Demography and Food in Early Polynesia

Shripad Tuljapurkar, Stanford University

The analysis of prehistoric demography requires a robust understanding of demographic rates and their changes, of food production in relation to agriculture, technology and soils, and of their interactions. We discuss the limitations of some key ideas, including Malthusian limits, carrying capacity, marginal areas, and sustainability. To address the limitations of demographic models, we suggest a data-driven approach that extracts the most from data on early humans – we illustrate this by developing a new model mortality schedule for prehistoric populations. To address the dynamics of food and soils, we describe a model of nutrient-cycling dynamics and explore the effects of different levels of harvesting intensity under water and nitrogen limitation. We interpret these results in terms of their likely effects on food availability. Such a modeling approach can provide a solid basis for analyzing productivity, resilience and sustainability over long time scales in prehistory.