When we talk about population, we have to divide into pre-historic population and population after pre-historical periods. In both cases, the population of a given country or geographic region can be estimated or known. How much labor spent on building a certain artifact, example Egyptian pyramid, how much army fought a certain battle, how much might have been population in the military age bracket. Before population census, some use church records of baptism. marriage, divorce or burial record to estimate the population of the world. So, always there has been interest in knowing the size of a kingdom in history.
In fact the world, population started to show a dramatic surge after 1650,not in the last century. Because of improved agriculture, industry, antibiotics, transportation. The birth rate dramatically exceeds death rate, resulting in population explosion in the West, which is now happening in the developing region. So, there is always a starting base population and that base population is extremely low. The projection model certainly leads to the initial population of a given geographic region. If one plugs the population of today and apply a natural growth rate, it can indicate an estimated population in habited that geography. Without exaggeration and underestimation, the size of Tigre population by then is not more than a few handful of villages, not enough to supply labor and differentiated skills to do what fraudulent tribal thugs are falsely claiming now. Labor differentiations is optimally possible with a modestly larger and diverse population. It is disgusting to read, some Tigre thugs are stealing or plagiarizing the cultural product of other ethnic groups whose current population size sufficiently warrants those products are cultural by products of them in the distant past.
sarcasm wrote: ↑30 Dec 2021, 16:29
The world population exploded in the last century and remained more or less constant for centuries. What was the population of Ethiopia when you were born? And it is 110 million now. What is the population growth in your life time? You have to remember that population growth was never that dramatic in the 1500 years before you were born. Don't let the current population size confuse your understanding of history. You also have to remember that people were not that connected 1500 years ago. Let alone in the 5th and 6th century, our grand parents were born, lived and died within 20 miles radius.