Population & People

[Cmdr_Floyd]

How many people actually live in the Land?? Considering that Lord Foul always seem to have the larger armies etc I thought that the Land must be scarcely populated!

Answers on a postcard please......

[Nerdanel]

I just started Lord Foul's Bane again. There is some relevant information near the beginning:

- There are 5 Stonedowns in the South Plains. This is considered sparse.
- By inference, there are no Woodhelvens in the South Plains, only on the hills bordering it.
- The population of Mithil Stonedown is 500.

So the population of the South Plains is about 2500 if Mithil Stonedown is of average size. The Center Plains would have much more population, being both larger and more suitable for farming. A guess might be 25000 or more. In addition to that come the population of Revelstone and various other areas.

The total population of the Land might be something from 50000 to 150000. My best guess is a hundred thousand people.

[drew]

Hass anyone ever asked that Question in the GI?

I imagine the population rose drastically after the 1st chrons..a baby boom sort of thing after the Illearth war--but because of the Clave, and the Sunabne, I'm sure it dropped a fiarbit during the 2nd

[Variol Farseer]

The key question is what kind of population it would take to support a Warward of 21,000 (the number Hile Troy had at the beginning of TIW), given the level of agriculture and other supporting technology available. (Kevin's Lore counts as 'technology' for this purpose.)

I've run various kinds of numbers on this, some of which I've posted in another thread which I won't bother to look up right now. I came up with figures in the range of 500,000 to one million people in the Upper Land under the New Lords. That would equate to a population density of 0.5 to 1.1 per square mile. (By way of comparison, Alaska had a population density of 1.09 per square mile as of the 2000 U.S. census. The Land was not crowded with humans by any means.)

There is simply no way that a civilian population of 30,000, or even 130,000, could support an army of 20,000 in the field. Recall that the Warward was a standing army, not a temporary citizen militia (which the Land did not possess, as it would probably have been a serious violation of the Oath of Peace).

To the best of my knowledge, the lowest ratio of civilians to professional soldiers in Earth history was in 18th-century Prussia. About 1740, Prussia had a population of 3,300,000 and a standing army of 80,000 — a ratio of about 40:1 — and to keep up that number, they had to conscript their own citizens and import soldiers from abroad. The Warward could do neither of those things.

The highest wartime ratio I know of was in Nazi Germany during WWII (soldierly blighters, those Germans), which at one point had 13 million men in uniform out of a population of 80 million, a 6:1 ratio. But Germany looted most of Europe to support itself, and even so, pulling that many labourers out of the civilian economy caused severe hardship.

For pre-gunpowder armies, we can look to the Romans. During the emergency of the Second Punic War, they had up to 200,000 men under arms at a time, about half of whom were non-citizen auxiliaries from allied states. I have read that the total number of citizens in 189 BC, shortly after the war ended, was about 1,100,000. A citizen army of 100,000 would give them an 11:1 ratio. That was the absolute maximum; they kept having to demobilize large parts of the army and send them home to grow more food.

All these figures come from extremely militarized and regimented societies, which the Land certainly was not, and from cultures widely famous for their cruelty, violence, and aggressiveness. I doubt whether the Council of Lords could have recruited more than one soldier to the Warward for every 40 civilians, even in the most desperate of emergencies; especially seeing that some of their recruits would have to travel as much as 900 miles on foot to reach Revelstone. A 40:1 ratio would fit well with a population somewhat under a million, so that remains my best guess.

Of course, this does not count Lord Foul's creatures. Fleshharrower alone had an army of over 300,000. But they were summoned and supported by the power of the Illearth Stone, which is just plain cheating.

[Prom_STar]

how do you know all this? It's rather fascinating, I must admit

[drew]

how do you know all this?

He just makes it up!

(JK VF)

[Cord]

Variol

"I doubt whether the Council of Lords could have recruited more than one soldier to the Warward for every 40 civilians, even in the most desperate of emergencies; especially seeing that some of their recruits would have to travel as much as 900 miles on foot to reach Revelstone."

but are you dis-counting the various people's love for the land as the motivator to "join up" - and there is a mention of the attrition as Hile Troy's squaddies did their run to Doom's Retreat.

