Population regime· The columns of time
First farmers
11.7 ka → 3,275 BCE
Farming villages spread. World population grows at roughly 0.04% a year, among foragers and farmers alike. It is slow, but for the first time the curve is no longer flat.
What the evidence shows
Growth of 0.04% a year sounds like nothing, and for a single lifetime it is: a village would not notice it. Compounded over six millennia it multiplies the species several times over. This is the first band on the frieze where the curve leaves the floor, but the obvious explanation does not survive the evidence. In the radiocarbon record, farming societies grew no faster than the foraging societies beside them, which points to climate, or to something in our own biology, rather than to how people fed themselves. Farming did leave a mark, visible in skeletons from the period: shorter stature, worse teeth and new diseases caught from livestock.
Bounds and conventions
HYDE estimates before 1 CE carry wide ranges; the long-term growth rate (~0.04% a year) is a statistical average over most of the Holocene, not a constant.
Sources
- Zahid, H. J., Robinson, E., Kelly, R. L. (2016). Agriculture, population growth, and statistical analysis of the radiocarbon record. PNAS 113(4), 931–935.
- 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.