Institute of Archaeology, University College London (UCL), 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK.
Institute for Modelling Socio-Environmental Transitions, Bournemouth University, Poole BH12 5BB, UK.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Jan 18;376(1816):20190715. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0715. Epub 2020 Nov 30.
The increasingly better-known archaeological record of the Amazon basin, the Orinoco basin and the Guianas both questions the long-standing premise of a pristine tropical rainforest environment and also provides evidence for major biome-scale cultural and technological transitions prior to European colonization. Associated changes in pre-Columbian human population size and density, however, are poorly known and often estimated on the basis of unreliable assumptions and guesswork. Drawing on recent developments in the aggregate analysis of large radiocarbon databases, here we present and examine different proxies for relative population change between 1050 BC and AD 1500 within this broad region. By using a robust model testing approach, our analyses document that the growth of pre-Columbian human population over the 1700 years prior to European colonization adheres to a logistic model of demographic growth. This suggests that, at an aggregate level, these pre-Columbian populations had potentially reached carrying capacity (however high) before the onset of European colonization. Our analyses also demonstrate that this aggregate scenario shows considerable variability when projected geographically, highlighting significant gaps in archaeological knowledge yet also providing important insights into the resilience of past human food procurement strategies. By offering a new understanding of biome-wide pre-Columbian demographic trends based on empirical evidence, our analysis hopes to unfetter novel perspectives on demic expansions, language diversification trajectories and subsistence intensification processes in the Amazonian biome during the late Holocene. This article is part of the theme issue 'Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography'.
亚马逊盆地、奥里诺科盆地和圭亚那地区越来越知名的考古记录不仅对原始热带雨林环境的长期假设提出了质疑，还为欧洲殖民前主要的生物群落规模的文化和技术转变提供了证据。然而，与这些转变相关的前哥伦布时期人口规模和密度的变化知之甚少，而且常常是基于不可靠的假设和猜测进行估计的。本研究利用对大型放射性碳数据库的综合分析的最新进展，提出并检验了在该广阔区域内，公元前 1050 年至公元 1500 年间相对人口变化的不同替代指标。通过使用稳健的模型测试方法，我们的分析表明，在欧洲殖民之前的 1700 年中，前哥伦布时期人口的增长符合人口增长的逻辑模型。这表明，在总体水平上，这些前哥伦布时期的人口在欧洲殖民之前就已经达到了可能的承载能力（无论多高）。我们的分析还表明，当从地理上预测时，这种总体情况显示出相当大的可变性，突出了考古知识的巨大差距，同时也为过去人类食物获取策略的弹性提供了重要的见解。通过基于经验证据对整个生物群落范围内的前哥伦布时期人口趋势提供新的理解，我们的分析希望为在后全新世时期亚马逊生物群落中的人口扩张、语言多样化轨迹和生计集约化过程提供新的视角。本文是主题为“史前人口学的跨学科方法”的特刊的一部分。
