ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
The long-term expansion and recession of human populations.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Ancient forests help document the long-term impacts of climate change.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Archaeology and traversing America's pre-Columbian fault line.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Spatiotemporal distribution of the North American Indigenous population prior to European contact.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Landscape of fear: indirect effects of conflict can account for large-scale population declines in non-state societies.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Modern archaeological research and the importance of information management.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- A model of long-term population growth with an application to Central West Argentina.PloS one · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Over the last 12,000 y, human populations have expanded and transformed critical earth systems. Yet, a key unresolved question in the environmental and social sciences remains: Why did human populations grow and, sometimes, decline in the first place? Our research builds on 20 y of archaeological research studying the deep time dynamics of human populations to propose an explanation for the long-term growth and stability of human populations. Innovations in the productive capacity of populations fuels exponential-like growth over thousands of years; however, innovations saturate over time and, often, may leave populations vulnerable to large recessions in their well-being and population density. Empirically, we find a trade-off between changes in land use that increase the production and consumption of carbohydrates, driving repeated waves of population growth over thousands of years, and the susceptibility of populations to large recessions due to a lag in the impact of humans on resources. These results shed light on the long-term drivers of human population growth and decline.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.