Population densities in Roman-Age Europe?

['Jamie Polichak' jamiepolichak@hotmail.com [gothic-l]]

> I also said that I had doubts about research from before the mid-late 1990s for reasons already mentioned. To which I will add the use of highly sophisticated satellite systems with ground-penetrating capabilities and resolutions on the m3 level (much better, for the security and military organizations of the nations controlling them). New sites are being found all over the world, and it is looking like the claims of very high populations in the Amazon basin prior to European contact were closer to right than those who claimed it was a green wasteland.

>I can’t find that discussion. I see your arguments against census data and Caesar’s lies, and your post about geography, climate, and lower Roman town densities.

Cheap and fast high-volume genetic sequencing of large sites. For human remains, animals, plants, pollens, and other elements that would give estimates of population size.

Genetic sequencing was very expensive until the mid-late 1990s, when it became just expensive. It has rapidly declined in price over the recent past. In many cases, year-to-year variation in land usage and/or climactic changes can be detected now.

And going along with that, greater use of environmental evidence from plants and animals to complement direct human evidence.

The 1.5 million population estimate is from Britain BC: Life in Britain and Ireland Before the Romans (2004), by Francis Pryor. London: Harper Perennial.
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