THE STORY OF MAN

AN INTRODUCTION TO 150,000 YEARS

CARROLL & GRAF                       2007

PART VII

Chapter 12: The World in 500

• By the year 500, the culture of wet rice farming with iron tools developed in China was also firmly established in the two countries – Korea and Japan – most exposed to Chinese influence.
• It is clear that Japan was united under a single government and already a power to be reckoned with in 391, when it despatched a military force that succeeded in conquering three kingdoms in the south of the Korean peninsula.
• By 500, the wealth extracted from these dominions, and Japan’s own rapidly improving technology, had fuelled a huge increase in its population, and created a luxurious lifestyle for its ruling classes.
• In addition to tribute, the Korean connection provided a steady stream of craftsmen.
• It was also the vehicle for a host of cultural innovations originating in China, of which the most notable were Confucian philosophy and the Chinese system of writing, later adapted to create a purely Japanese script.
• A key element of Japanese culture at this time was respect for the family, including the largest family of all, the whole people, of which the emperor was the head.
• Each family had its own deity, and it was the responsibility of the head of the family to ensure the proper worship of the family deity.
• This family worship existed within a wider context, Shinto – or  more correctly, Ancient Shinto – a religion with many gods, some connected with natural forces or objects, such as the sea or mountains, and some concerned with processes, such as growth or creation.
• The adventurous Polynesians, in their double-hulled sailing canoes, had just arrived in Hawaii, after a century-long, island-hopping migration of 2500 miles from the Marquesas Islands.
• Other Polynesians had got as far as Easter Island, after an equally long journey – both in miles and years – from Tahiti.
• These settlements were not the outcome of chance discoveries. They were the result of systematic exploration, by superb navigators, who took with them the dogs and pigs, and the breadfruit, coconuts, bananas and yams, they would need to re-establish themselves in their new homes.
• Only New Zealand remained to be discovered. Amid its lush vegetation, flocks of giant flightless birds wandered, ignorant of the human nemesis that threatened them just over the horizon.
• The people of Australia were still isolated from the rest of the world. A thinly spread population in an unrewarding environment, they lacked the means to embark upon the urban/agricultural adventure that had transformed the lives of people elsewhere.
• On the other side of the Pacific, 13,000 feet up in the Andes of South America, there was a lake – Lake Titicaca – that extended for 3000 square miles. Along its shores, an ancient civilization, with centuries of prosperity still ahead of it, was enjoying a golden age.
• The foundation of its wealth and power was a unique system of agriculture, in which crops were grown in raised fields, capable of producing tens of thousands of tons of potatoes a year.
• They were watered by a network of irrigation canals, constructed to retain the heat of the midday sun through the cold mountain nights, protecting crops from the mountain frosts.
• The bountiful harvests supported an empire that embraced large areas of present-day Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and northern Chile.
• Some of the stones adorning temple complexes weigh 100 tons and their nearest source was 3 miles away.
• Their impressive architecture was the product of Stone Age technology, using axes made of flint.
• In the Valley of Mexico, 5000 miles to the north, another Stone Age civilization was also at its height.
• In 500, it was already four centuries old, and its chief city – Teotihuacán – with a population of 150,000, was one of the biggest cities in the world.
• At 210 feet high, and with a base measuring 760 feet by 720 feet, the Pyramid of the Sun was the largest building in the Americas, and the third largest pyramid in the world.
• Such art and architecture, and such a large population, could only have been possible with a highly productive system of intensive agriculture.
• The civilization of the Maya was in full flower. This civilization, which occupied an area about 500 miles by 300 miles, resembled no other, before or since.
• It had been created in almost impenetrable jungle, where nothing could be built, and no crops could be sown, until space had been cleared (with stone axes).
• And this in a hot, steamy climate, where annual rainfall was 120 inches, and the dry season lasted just a few months.
• The Mayan was not really an urban civilization. What were assumed to be cities by their 19^th century discoverers are now considered ceremonial centres: religious and administrative capitals of districts in which the basic unit was the farming village.
• Nor was it an empire, with a central administration. It seems to have been more in the nature of a collection of city-states, with the ceremonial centres fulfilling the role of the city, and with religious observation, and the propitiation of the gods, occupying a central role in the community’s life.
• The few Mayan writings we possess are mostly astronomical and priestly records. The calculations they contain are of a quality unsurpassed by any Stone Age civilization.
• The population of North America at this time, north of present-day Mexico, was possibly no more than about 2 million. Central and South America, by contrast, had a population of around 13 million.
• In Europe, the cultures of the Stone Age had long since been left behind. Almost everywhere, either pastoralism or settled agriculture provided the framework of everyday life.
• Both inside and outside the former Roman empire’s boundaries, the technology of iron tools and iron weapons was universal.
• In the 5^th and 6^th centuries, with the Roman legions gone, every country in western Europe experienced waves of invasion.
• When a promising place was found, the raiders would settle down, and start farming. The peoples they displaced were forced to eke out a living in less fertile places, in the hills or on the seacoast.
• At the other end of Eurasia, on the borders of India, the relentless pressure of attacks from the nomads of the steppes seemed finally to be easing.
• In Africa, south of the Sahara, the discovery of the secrets of iron working, and the development of indigenous systems of agriculture, had enabled many peoples to make up for the time they had lost when the Bronze Age had passed them by.
• Developing skills of both pastoralists and farmers had yielded increases in food production, and brought about new technologies, that had made possible a rapid growth in population.
• The growth of population in sub-Saharan Africa between AD 100 and AD 500 – from around 12 million to something like 18 million – was spectacular.
• From a mere 10 million in 6000 BC, the world’s population had grown hugely, until by the beginning of the fist century it had reached 250 million. But over the next 400 years, it dropped to 200 million. War and famine were part of the explanation, but the principal reason was disease.

