The population multiplies
World population rises from a few million to perhaps fifty, and the growth never stops.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 6.2 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 1 thousand years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Estimates put global population at roughly 4 to 6 million at the start of the Holocene and around 40 to 50 million by 3000 BCE. Farming raises the ceiling by producing more calories per hectare, and it raises the birth rate too: settled women can wean earlier and space children more closely than mobile foragers, whose birth intervals are constrained by having to carry them. Higher fertility and higher mortality together produce a young, growing, denser humanity.