Population Rates of primitive and barbarian people

[Prinz Slasar]

Does anyone have useful data for the populations of primitive and barbaric peoples?

I am particularly interested in the approximate numbers of members/individuals of tribes and clans. My setting has 25km "hex"  fields, and I would be interested in how big such cultures, tribes and clans are. If possible I'm interested in numbers for small settlements and urban places, too.

The terrain is coast, island, forest, steppe, hills and plains. And the climate is Mediterranean.

Thank you very much for your hints and tips!

Edited October 2, 2019 by prinz.slasar

[Qizilbashwoman]

i feel like maybe we don't call them "primitive and barbaric peoples" since about the Victorian Era, and especially since it doesn't really clarify what you mean

do you mean hunter-gatherers? do you mean early neolithic? do you mean paleolithic? do you mean bronze-age settlements? it's extremely unclear

Jericho has been an inhabited city since the Natufian culture, which predates the adoption of agriculture.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Prinz Slasar]

32 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i feel like maybe we don't call them "primitive and barbaric peoples" since about the Victorian Era, and especially since it doesn't really clarify what you mean

do you mean hunter-gatherers? do you mean early neolithic? do you mean paleolithic? do you mean bronze-age settlements? it's extremely unclear

Jericho has been an inhabited city since the Natufian culture, which predates the adoption of agriculture.

Not helpful, but thanks anyway.

[Joerg]

2 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i feel like maybe we don't call them "primitive and barbaric peoples" since about the Victorian Era, and especially since it doesn't really clarify what you mean

In RQ and BRP terminology, neither "primitive" nor "barbarian" are meant as degrading usage.

Sure, the terms aren't politically correct. But they describe an attitude to agriculture, technology, and political organisation that was laid out in the RuneQuest 3rd edition rules, and adopted widely. Primitive, Nomad, Barbarian and Civilized (where the latter is a bit of a condemnation - although Jennell Jacquay's old Central Casting supplements for creating more interesting characters added a fifth, even more condemning state, Decadent).

The Guide has tried to keep those categories while desperately trying (and failing, IMO) to give better names.

 

2 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

do you mean hunter-gatherers? do you mean early neolithic? do you mean paleolithic? do you mean bronze-age settlements? it's extremely unclear

The definitions are in the Big Golden Book of BRP, inherited from RQ3, and they are quite clear, and, as mentioned, well established. Placing the question in this forum brings up that context.

Your terms are about as undefined and useless - Jane Goodall's chimps are hunter-gatherers. What is a bronze-age settlement? There are regions of the world which never had a Bronze Age, but had urban iron age civilizations. What does "paleolithic" mean in Saskatchewan or Patagonia?

Yes, European language carries an ugly colonial inheritance.

Yes, descendants of these (and basically any) colonial overlords do deserve being reminded of what brought them into their comfortable existence, and own up their ancestral sins.

And no, the cultural achievement of living languages should not be skewered by agendas. Censure is oppression.

 

2 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

Jericho has been an inhabited city since the Natufian culture, which predates the adoption of agriculture.

Jericho probably started out as Barbarian, as that is the cultural level for grain cultivation. The city is small enough to be a clan center in its origin, much like ancient Rome. And the Natufian culture is as much the odd man out as is the sedentary "nomad" culture of the Botai horse tamers in what became modern Kasachstan, relying heavily on the quite unique conditions provided in the Fertile Crescent initially.

[Prinz Slasar]

Yes, the terms are derived from old BRP/D100 and are used in RQ6/MYTHRAS as well.

I forgot the nomadic culture, thanks Joerg for bringing them into discussion.

So question is for primitive, barbarian and nomadic cultures.

The setting is a fantasy setting without any relation to real earth cultures and times. But I want the numbers at least reasonable.
For the actual question the setting itself isn't important. The cultures "Primitive", "Barbarian" and "Nomad" are quite clear for D100 gamers.

[Joerg]

46 minutes ago, prinz.slasar said:

Does anyone have useful data for the populations of primitive and barbaric peoples?

I am particularly interested in the approximate numbers of members/individuals of tribes and clans. My setting has 25km "hex"  fields, and I would be interested in how big such cultures, tribes and clans are. If possible I'm interested in numbers for small settlements and urban places, too.

After mentioning the RQ3 Gamemasters' Book, I guess it is best to point you there. The rules for densest human settlement, with only extra fertile regions like the Nile delta with its two harvests in a year as an example of denser settlement, can be applied.

A 25 km hex field - 25 km to the side, or to the hex diagonal?

Under optimal conditions, you can have a village practicing agriculture or horticulture with some animal husbandry on the side every five kilometers, and a trigonal pattern is the densest possible pattern you can get. This includes quite a bit of less cultivated land in between used as pasture, source for building wood and fuel.

As soon as you add less productive conditions or a strong vertical component, forget about that trigonal pattern. Instead, you will get a pattern of such settlements stringed along traffic routes. For a barbarian culture as per RQ3/BGB, I would assume half the optimal density population of settlements. These can be concentrated in towns or even fortress cities if an easy mode of traffic (usually by water) is present.

Primitive sedentary fisherfolk (like the Kjøkkenmøddinger of the Baltic Sea) may practice something quite similar to transhumance, with temporary settlements at the fish migration sites. I would reduce population density for such a culture to a third or less of optimal agricultural density, and of course limit it to rivers, lakes, wetlands with reliable stretches of open water, and sea shores.

Purely hunter-gatherers are tricky to determine. Some follow the herd migrations, like the Ahrensburg reindeer hunter cultures (both the atlatl-user culture and its successor 2 millennia later using bows). They are on the brink of switching to a nomadic lifestyle, although the normal step towards nomadic cultures comes from agricultural cultures.

As a rule, the population density of hunter-gatheres (and fisherfolk) is determined by the regenerative ability of their prey. Usually, prey and predators fall into mutual cycles of growth and reduction, but additional stress on the prey may lead to extinction first of the prey, then of the predators. New predators for isolated prey populations often lead to extinction of that prey within few generations, but so does loss of habitat.

 

[Prinz Slasar]

11 minutes ago, Joerg said:

After mentioning the RQ3 Gamemasters' Book, I guess it is best to point you there.

I've got the german translation RuneQuest 3 - Das Fantasy-Rollenspiel [I guess with all three books in one] and I'll take a look.
 

 

11 minutes ago, Joerg said:

A 25 km hex field - 25 km to the side, or to the hex diagonal?

Not really hex fields but Collegeblock with squares. Each square has an edge length of 25 kilometers.



 

Edited October 2, 2019 by prinz.slasar

[Joerg]

1 minute ago, prinz.slasar said:

I've got the german translation RuneQuest 3 - Das Fantasy-Rollenspiel [I guess with all three books in one] and I'll take a look.

Yes, that has this information, IIRC.

1 minute ago, prinz.slasar said:

Not really hex fields but Collegeblock with squares. Each squares has an edge length of 25 kilometers.

By making a map square 4 college block squares and alternating the pairing in every second column, you get the equivalent of a hex map.

1 1 X X 1 1 X X
1 1 2 2 1 1 2 2
3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2
3 3 4 4 3 3 4 4

(etc.)

Anyway, a 25 km square will accommodate up to 25 agricultural settlements (of 50 adults) in square packaging, and almost 40 in trigonal packaging.