•Archaeologists and geographers have been trying to estimate the pre-1492 population of the Americas 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 lived there. In his journal, Columbus described the people who greeted him, those who traded with him, and other groups living on nearby islands.
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, along with 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 filled 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 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 the dramatic reduction of indigenous populations by European diseases in the early 16th century, contained roughly between 2.8 and 5.7 million people, or ‘best estimate’ of 3.8 million.”
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 periods 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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