Pattern Of The Past

The book will be of importance for archaeologists and of interest to anthropologists.

A satisfactory comprehensive history of the social and economic development of pre-modern China, the largest country in the world in terms of population, and with a documentary record covering three millennia, is still far from possible. The present work is only an attempt to disengage the major themes that seem to be of relevance to our understanding of China today. In particular, this volume studies three questions. Why did the Chinese Empire stay together when the Roman Empire, and every other empire of antiquity of the middle ages, ultimately collapsed? What were the causes of the medieval revolution which made the Chinese economy after about 1100 the most advanced in the world? And why did China after about 1350 fail to maintain her earlier pace of technological advance while still, in many respects, advancing economically? The three sections of the book deal with these problems in turn but the division of a subject matter is to some extent only one of convenience. These topics are so interrelated that, in the last analysis, none of them can be considered in isolation from the others.

Population Patterns in the Past focuses on the study of historical populations. This book presents methods for the exploitation and use of aggregate data for demographic inference, facilitating the development and testing of hypotheses with socioeconomic content through advances in the use of demographic time-series. The topics discussed include homeostatic demographic regime; peasant household organization and demographic change in lower Saxony; civil code and nuptiality; and primonuptiality and ultimonuptiality. The deaths, marriages, births, and the Tuscan economy; influence of economic and social variables on marriage and fertility in 18th and 19th century Japanese villages; and childbearing and land availability are also elaborated. This text also covers the American fertility patterns since the civil war; a repertory of stable populations; and methods and models for analyzing historical series of births, deaths, and marriages. This publication is recommended for demographists, historians, and sociologists in charge of analyzing behavioral models in historical demography.