growth phases interrupted by collapses. The Black Death caused the death of a substantial part of the populations of Europe and western Asia within a few years; the epidemics introduced into the Americas after 1492 caused that of the majority of the inhabitants of two continents within a century. At the scale of the band, these two episodes are not visible.

Bounds and conventions

Before censuses became general, estimates rest on the extent of settlement and on tax registers rather than on counts, and HYDE publishes them as ranges, the wider the scarcer the documentation. Regional developments, epidemics and conquests, are effaced by the width of the band.