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A comment on Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer than any 2015 country. Parent comment

Re:Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer ... by RoboTeddy on Thursday October 12, 2017 @01:17AM (#15455828)
If you're curious about this, I'd recommend reading accounts of hunter-gatherer lives written by anthropologists! This book is fascinating in many ways: http://voidnetwork.gr/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/The-Dobe-Ju...

In particular:

* Level of food security (very high -- people only bothered to keep 3 days of food on hand, since it was so easy to get more)

* Their social living arrangements (persistent "living groups" of 10-ish people, multiple of which might be camping around the same water hole at a given time. so there's a collection of people you're often around that rarely changes, and then other groups you see and live with for a time periodically)

* Reasons why their population didn't explode despite lack of contraceptives (no crops --> no e.g. maize that can be turned into mash for kids --> kids breastfeed for years longer, which apparently acts as a contraceptive.

As others are saying, life undoubtedly was quite different for hunter-gatherers in other regions.

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Re:Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer ... by geezerjay on Thursday October 12, 2017 @04:12AM (#15456424)
> * Reasons why their population didn't explode despite lack of contraceptives (no crops --> no e.g. maize that can be turned into mash for kids --> kids breastfeed for years longer, which apparently acts as a contraceptive.

Actually, it's far more probable that population were kept low because everyone got killed at a very high rate compared with the rate of reproduction. With no medical care to treat diseases of wounds and with both man and nature invested in killing off people, population growth tends to be kept low.

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Re:Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer ... by danieltillett on Thursday October 12, 2017 @06:08AM (#15456871)
Read the The Life and Adventures of William Buckley [0] for an understanding of what hunter-gather life was like. No starvation, no disease, lots of children and yet a static population.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Buckley_(convict)

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Re:Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer ... by RoboTeddy on Wednesday October 18, 2017 @07:48PM (#15504300)
Systematic anthropologic research over more than a decade (in the case of this particular society), including interviews with everyone about the number of violent killings in the past, disagrees.
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Re:Roman Empire per capita GDP shows the Romans were poorer ... by donw on Thursday October 12, 2017 @06:01AM (#15456845)
Malnutrition and starvation also have a strong impact on ovulation rate.
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