Population

The environmental diversity of the Near East caused its population to be distributed more unevenly than today. Communities mainly settled in the alluvial plains and the intermontane niches. In some phases, they even moved into vast hilly areas and plateaus, and avoided the mountains and steppes, which were accessible on a seasonal basis, and by smaller, nomadic communities. The alluvial plains themselves were not evenly populated and were inhabited insofar as the land was cultivated and free from marshes. Therefore, even within these densely populated areas, the discontinuity of population levels remains, with irrigated patches ofland (cultivated by sedentary and even urbanised communities) emerging from a territory potentially exploitable, but largely left uncultivated.

Overall, there are three principles worth bearing in mind. First of all, the amount of land was higher than the number of people living in it. Second, agriculture depended on the availability of water. Third, human intervention was the main factor allowing the development of infrastructures for the exploitation of land and water. Moreover, human intervention was proportional to population density and the level of socio-political organisation. These three core elements — land, water, and labour — strongly influenced each other. Consequently, population density was influenced by the availability of food, but was also the main factor causing food production. Therefore, population growth was a gradual and difficult process, and no single factor could be responsible for it without the intervention of other contributing factors. Similarly, the process could be put to a halt or even reverted in case of a crisis.

The spatial discontinuity of the population was parallel to a diachronic discontinuity in time. The archaeological evidence shows that the history of each settlement was characterised by an alternation between phases of construction and destruction, of occupation and definitive, or prolonged, abandonment; this evidence makes it possible to compile the specific histories of each settlement into a regional and demographic history. This allows for a better understanding of local alternations between phases of development, during which positive factors (such as production and reproduction) significantly prevailed, and phases of decline, or even collapse, during which negative factors prevailed.

Crises were often caused by natural phenomena, such as earthquakes, droughts, epidemics and floods, which could not be averted, at least considering the levels of technological development of the period. However, apart from these natural causes, which were outside human control, there were crucial human factors. These constituted effective development strategies, even though the people implementing them were largely unaware of them. First, there is a strictly quantitative factor. A small community has fewer chances to survive over a prolonged period of time, being more vulnerable to a violent crisis. Moreover, a small community is less able to maintain its cultural and physical bonds over time, such as in the case of marriage incompatibilities, endogamy, the unsuitable marriageable age of its members, and so on. In this regard, a larger community is better equipped to cope with minor crises, being affected by them, but not destroyed. A larger community therefore has the ability to recover from minor crises, while at the same time providing its members with a wider range of choices and more frequent adjustments. However, in order to function properly, a larger community has to be structurally and socially complex. Therefore, a larger community is more exposed to dangerous and unrecoverable crises, affecting those not directly involved in food production in particular.

Second, there is a strictly strategic factor, based on a choice between two possible models. One developmental model is slow — almost imperceptible — but safer, being more inclined towards safeguarding the community, rather than quantitative growth and qualitative improvements. This model is generally found in small agricultural and pastoral communities (such as villages and semi-nomadic groups). The model is centred on subsistence rather than progress, and it aims at maintaining its reserve of resources (land, livestock, and so on) virtually intact. There is, however, an accelerated model, primarily found in urban settlements. This model focuses on the accumulation of surplus and the specialisation of labour, with a marked tendency towards the increase and diversification of resources. In order to achieve this, the model requires the maximisation of profits from the available resources, and thus the over-exploitation of its means of production and labour: decimating herds, over-irrigating lands, cultivating without interruptions (causing soil salinisation and land degradation). These measures lead to the expectation of amounts of labour and food surplus that, if excessive, can become detrimental. This second model allowed the greatest achievements of the history of the Near East (cities with temples and palaces, the development of craftsmanship, archives, city-walls, canals, and so on). However, it was also the ultimate reason for the dramatic collapses and disasters in the Near East, caused by projects that expected too much from the scarce and variable human and material resources available at the time.

An important factor that played a major role in this progressive model was war, understood here as an extreme means to obtain resources and to expand one’s sphere of political control. Military campaigns always have a negative effect on the population (bloodshed and lower birth rates) and on production (destruction of settlements and farmlands). However, through the annexation and re-organisation of conquered lands, war can have positive effects, though strictly in the sense of allowing the enlargement of a community and the integration of different territories. These effects respond to the two factors mentioned above, namely, the establishment of boundaries and of a certain pace of development. In terms of demography and production, it is clear that war is convenient to the winner and detrimental to the loser. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the effects of war over people and lands from both sides, and evaluate whether its immediate negative impact is compensated through time and contributes to the overall progress of the defeated community.

In general, the first model can be represented on a chart with a line that slowly but continuously increases through time. On the other hand, the fast-paced model can be represented with a line that rises rapidly, but abruptly drops from time to time. Considering the peaks reached by this second line, it is undeniable that they are far higher than the ones achieved in the first model. At the same time, considering the lowest points of the second line, they roughly coincide with the ones of the first model. This is because phases of accelerated development (generally urban, political, and economically and militarily aggressive) cannot continue indefinitely in time. Their eventual collapse is a structural aspect of their existence and is not accidental, but lays the groundwork for new phases of development.

