2000+
1000-2000
500-1000
0-500
Modem demographic concentrations in the Balkans, bearing in mind the changes brought about by industrialisation and mechanisation of both industrial and agrarian production.
There were several phases of evolution in the overall settlement pattern of the empire, which will be dealt with in greater detail in the following chapters. But the two most apparent shifts occurred during the fifth and sixth centuries in the Balkan territories of the empire and during the sixth and seventh centuries in Asia Minor, when towns decreased in size, when a larger number of intermediate semi-rural/semi-urban fortified centres evolved, and when village communities came to play a more significant fiscal and political role than they previously had; and in the ninth to twelfth centuries, when relatively peaceful circumstances saw a demographic upswing, an increase in urban consumption and market activity, a growth of local industry and in a closer relationship between supply, demand and consumption in the Byzantine territories and the neighbouring zones, especially with the west and the Islamic world. Both these movements can be related to the changes in general climatic conditions in the period from the later fourth century onwards, and again from the middle of the ninth century on. While it would not be correct to draw too many direct relationships, there can be no doubt of the indirect causal associations which evolved.
World History