When human beings moved out of Africa, they left behind the insects that were unable to follow them into cooler regions. In so doing, they also left behind the diseases these insects carried. The result had been a ‘holiday’ from insect-borne diseases that had lasted for thousands of years. But when they created settlements and domesticated wild animals they became exposed to new diseases harboured by these animals, and these diseases evolved in ways that enabled them to exploit human hosts.

By the time the Chinese were using wheelbarrows, and the ladies of Rome and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, were wearing silk, human beings had been exchanging microbes with their invited guests – pigs, chickens, cows – and with their uninvited guests – mice, rats, flies and fleas – for thousands of years. But the resulting infections were for a long time confined to specific corners of the world, and deserts, seas and mountain ranges had been effective barriers. Even where such barriers did not exist, urban populations were often too small to sustain prolonged epidemics. But the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean were now crowded with shipping, and the Silk Road, and routes like it, were busy highways. Saddlebags and ships’ holds made ideal mobile homes for rodents and insects, and the disease-carrying parasites they harboured. Crowded cities awaited them at their journey’s end. Humanity had invented the global village, and the bugs were having a ball.

• We have seen in the previous chapter how China endured one epidemic after another in the 300 years after AD 100. By the end of these three centuries of torment, the population had fallen from more than 60 million to a mere 25 million.
• Rome’s experience had been no less horrific. In the year 165, soldiers returning from Mesopotamia brought a new disease – possibly smallpox – that wrought havoc across the empire for the next 15 years.
• In the years 251 to 266 another pestilence of equal virulence struck. When the infection was at its height, the city of Rome was said to have suffered 5000 deaths a day.

In Japan, in Central and South America, and in the healthier parts of sub-Sahara Africa – regions isolated from Eurasian plagues – numbers had continued to rise. By contrast, during these 400 years, the population of Eurasia had fallen by about a quarter. Humanity was no longer a species on the march. Over most of its range, it was a species under siege.

ESTIMATED WORLD  POPULATION

AT SELECTED DATES

 

YEAR                                                            GLOBAL POPULATION (millions)

30,000 BC                                                                   0.5

   6000 BC                                                                   10

   4000 BC                                                                   30

   1000 BC                                                                   120

500                                                                                                                                                  200

1095                                                                                                                                              300

1455                                                                                                                                              400

1763                                                                                                                                              800

1913                                                                                                                                              1600

2007                                                                                                                                              6500

REGIONS EXPERIENCING A FALL IN POPULATION (millions)

Year      China            India          S.W.            Europe        Other*            World*

                                                       Asia

100            65              45                46               37                 38                    255

500            32              33                41               30                 31                    205

Change    -50%           -25%            -10%           -20%             -20%                -20%

excl. North America

Source: D. Christian, Maps of Time

Chapter 13: The triumph of Islam