Time Since What? (Re)interpreting the Neolithic Transition in a Malthusian Environment
Time Since What? (Re)interpreting the Neolithic Transition in a Malthusian Environment
This chapter provides a reinterpretation of the positive correlation between the time since the Neolithic transition and per-capita income before the economic and demographic transitions. It shows that in a simple Malthusian model, the differences in development might be amplified by territorial competition between societies or an upper bound on the rate of population growth, suggesting that superstructures, such as empires, and behavioral norms might have played a decisive role during this phase of development. The chapter argues, however, that while a useful theoretical insight, this simple extension of the Malthusian model is not itself sufficient to account quantitatively for the observed variation in both per-capita incomes and population densities.
Keywords: Neolithic transition, per-capita income, demographic transitions, Malthusian model, population growth, superstructures, behavioral norms, population densities
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
