07-07-2003, 10:05 PM
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Plausible population support productivity figures / sq.Km?
(Andrew Stephenson) writes:
Thank you, everybody, for your prompt and helpful responses. It
looks like my initial (NB wild) guesstimate of 30,000 people must
be cut back to 10,000 tops -- good thing I thought to check. As
round numbers always sound fake (weird, really), let's say 9,403.
One thing people have forgotten is that horses have to eat, and working
horses eat a LOT. Say one horse can work 40 acres, you will have to
allocate about 15 acres to growing hay and grain for the horse, so only
about 60% of the land can be dedicated to growing food for human
consumption. Your land will only support about 5800 people, and about
550 horses. By historic nonindustrial horse agriculture standards, about
2000 people will be required to work the land, so you will be able to
support a non-agricultural population of about 2800 to 3000 people.
--
http://home.teleport.com/~larryc
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