Where have I suggested we don't make them? I'm suggesting precisely the opposite - that we should widen where we look to include times where we have more and more reliable figures.
>> The best we have are actual population figures which may
>> not be particularly reliable when we need to know the maximum population
>> that an area could support given a particular level of technology.
>
>But you're comparing with a different level of technology, which is to
>my mind less reliable still. Not to say, pretty irrelevant if the
>point is an actual comparison, rather than a hypothetical one (battery
>Celts, as it were).
As I said earlier differences in production due to improved technology didn't tend to increase rural populations but allowed increasing town and city populations. A new seed which produces 50% more crop for the same effort gives the farmer something extra to sell in the market, he probably won't stop working for a third of his time. Particularly when the extra production means a surplus which pushes prices down while his landlord wants to increase his rent.
>> >Note that this certainly isn't true in either Heortling lands or the RW,
>> >where clearing forests and "wildlands" was (and still is...) part of
>> >the equation. Which itself is significant of course, depending how
>> >viable "Hunter" is as a Heortling occupation...
>>
>> Hunting is a use of land and at a given level of technology may be the
>> most effective. In other cases land may shift from wildland to farmland
>> and back depending on population levels.
>
>Hunting isn't a use of "land available for cultivation", and it's only
>the most "effective" _in terms of population density_ if it's the only one
>available to you at all. (Broadly speaking.)
But we're talking about population as relating to total land area, unless someone has gone round a map of Sartar working out what's suitable for cultivation and what's not. Certainly there's a fair bit which couldn't be cultivated with modern technology never mind anything in Glorantha.
>> Only if we
>> can find evidence of RW emigration at population levels significantly
>> below those in Glorantha can we conclude that the area in Glorantha
>> is overpopulated.
>
>I think you're assuming some much stronger sense of "overpopulated" than
>anything I've suggested. I'm not saying 50 people per square mile will
>have them dying in the streets and heading for the Lunar poorhouse, but
>that it's too dense to _feel_ congruent with the comparisons that are
>usually made.
That's depending almost entirely on how individuals view Sartar, which isn't going to result in a clear answer. For what it's worth my view is that at times the population of Sartar uses all the cultivatible land, including hills for sheep leaving only mountain areas for hunting. Nothing similar to the great forests of ancient Britain appears on any map of Sartar I've seen. That difference alone would create a population several times the RW one.
>> If I were to suggest equivelents I would compare Sartar with Scotland/
>> Northern England (probably excluding parts of the more remote highlands)
>> rather than Iron Age Britain in general. The more productive lands of
>> South East England I would compare to Esrolia.
>
>I was deliberately saying "Britain" since we seem to have arrived at the
>situation where Sartar is considerably more populous than "North
>Britain", and Volsaxar (never mind Heortland at large) moreso than
>"South Britain" (splitting at say the Pennines for the sake of argument)
>for the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Dark Ages, or the early Norman
>period, pick any "tech"/cultural comparison you like.
So you're saying that because Britain was less populous than Sartar there must be something wrong in spite of having no idea how close to the maximum population Britain was at the time.
I'd much rather find a time when there was recognisable overpopulation for a similar mix of land types and use that as a basis. Particularly as the only complete set of figures I'm aware of from that time is the Doomsday Book which only covers England - excluding much of the land similar to Sartar.
>Esrolia is rather in a league of its own, but in this case we're at
>least pretty clear what the dominant land use (if not to say almost
>exclusive).
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/
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