World Population in the Bronze Age

It's quite evident that we cannot rely upon any census to help us determine population in prehistoric times. Written sources before the end of the Bronze Age (1200 BC), are scarce to non-existent. The discipline of Paleodemography deals with estimating population in antiquity, relying heavily on bioarchaeology, which itself relies upon skeletal analysis and genetic analysis to estimate the health of human remains, when writing is not present. Global estimates of early populations are highly subjective, but nonetheless a critical factor in the reconstruction of history.

Divergent Assumptions and Interpretations

The main two models for human demographics could not be more divergent. The popular uniformitarian model describes man (genus homo) as evolving over two million years. Its greatest challenge is to explain an extremely slow population growth. Possible factors include poor health, limited communication, primitive skills, and a hostile environment.

The creation model for population begins with 8 people, the family of Noah, who are believed to have had superior intelligence and health, both of which diminished in subsequent generations. Noah, and perhaps his wife, are understood to have lived 600 years before the flood Genesis 9:29 (ESV), and their son Shem would have lived 98 years before flood and 502 years after it Genesis 11:10-11 (ESV). They benefitted from the technological accomplishments of an advanced pre-flood society, as demonstrated by the early building of the pyramids, ziggurats, and Göbekli Tepe. Accepting the text of Genesis as credible, we have reason to believe that the first family had excellent health and the skills to tame their environment. We therefore have reason to assign the most rapid population grow to the generation immediately following the flood and assume that this rate decreased with time.

Methodology

To reconstruct a creation model for population, we are going to join data points from both methodologies. We will calculate the first eleven generations after the flood according to the creation model, and then continue from the eleventh generation with data from the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), a reputable evolutionary model. Remember that both of the models are estimates based on assumptions.

The year 2300BC has been selected for the year of the flood, even though many young earth creationists would opt for an earlier date. In fact, Whitcomb and Morris have written, "The strict-chronology interpretation of Genesis 11 has been shown to be unnecessary for various reasons. Thus, it seems Biblically possible, or even probably, that the Flood occurred several millennia before Abraham." Nonetheless, if growth rates are shown to be reasonable for the latest date, then they will reasonable for an earlier date.

As for the initial growth rate, Osgood notes that the average number of sons known to be born to the sons of Noah is 5 1/3 and suggests multiplying the population by 5 for the first five generations. That is the equivalent of ten children per family or a population growth rate of 5.35%. The first five generations use this high, but reasonable, growth rate. After all, rapid growth is consistent with the health of the first family, the commandment to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” and the supernatural blessing of God upon Noah and his sons. All generations are estimated at 30 years by Osgood, since this is the average time between birth and childbearing in the Genesis account.

Generations 11 through 30 conform to the HYDE data, which only increases by 0.0454% per year. We retain the HYDE data point for the year 2000BC, which shows a population of 28,151,440. We therefore adjust the growth rates from generations 7 to 11 in order to imitate the decreasing lifespans of the Patriarchs. Sumerian history also testifies that warfare increases with time slowing population growth.

Population is calculated according to the formula $P=P_{0}\times e^{rt}$, where

P is the population after t years

$P_{0}$ is the initial population

r is the yearly rate of population growth expressed as a decimal, e.g. 0.01 for 1% per year.

The population formula used in our MS Excel worksheet is

=D2*EXP(30*(C3/100)), where

D2 is the cell to the left with the growth rate expressed as a percentage.

30 represents the static 30 years per generation used for each calculation.

C3 is the cell above, with the starting population, at the end of the previous generation.

Rate is calculated according to the formula $r={\frac {\ln \left({\frac {P}{P_{0}}}\right)}{t}}$

Rate can be calculated between two data point with the Excel rate formula

=LN(D3/D2)/30, where

D3 is a cell containing the ending population.

D2 is a cell containing the beginning population.

30 is the number of years between the data points.

Bronze Age Population Worksheet

generation	year (BC)	growth rate (%)	population	events	HYDE pop	HYDE ref
1	2300	5.3648	32	Noah	24,536,126
2	2270	5.3648	160
3	2240	5.3648	800
4	2210	5.3648	4,000
5	2180	5.3648	20,000
6	2150	5.3648	100,001
7	2120	5	448,174
8	2090	4.5	1,728,796
9	2060	4	5,739,806
10	2030	3	14,117,644
11	2000	2.3	28,146,566		28,151,440	-4017
12	1970	0.0454	28,532,544	Abraham born	28,538,939	-3987
13	1940	0.0454	28,923,816	Noah dies	28,931,311	-3957
14	1910	0.0454	29,320,454		29,731,090	-3927
15	1880	0.0454	29,722,530		29,731,090	-3897
16	1850	0.0454	30,130,120		30,002,257	-3867
17	1820	0.0454	30,543,300		30,551,657	-3837
18	1790	0.0454	30,962,145	Abraham dies	30,970,028	-3807
19	1760	0.0454	31,386,735		31,393,955	-3777
20	1730	0.0454	31,817,147		31,823,565	-3747
21	1700	0.0454	32,253,461		32,258,989	-3717
22	1670	0.0454	32,65,758		32,700,365	-3687
23	1640	0.0454	33,144,121		33,147,831	-3657
24	1610	0.0454	33,598,632		33,601,533	-3627
25	1580	0.0454	34,059,376		34,061,621	-3597
26	1550	0.0454	34,526,438		34,528,249	-3567
27	1520	0.0454	34,999,905		35,001,576	-3537
28	1490	0.0454	35,479,865		35,481,767	-3507
29	1460	0.0454	35,966,406		35,968,993	-3477
30	1430	0.0454	36,459,620	exodus	36,463,427	-3447

Family Groups

Traditional theologians and historians have used Jewish sources, such as the Table of Nations in Genesis 11, to reconstruct migration patterns from the sons of Noah to the civilizations that later developed around the world. The Table of Nations lists the names of Noah's descendants from which the nations came. Morris gives the number as seventy, while Osgood arrives at forty-six by only counting the latest generations listed. He estimates the size of each of these "dispersal units" at the time of the dispersion as 600 for the sons of Japheth and Shem and 300 for the sons of Ham. The idea that these 46 to 70 clans may well have been the primary building blocks of all the ethnic groups and nations of the world is theologically support by the statement, "from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood."Genesis 10:32 (ESV)
Each of these family units have been studied with relation to the nations which developed from them. Much work remains to be done to understand archeology in terms of the Table of Nations. Consider an example of how a creation population model can help understand archeology. The amazing pre-historic settlement of Çatalhöyük in present-day Turkey had a population between 5,000 and 7,000 inhabitants. Is this reasonable? Curtis thinks that Catal Huyuk was populated by the children of Canaan, who was the son of Ham. He places the fifth generation from Noah in 2730BC, which is an older model than the one above. A clan of 300 people could have reached a population of 6000 in two to five generations, which would have been around 2580BC, according to Curtis' dating. This and other sites need to be studied in light of rapid development as well as the extremely slow development that is so popular.