Also, they are on a constant war footing, keeping all sorts of nasties at bay, such as kresh maruading thru the middle plains

so getting them into the army may not have been too difficult

[Rincewind]

And if you think about it, comparing a militaristic society like rome or 18th century Prussia to the pacifist people of the land is a stretch

i personally think that the population of the land is underestimated, with land the size of about half a million square miles or more, and thousands of years withought any famines, natural disasters, birth control, etc - what are the chances of some places not being more like India or China today? (after the desecration, of course)

also, Mithil Stonedown has a population i think was mentioned at 500, but i recall it being a small village, so it might be that the other stonedowns are much larger (though i still can't see a woodhelven holding many people)

[Variol Farseer]

The trouble with that notion, Rincewind, is that the Land gives every evidence of being very thinly populated. Andelain, for instance, is entirely unpopulated by humans in spite of being the most desirable piece of real estate in the country. And we are specifically told that the Center Plains are the most thickly populated region, yet most of their population was brought safely within the walls of Revelstone for the siege in TPTP.

Breeding like flies does not seem even to have occurred to the people of the Land as either a pastime or a defensive strategy. The very idea would probably be considered a blasphemous affront to the Earthpower.

[drew]

That's true..the families that we do about aren't very large.
TRell and Atiaran had only one child.

Variol and Tamarantha only had one.

The only sibling I can think of is Atiaran's (Her name eludes me right now)

And Loerya had only a couple of daughters.

So if there aren't large families...then the populations ouldn't have gotten too large.

[dlbpharmd]

Farseer's assumptions and conclusions seem very logical to me.

[Landwaster]

While it seems all the plains etc seemed very thinly populated. I thought Revelstone was meant to be pretty friggin' huge. Perhaps there were a couple of mill inside Revelstone?

Oh and regards army to civilian ratio, ya gottah remember that the bigger the population, the lower the ration (in general). In some small cultures, nearly everyone is available for a fracas loaded for bear (a great expression my american missus taught me).

Otherwise, yeah, its certainly a bit of an anomaly, the size of that army.

[dlbpharmd]

Hi Landwaster!

[Landwaster]

Hi dlbpharmd

Umm are you showing HUGE tracts of land beneath your posts to symbolise the low populace of the Centre Plains?

[dlbpharmd]

That's a side effect of the Edgetar. It's good to see you back around.

[Avatar]

Since we lost my reply to VF in the reload, I'll just briefly restate that I agree with a small population, but that I'd pegged it at even lower than VF's 800,00 odd.

VF, your reasoning certainly makes sense, but as I pointed out in the original post, consider perhaps that the 21,000 strong WarWard was not a standing army in the truest sense of the word.

The Lords were preparing for a confrontation with Foul, in terms of his original prophecy, and thus they were very much on a "war-footing", and therefore it may be that the WarWard at that time was more than the Land could support indefinitely as an army.

What would that population extrapolation look like if you applied the same theory to the WarWard in LFB, adjusting for population growth over the intervening years?

--Avatar

[Warmark]

That's a side effect of the Edgetar. It's good to see you back around.

Havent been able to see it for a few days....

[hierachy]

Dude... Landwaster just suddenly reappears two years later...

[dlbpharmd]

That's a side effect of the Edgetar. It's good to see you back around.

Havent been able to see it for a few days....

Can't see my Edgetar? Hmmmmm...

[Variol Farseer]

While it seems all the plains etc seemed very thinly populated. I thought Revelstone was meant to be pretty friggin' huge. Perhaps there were a couple of mill inside Revelstone?

Not likely, given that Revelstone was said to be capable of feeding its entire population from the crops grown on the upland plateau behind the city. From that, and the way Revelstone was described (no teeming crowds, no bustling industries, not even a vague mention of different districts), I always had the gut feeling that the population of the city was in the five-figure range. Might be as high as 100,000, but I doubt it.

Oh and regards army to civilian ratio, ya gottah remember that the bigger the population, the lower the ration (in general). In some small cultures, nearly everyone is available for a fracas loaded for bear (a great expression my american missus taught me)..

Those small cultures invariably occupy small territories. You can't have the whole population turn out for a fracas if most of them have to march for a solid month to get there. And those are not standing armies in any case. As soon as the battle is over, they go home to their peacetime occupations.