Population regime· The columns of time

First farmers

11.7 ka → 3,275 BCE

From 11,700 to 5,300 years ago, farming villages spread, and the curve of world population, growing by about 0.04 per cent a year, ceased to be flat.

Regime corresponding to the diffusion of farming villages. World population grows by about 0.04 per cent a year, an identical rate among farmers and among contemporaneous hunter-gatherers. Growth is slight but the curve ceases to be flat.

What the evidence shows

A rate of 0.04 per cent a year is imperceptible on the scale of a human life; compounded over six millennia, it multiplies the numbers of the species several times over. This is the first band on the timeline where the curve departs from the floor. The explanation by agriculture does not survive the data: the synthesis of radiocarbon dates attributes to farming societies the same growth as to neighbouring hunter-gatherer societies, which points to a common climatic or biological factor rather than to the mode of subsistence. Agriculture does, however, leave a documented osteological trace: reduced stature, deteriorated dental condition, stress indicators on long bones and the appearance of zoonoses, that is, diseases transmitted by domestic animals.

Bounds and conventions

HYDE estimates prior to the year 1 carry wide ranges. The long-term growth rate of about 0.04 per cent a year is a statistical average established over most of the Holocene and not a constant.