Excellent resource! Well thought out!
Excellent resource! Well thought out!
Great thread! I've really enjoyed reading through it.
Something I'd like to add, and it applies to both populating the world and it's cultures, is the consideration of topography and climate. Going back to Britain, the land is mostly rocky and suitable for hardier, more sure-footed animals, such as sheep. The sheep is very well suited to both the land and climate of the British Isles and pre-modern England was economically built upon its wool market. During the 1200's, England had a population density of roughly 40 people per square mile and the diet consisted mainly of simple grains, tubers, and the ocassional lamb. It wasn't until the Admiralty really got going in the 14 and 1500's that England decided they could kick everyone's buttocks and became a world power/empire. Conversely, France has a population of almost triple England's density due to a favorable climate and far fewer rocks in the local gardens, and they were able to expand their power center beyond the Isle de France much more quickly then England could get off the cliffs of Dover. France also had a bit more room to expand initially. Spain of the time, being largely hills and plateau, developed a bit more slowly than France but more rapidly than England. A better food supply in the existing realm allows for quicker growth in that same realm.
Fantastic read - I like the way you point out how in order to do a proper top-down, you need to learn more stuff. Informative!
Thanks for that praise. I've been meaning to update this thread for a while, but, as usual, everything else happened instead. I plan to get back to writing these tips in the next few weeks.
Kaelin's right, by the way, about population density. I think the situation regarding the growth of the British, French and Spanish empires is a bit more complicated, though. In Britain, for example, the admiralty was only one component of the nation's rise; politics, economics, technology, and even religion had a part to play, as well as wider historical events.
TheHoarseWhispere - great set of posts about worldbuilding!
I'd like to add a couple of things, if I may ...
The first is trees. Or, rather, the lack of them. The effects of settlements on forests is huge. If you ignore settlements constructed as part of a defensive line or in order to mine a particular mineral then most settlements start life as some kind of market for either goods or people. The inhabitants will need houses, workshops, stores, barns, etc. These may come to be built out of brick (or out of quarried stone if they are rich enough), but often these will be made from wood. If you think of roundhouses they are made primarily of wood, and thatched. Fencing is normally formed of wood. All these wonderful hand-built homes will also require heating. Granted, later towns may use fossil fuels of some kind or another, but the vast majority will be using wood fires for heating and cooking.
The pressure on local forestry will be immense, and areas very quickly become denuded. This is great (after a fashion) for local farmers who gain more land for crops and animals ... but I often see on maps (and I am not having a pop at anybody at all when I say this) cities and towns surrounded by huge swathes of thick, pristine woodland. In my experience, and if you look at satellite images of towns and villages, the predominant land use around settlements is open fields.
The second thing is ... waste disposal. Sanitation. Its a dirty word, but somebody has to do it. (I feel I should apologise for that ...) Granted, there is evidence that the Indus Valley civilization had "urban sanitation", and Rome certainly understood the concept of sewers and whatnot. However, primarily it wasn't until the late Middle Ages that sanitation was found again in settlements. Had Ancient Rome not 'fallen' then perhaps it would've been different, but if you look at examples from today's developing nations then its clear that sanitation is something that not every civilization grasps fully. (I could make a really bad joke about the 'bottom up' method ... but I won't ....)
If I may expand DEMurray's comment on trees a bit...
After reading a fair number of academic guesstimates, I've developed a short set of 'rules of thumb' for forests coverage.
Rule 1. If there were no people, forest coverage is immense. Trees tend to win over grass if the climate supports both.
Rule 2. For civilized but not industrial civilization there's a simple relationship between deforestation and population density, excluding the bottom 15% extremes. At 50 people per square km mi, forests are reduced by 50%. At around 85 pop/kmmi^2 forest coverage has been reduced to ~15%. At this point a severe change in slope happens, and the curve runs from here through ~12% coverage for 160 pop/kmmi^2 to the extreme point of ~7% for 200 pop/kmmi^2.
I want to accent that very last point. For pre-industrial age (ie before about 1800 in US and western Europe) it sort of looks like there's a cap on population density of 200 people per square kilometer mile. It's basically a Malthusian breakpoint. Even with that there's about 7% of forested land that's just too inaccessible for use, too marginal for farming, or whatever, and it remains untouched or replanted.
It looks like a depopulation event causes reforestation. From what we can tell, the depopulation of the world in the mid to late 14th century was accompanied by an increase in forest coverage. Sure it was "new growth" forest, but it was reforestation nonetheless.
The above is a general guidance. As an example that emphasizes DEMurray's point, Scotland pretty much deforested itself despite remaining under 60 pop/kmmi^2, and despite heavy use of peat for heat. My theory is that it was because so much of the land was marginal for farming; that it took more acreage to feed a population and so more land needed cleared, but I'm just guessing from available estimates.
Post-industrial, by the way, appears to maintain a pretty constant 6 to 9% forestation rate regardless of average density. Food production gets more efficient per acre, and population growth increases local densities instead of spreading.
edited to correct units of measure. deleted km and replaced with mi.
Last edited by kirkspencer; 03-13-2014 at 01:45 PM. Reason: mind catching up with fingers and making corrections.
HW,
I just registered the other day and am officially in love with these posts!
@kirkspencer Using the data you so generously gathered, as well as some gratuitous rounding to make my math easier on me, I created an equation to find the (approximate) forest reduction as a percentage, given the population density and vice versa.So, if you have the population density (in people per square mile), to find the approximate forest reduction (as a percentage of original forest), multiply the PD by 0.45 and add 17. To go in reverse (FR to PD), subtract 17 and divide by 0.45. I'm not sure why you would have the FR and not the PD, but it might be useful somehow.y=0.45x+17
Method Comparison:
The blue line is your data, and the red line is mine. The yellow line is something of a combination of the two where the slope is 0.535 and the y-intercept is 0, so that it meets both the first and last of your data points, but still remains linear, like mine. Obviously, mine is less accurate than yours, but it does allow for a (kind of) easy method to calculate forest reduction (or population density, if need be).
Not really a good fit. This looks much more like an asymptotic function, in the family of f(x)=1/x or suchlike, since forestation approaches a limit as population density increases. (E.g. you can't have less than zero forestation.) I'd have to play around to get a nice fit, though.Originally Posted by jkat718
I've read up on this thread over the last few days, and I'd like to give some encouragement regarding your excellent work. I'm a natural sciences major in college, because I love to know why things work the way they do. This started with worldbuilding many years ago. I understand all the points you make in your top-down guide, and they are familiar from guides or classes I have had in the past. But here, the material is more well-organized than I have ever seen, and despite being familiar with the sciences involved already, I consider your post an invaluable organization tool. If you turned this thread into a blog, I'd subscribe - a book, I'd buy it. I hope, in whatever format, you do keep working on this.
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