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Why are population growth rate estimates of past and present hunter-gatherers so different?

ABSTRACT: Hunter-gatherer population growth rate estimates extracted from archaeological proxies and ethnographic data show remarkable differences, as archaeological estimates are orders of magnitude smaller than ethnographic and historical estimates. This could imply that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were demographically different from recent hunter-gatherers. However, we show that the resolution of archaeological human population proxies is not sufficiently high to detect actual population dynamics and growth rates that can be observed in the historical and ethnographic data. We argue that archaeological and ethnographic population growth rates measure different things; therefore, they are not directly comparable. While ethnographic growth rate estimates of hunter-gatherer populations are directly linked to underlying demographic parameters, archaeological estimates track changes in the long-term mean population size, which reflects changes in the environmental productivity that provide the ultimate constraint for forager population growth. We further argue that because of this constraining effect, hunter-gatherer populations cannot exhibit long-term growth independently of increasing environmental productivity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography'.

SUBMITTER: Tallavaara M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7741106 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Why are population growth rate estimates of past and present hunter-gatherers so different?

Tallavaara Miikka M Jørgensen Erlend Kirkeng EK

Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 20201130 1816

Hunter-gatherer population growth rate estimates extracted from archaeological proxies and ethnographic data show remarkable differences, as archaeological estimates are orders of magnitude smaller than ethnographic and historical estimates. This could imply that prehistoric hunter-gatherers were demographically different from recent hunter-gatherers. However, we show that the resolution of archaeological human population proxies is not sufficiently high to detect actual population dynamics and ...[more]

PMID: 33250023

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Project description:Human lifestyle and its relationship with the human microbiome has been a line of research widely studied. This is because, throughout human history, civilizations have experienced different environments and lifestyles that could have promoted changes in the human microbiome. The comparison between industrialized and non-industrialized human populations in several studies has allowed to observe variation in the microbiome structure due to the population lifestyle. Nevertheless, the lifestyle of human populations is a gradient where several subcategories can be described. Yet, it is not known how these different lifestyles of human populations affect the microbiome structure on a large scale. Therefore, the main goal of this work was the collection and comparison of 16S data from the gut microbiome of populations that have different lifestyles around the world. With the data obtained from 14 studies, it was possible to compare the gut microbiome of 568 individuals that represent populations of hunter-gatherers, agricultural, agropastoral, pastoral, and urban populations. Results showed that industrialized populations present less diversity than those from non-industrialized populations, as has been described before. However, by separating traditional populations into different categories, we were able to observe patterns that cannot be appreciated by encompassing the different traditional lifestyles in a single category. In this sense, we could confirm that different lifestyles exhibit distinct alpha and beta diversity. In particular, the gut microbiome of pastoral and agropastoral populations seems to be more similar to those of urban populations according to beta diversity analysis. Beyond that, beta diversity analyses revealed that bacterial composition reflects the different lifestyles, representing a transition from hunters-gatherers to industrialized populations. Also, we found that certain groups such as Bacteoidaceae, Lanchospiraceae, and Rickenellaceae have been favored in the transition to modern societies, being differentially abundant in urban populations. Thus, we could hypothesize that due to adaptive/ecological processes; multifunctional bacterial groups (e.g., Bacteroidaceae) could be replacing some functions lost in the transition to modern lifestyle.

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Why are population growth rate estimates of past and present hunter-gatherers so different?

Publications

Why are population growth rate estimates of past and present hunter-gatherers so different?

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