The biggest problem is the number of newborns compared to the number of childbearing women (15-44). In generating the Hunting Brothers bloodline with random ages derived from the pyramid, I have five children born in the last year but only 3 women between 15 and 40! Discounting multiple births and searching under the cabbage patch (at least a small possibility in Glorantha) where the babies are coming from may be a real problem.
This particular example may have problems with the sampling, but if we go to the base pyramid, by the percentages, we have 14 newborns and only 17 women between the ages of 15 and 44. (45 is a good cross-cultural value for menopause). Allowing for a few women who do not marry, and assuming that while women marry young (I'd assume 17 as a working average for Heortlings) not *all* of them marry at 15, this means married women are just about constantly pregnant from marriage to menopause - one birth per woman per year!. Given that lactation is a natural form of contraception, this is pushing biological impossibility.
Now while constant pregnancy not be a particularly far-fetched assumption
for the Heortlings, I found it a
sobering thought, and suggest that we tweak our toolkit a little BEFORE we
generate characters from the current values.
I have been discussing this privately with Nick, and we have a few options. One is to reduce the 50% children figure, which is historically bizarre. Nick notes that the figure for Rome in Empire was only 31.7%.
>TR posits C(x) = 50.0% for ages 0+1+5+10 (i.e. under-15's = 50% of
>population).
>The Roman model has C(x) = 31.7%
Another promising option is to differentiate the male and female birth mortality rates so there are a few more women of childbearing age at the expense of those live-hard, die-young, adventuring males. (Not too much though, for there is little evidence of Heortling polygyny, which would arise as an adaptation if there were significantly fewer men).
What are the pressure points for male mortality? - early childhood, initiation, the wandering and raiding years, and fyrd duty. And for emales? - early childhood and childbearing, though the later less deadly than historic reality.
A third option, less appealing for me, would be to reduce the age of senescence to artificially inflate the children percentage, but this means less elders.
Thoughts?
John
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