Demographic theories
(noun)
Theories about how sedentary populations may have driven agricultural changes.
Examples of Demographic theories in the following topics:
-
The Neolithic Revolution
- There are several competing (but not mutually exclusive) theories about the factors that drove populations to take up agriculture.
- The Oasis Theory, originally proposed by Raphael Pumpelly in 1908, and popularized by V.
- However, this theory has little support amongst archaeologists today because subsequent climate data suggests that the region was getting wetter rather than drier.
- The Demographic theories proposed by Carl Sauer and adapted by Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery posit that an increasingly sedentary population outgrew the resources in the local environment and required more food than could be gathered.
- The Evolutionary/Intentionality theory, developed by David Rindos and others, views agriculture as an evolutionary adaptation of plants and humans.
-
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- The Latin-speaking west, under dreadful demographic crisis, and the wealthier Greek-speaking east, also began to diverge politically and culturally.
- The various theories and explanations for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West may be very broadly classified into four schools of thought, although the classification is not without overlap:
-
Disappearance of the Indus Valley Civilization
- Scholars have put forth differing theories to explain the disappearance of the Harappans, including an Aryan Invasion and climate change marked by overwhelming monsoons.
- According to one theory by British archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler, a nomadic, Indo-European tribe called the Aryans suddenly overwhelmed and conquered the Indus River Valley.
- The theory suggested that by using horses and more advanced weapons against the peaceful Harappan people, the Aryans may have easily defeated them.
- Yet shortly after Wheeler proposed his theory, other scholars dismissed it by explaining that the skeletons were not victims of invasion massacres, but rather the remains of hasty burials.
- Many scholars came to believe in an Indo-Aryan Migration theory that states the Harappan culture was assimilated during a migration of the Aryan people into northwest India.
-
Scientific Exploration
- According to an earlier theory, a substance called phlogiston was released from inflammable materials through burning.
- Eventually the oxygen-based theory of combustion drowned out the phlogiston theory and in the process created the basis of modern chemistry.
- Beccaria is recognized as one of the fathers of classical criminal theory.
- His theories have continued to play a great role in recent times.
- Some of the current policies impacted by his theories are truth in sentencing, swift punishment and the abolition of death penalty.
-
John Locke
- Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, he is equally important to social contract theory.
- The Second Treatise outlines a theory of civil society.
- Therefore, any government that rules without the consent of the people can, in theory, be overthrown.
- Locke's political theory was founded on social contract theory.
- Locke's theory of mind has been as influential as his political theory and is often cited as the origin of modern conceptions of identity and the self.
-
Italian Trade Cities
- A rise in population―the population doubled in this period (the demographic explosion)
-
The Macedonian Dynasty
- The conversion of the Bulgarians, Serbs and Rus' to Orthodox Christianity permanently changed the religious map of Europe and still impacts demographics today.
-
Thomas Hobbes
- Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher and scientist, was one of the key figures in the political debates of the Enlightenment period, who introduced a social contract theory based on the relation between the absolute sovereign and the civil society.
- Hobbes was the first modern philosopher to articulate a detailed social contract theory that appeared in his 1651 work Leviathan.
- This marked an important departure from medieval natural law theories which gave precedence to obligations over rights.
-
The Indo-Aryan Migration and the Vedic Period
- Different theories explain the Vedic Period, a time of Indo-Aryan people on the Indian subcontinent migrating to the Ganges Plain around 1200 BCE.
- Yet shortly after Wheeler proposed his theory, other scholars dismissed it by explaining the skeletons were not victims of invasion massacres, but rather the remains of hasty burials.
- Wheeler himself eventually admitted that the theory could not be proven.
- According to this theory, these nomadic pastoralists expanded throughout the Pontic-Caspian steppe and into Eastern Europe by early 3000 BCE.
-
Discontent with the Roman Catholic Church
- These reformist movements occurred in conjunction with economic, political and demographic forces that contributed to a growing disaffection with the wealth and power of the elite clergy, sensitizing the population to the financial and moral corruption of the secular Renaissance church.