Demographics

Generally, in the period 900-500 BC, in most parts of Eurasia a regime of natural fertility prevailed. People did not try to limit their number of children and had families as large as the carrying capacity of their surroundings would permit. In a rather fertile but underpopulated area the population could rise quickly, only to stagnate when the limits of food production were reached. Presumably, in the fertile river valleys of Mesopotamia and

Egypt those limits had been reached already long before 900 BC and populations there had stabilized on the relatively high level that the local carrying capacity would permit. But in less developed areas, especially in southern Europe, in the early 1st millennium B. C. there were still possibilities for rapid population growth. This explains the increase in population in Greece especially in the 8th century BC, as well as the rapid development of Greek colonies from what were initially small settlements to important, and in some cases quite large cities such as the Greek colonies in Sicily. It also explains the increasing importance of Italy, which, beginning in the Archaic period, would develop into one of the most populous regions of the Mediterranean. When the material circumstances did not allow any further extension of the population, growth diminished and eventually halted automatically as a result of impoverishment and the accompanying higher mortality, especially of children, or by the emigration of the surplus numbers of the newborn. The latter phenomenon was common in Greece and Italy. Since the 8th century, the population in Greece grew very slowly, but there was a steady outflow of small groups and individuals settling in the new poleis along the shores of the Mediterranean and Black Sea or offering their services as mercenary soldiers in the great empires of the Near East and Egypt. In Italy, population growth stimulated the early expansion of the Italic peoples, an expansion that would be continued in subsequent centuries in the shape of the Roman conquests and the rising Roman Empire. Elsewhere too, the demographic factor was ultimately the driving force behind important historical processes, for example, in the case of the constant expansion of the Chinese states over north, central, and then south China, enormous areas that eventually became parts of a more or less homogenous state.

Of population numbers, we know very little. The poleis of Archaic Greece were doubtless very small, varying from a few hundred to a few thousand citizens. The whole of Greece south of Thessaly around 500 BC had presumably 1.5 million inhabitants at the most, and the whole of Egypt hardly more than 6 million. Large cities only existed in the Near East and in China, but their size is, again, difficult to estimate. Probably, Babylon in the 6th century BC had between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, but these are tentative figures. It is, however, certain that practically everywhere along the Mediterranean Sea—at least along its European shores—the population in the period 900-500 BC rose considerably.