It remains true, however, that peaks of development in the second model — and it has to be pointed out that we tend to overestimate them, due to their better attestation both in archaeological and written evidence — are rare and isolated in time and space. Overall, then, the average demographic development of the Near East follows the slow pace of the first model. This slower rate of growth is due to two factors: 1) the high infant mortality rate, which virtually cancelled out the high birth rates (also because the high birth rates were aimed at compensating for infant mortality); 2) an average life expectancy so low as to affect fertility rates. In a community in which the average life expectancy is 25 or 30 years, a couple’s main problem is whether or not they will be able to give birth to enough children. In this way, they would be able to leave at least two of them alive long enough to be able to generate offspring themselves (since many of them would have died in infancy). Otherwise, a community would eventually die out. The solution found was to lower the marriageable age of women, in order to benefit the most from their fertility, and to balance endogamy with exogamy, monogamy, and polygamy, in order to make full use of the range of marriageable individuals available.

However, these social and cultural measures could not completely remove the physical and biological risks linked to childbirth. The latter was determined by two main factors, namely, health and diet. Infant and maternal mortality, frequent epidemics, and famines were insurmountable plagues for the Near Eastern levels of health and diet. Therefore, the already low and discontinuous population density of the Near East was further reduced by short life expectancy and poor quality of life, which was worsened by malnutrition and endemic diseases (gastro-enteric illnesses in particular, due to the low water quality of rivers and wells).

In the Near East, then, people had a short life span, lived badly, with little food and many illnesses. Consequently, they produced at rates and in quantities that may seem insignificant to us, but were the reflection of bad health and diet. However, given the achievements of these communities despite their low quality of life, the frequent crises affecting them are not as surprising as their ability to even reach such levels of growth. The accomplishments of these people with their cities and temples, as well as their high-quality artefacts and technological developments, are the result of a tenacious fight for survival and a forceful sourcing of food and labour. These efforts should be attributed to the ruling socio-political structures, which managed to control the population both physically and ideologically.

Finally, it is important to note the anthropological and linguistic features of the Near East. In terms of anthropology (as far as the available evidence can provide us with diachronic data), the stability of the population is striking and is an aspect still present today. This characteristic indicates that the Near East began to be populated very early on, and from the Neolithic period onwards experienced considerable internal movements, such as seasonal and permanent migration. The invasions and migrations emphasised by historians of the nineteenth century (ad) must have been quite modest in scale. They therefore influenced genetic diversity only marginally, allowing the leading human species to survive. The impact of migratory movements was more cultural than genetic, especially in the case of movements of elite groups (i. e. specialised military, technological, religious, or administrative groups). The latter were both culturally and politically influential, but too limited in size compared to the rest of the population, made of sedentary agro-pastoral communities.

A similar overview can be gathered from the distribution of languages in the Near East. Languages are crucial cultural phenomena, being both transferable and versatile. From a linguistic point of view, then, the earliest written attestations document the presence of Semitic groups, located on the concave side of the Fertile Crescent, where they live to this day. These groups were to stay within this area throughout their existence, spreading all the way to the Taurus and Zagros Mountains, but not beyond these boundaries. Within this compact Semitic area, however, a variety of Semitic languages developed with considerable differences and in a variety of dialects. This is the case of the ancient Eblaite and Proto-Akkadian languages, which were slowly replaced by waves of Amorite, Aramaic, and Arabic. By the third millennium bc, the borders of this Semitic area were already established. These were not much different from the ones that separate Arabic-speaking people from those speaking Turkish and Iranian languages today.

Populations speaking Indo-European languages can be found outside the Fertile Crescent, especially in Anatolia and the Iranian plateau. These populations, which were slowly but progressively spreading to the south, managed to move into those intermediary zones standing between them and the Semitic area. In these intermediary zones, people initially spoke a variety of different languages (neither Semitic, nor Indo-European), partly related to each other, such as Sumerian, Elamite, Hurrian, and others that are not sufficiently documented in the sources. However, this linguistic buffer zone was destined to disappear, and was slowly assimilated and replaced by the two predominant linguistic groups (although these other languages lasted longer in Armenia and on the Transcaucasian highlands).

As can be seen, these changes in the ethno-linguistic groups of the area were long-term phenomena affecting the Near East as a whole. The individual migrations attested in the sources were cultural phenomena rather than movements of large ethnical groups. Substantial changes in the Near East, from the assimilation of entire groups, to the shift of linguistic boundaries, and the rise of internal subdivisions, took place without the full awareness of the people experiencing them. Consequently, they remain undocumented in the sources. However, scholars have too often drawn simplistic connections between the available documentation and these changes.