Population regime· The columns of time
Cities and states
3,275 BCE → 1800
Cities, states and trade networks. World population climbs from a few tens of millions to about one billion by 1800 CE (HYDE 3.2).
What the evidence shows
Five millennia to go from a few tens of millions to about one billion, a threshold crossed around 1800. The curve is not smooth: it is a series of climbs interrupted by collapses. The Black Death killed a large share of the people of Europe and western Asia in a few years; the epidemics that followed Europeans into the Americas killed the majority of the people of two continents within a century. Drawn at this scale, both look like nothing at all.
Bounds and conventions
Before censuses, population figures rest on settlement data and tax records rather than head counts, and HYDE gives them as ranges, widest where the written record is thinnest. Regional history, plagues and conquests alike, is smoothed away at this width.
Sources
- Klein Goldewijk, K., Beusen, A., Doelman, J., Stehfest, E. (2017). Anthropogenic land use estimates for the Holocene : HYDE 3.2. Earth System Science Data 9, 927–953. Jeu de données versionné, consulté le 2026-08-28.
- Klein Goldewijk, K., Beusen, A., Janssen, P. (2010). Long-term dynamic modeling of global population and built-up area in a spatially explicit way: HYDE 3.1. The Holocene 20(4), 565–573.