•Archaeologists and geographers have been trying to estimate the pre-1492 American population for decades. But this is a very difficult task. When Christopher Columbus set foot on the island now known as San Salvador in the Bahamas on Oct. 12, 1492, he encountered the indigenous people who greeted him, traded with him and lived on nearby islands. In his journal, Columbus described these people, who were the first to meet him.
But a few decades after Columbus’ arrival, the Native Americans, as anthropologist Eric Wolf described them, declined rapidly due to a combination of disease, war and enslavement.
For centuries, researchers have tried to figure out how many Native Americans lived in the Americas just before the arrival of European colonists. The answer to this question has remained surprisingly unclear; historical census records, archaeological sites and estimates based on the carrying capacity of the semi-submerged land bridge have varied widely.
Recent studies of Native American demographics have shown that the population reached a peak several centuries before the arrival of Europeans. If the Europeans had arrived during that peak period, the continent’s history could have been completely different.
Early estimates
Humans have been living in the Americas for tens of thousands of years, migrating across the Bering Strait to the landmass. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first Americans spread to their new lands quite rapidly. But there is a great deal of uncertainty about the population during the period between this spread and Columbus’ arrival; estimates for the number of indigenous people living on the entire isthmus in 1492 ranged from 1 million to 112 million.
In a statement to Live Science, the Penn State University anthropologist said, “We don’t have good numerical estimates. The numbers are all over the place.”
One of the first modern researchers to attempt to quantify the pre-Columbian indigenous population was the anthropologist Dobyns. In one study, Dobyns used estimates of how many people different land types could support and records of epidemics in the 16th century to arrive at an estimated indigenous population of about 112 million — more than 100 times higher than some earlier experts believed. “In summary, Dobyns filled the land to its maximum carrying capacity, so that all similar lands environmentally were populated with the same number of people,” Milner said. “He also assumed that the epidemic was widespread and universal, which would make sense if the land was full.”
In one study, Milner and the geographer Chaplin focused on data from eastern North America; by compiling historical group sizes and the sizes of archaeological settlements, they estimated the location and size of “population communities.” Using this method, their general estimate for eastern U.S. and southeastern Canada was about 1.6 million people. Milner and Chaplin wrote: “Our average estimates suggest that North America, before European diseases dramatically reduced the indigenous population, contained roughly 2.8 to 5.7 million people, or ‘best estimate’ of 3.8 million.”
“If you’re going to start calculating specific populations, you have to use measurements that work across regions,” the researcher, an archaeologist at the University of Wyoming, told Live Science. “Humans produce things that are ubiquitous, because everyone needs to make fire to keep warm and cook food.”
Charred wood is one of the main human-made things that archaeologists use to date an area with radiocarbon. Radiocarbon data provide a series of dates that suggest the forest fuel was likely used.
In North America, many carbon-14 dates from charred wood, along with animal bones and plant remains from archaeological sites, were recorded in the CARD (North American Radiocarbon Data Bank).
In one study, geographer Peros and his co-authors at Bishop’s University mathematically combined the ranges of radiocarbon dates in CARD to produce a single curve that showed how common C-14 dates were at the time. At that time, CARD contained about 25,000 records.
Periods with more people likely produced more material that could be radiocarbon-dated, so the shape of the radiocarbon date curve gave the team an idea of when North America’s population was growing and declining. They found that the North American population grew rapidly around 50 B.C. and peaked around A.D. 1150. Before that time, the indigenous population was likely declining; this may have been because people were moving into denser settlements, possibly due to increased mortality from diseases such as tuberculosis.
“The 1150 date was a surprising and interesting finding,” Peros told Live Science. “I was expecting that to follow the arrival of Europeans, which would be around 1500.”
In one study, Kelly and his co-authors found a similar peak time. By that time, CARD’s dataset had grown, making the estimates more robust. In the study, the researchers wrote: “Although the indigenous population was decimated by contact with Europeans, it simply peaked in the 1500s and did not decline thereafter.” In fact, they found evidence of a slight recovery in the population count just before 1500.
“World population has more than doubled in my lifetime; this has never been seen in human existence,” said Milner. “Environmental scientists are trying to look at what happened over long time scales to give us a range of what might happen in the future. We need to make some conscious decisions about how we manage our landscape and adapt to these changes.”
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