Multicentennial cycles in continental demography synchronous with solar activity and climate stability.

Human population dynamics and their drivers are not well understood, especially over the long term and on large scales. Here, we estimate demographic growth trajectories from 9 to 3 ka BP across the entire globe by employing summed probability distributions of radiocarbon dates. Our reconstruction reveals multicentennial growth cycles on all six inhabited continents, which exhibited matching dominant frequencies and phase relations.

Explaining population booms and busts in Mid-Holocene Europe.

Archaeological evidence suggests that the population dynamics of Mid-Holocene (Late Mesolithic to Initial Bronze Age, ca. 7000-3000 BCE) Europe are characterized by recurrent booms and busts of regional settlement and occupation density. These boom-bust patterns are documented in the temporal distribution of 14C dates and in archaeological settlement data from regional studies.

Quantitative methods demonstrate that environment alone is an insufficient predictor of present-day language distributions in New Guinea.

Environmental parameters constrain the distributions of plant and animal species. A key question is to what extent does environment influence human behavior. Decreasing linguistic diversity from the equator towards the poles suggests that ecological factors influence linguistic geography.