I don't really think that the spirit magic heal spell does much for demographics. In a combat, both sides have it, slowing loss by attrition and forcing the participants to go for more lethal actions. In everyday life, the minor wounds (main recipients for heal) rarely kill.
Ok, heal takes some of the terror out of infection, but there's Malia to compensate.
The change in demographics from modern world to ancient world doesn't seem to address much of Roger's concerns, either.
The numbers for growth rates are interesting even though Roger's math is flawed. I assume that population explosion due to access to useful healing is sort of a a steady state in Glorantha, a survival strategy.
> According to the latest Greg Sez conditions just before the Dawn were
> somewhat akin to "a nuclear winter" with isolated bands of survivors
> emerging from their shelters into a ruined and devastated world. This
> to me implies that outside of the handful of societies which had
> somehow managed to escape the worst effects of the Darkness, most
> of Glorantha was at a neolithic level of culture and that the
> population who were around to greet the Dawn cannot have been that
> much larger than that of the RW at the end of the last Ice Age.
True. However, with the Dawn (and in some regions even before) you get these civilized centres going out into the world and sharing their ressources (magical healing, agricultural technology and magic) with the other survivors. The primitive regions experience at least a sudden improvement of their situation. If they keep up the reproduction rate tailored to survival against the overwhelming odds of the Grey Age (accepting negative growth rates for this period, but overall with a much higher mortality), population explosion will have been enormous in the first century when mortality rate was decreased by a magnitude. If a Grey Age farmer had to raise 7 children to provide 2 survivors for a stable population for his stead, now 5 instead of 2 of these children would get a chance to survive and increase the numbers.
Imagine survivors of the ice age with access to late Bronze age technology, traditions of irrigation farming, and a degree of medical care comparable to that of the Caliphate of Cordoba in the 10th century (thanks to the magic).
Dawn Genertelan population may have been in the order of a half a million west of the Shan Shan mountains.
Kralorela is said to have survived the Darkness almost intact - while I think this is exaggerated, I have no problem assigning Kralorela and Teshnos with larger starting populations.
The Theyalan missionaries brought about a population expansion of an enormous degree with their teachings of Lightbringer magics and customs - - including healing (CA), agriculture (Orlanth&Ernalda, aldryami support!), knowledge about technology (LM, dwarf contacts) and trade (Issaries). They also brought back valuable knowledge from the people they encountered.
> Now my maths may be at fault here, but a fifty-fold increase in
> population in 1620 years presumably means that on average the
> Genertelan population has doubled in size roughly every 33 years.
Assuming a 64-fold increase for mathematical convenience and constant growth, I arrive at a doubling in population every 270 years (2 by the power of 6 makes this six phases of doubling). I assume that growth was somewhat faster as long as the limiting factors of availability of resources weren't reached. Over-population produces increased mortality through famine, conflicts, and plagues.
> Now in the RW
> that sort of population growth rate can only be sustained by an
> industrialising society undergoing the demographic transition or
> revolution That is to say a society where the birth rate is several
> times greater than the death rate due to radical improvements in
> public health on the one hand and a lack of any effective medical,
> social or economic limitations to fertility on the other.
As long as a society remains agricultural while gaining these benefits and has enough room to expand into, no decrease in procreation rate is to be expected.
> over the past 500 years the RW
> population has *only* increased tenfold (1500: 545m; 1993: 5506m).
This makes population doubling occur 3.5 times in 500 years, every 150 years or so. Assuming this rate, you get about 7 million Genertelans from your one million starting point by the time the Gbaji Wars started to get ugly.
> So what is the Genertelan growth rate and what does it equate to in
> the RW? Again according to the State of the World Atlas, an annual
> growth rate of 3% doubles the population in 23 years, 2% in 34 years,
> 1% in 67 years and so on.
1 to 3% after the disasters, slowing down a lot when the limitations of the resources are reached. I find the Civilisation boardgame rates for population growth (including attrition through warfare and urbanisation) to model the situation nicely.
Assuming a constant growth rate of 3%, you can start out with 20000 people in Kethaela and Kerofinela at the Dawn and arrive at 10 millions around 200 ST, or 0.64 millions around 115 ST (when the peace of the Theyalans began to fall apart, and growth rate is reduced).
> I'd therefore suggest that if HW is going to make magical healing
> relatively uncommon we need to seriously consider what this means in
> demographic terms and come up with alternative explanations for the
> high population growth rates that catastrophe-prone Gloranthan
> societies need.
As the check of your maths showed, there is no need to worry demographics-wise. There might be other worries, but this one ain't valid.
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #156
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