why are the westlands so depopulated?

[king of nowhere]

One constant thing in the story of mankind is that, ever since the discovery of agriculture and cattle herding, the human population has increased to fill all the space available. all the good arable soil has been cultivated for the need of the ever growing population, and that growth stopped only when the new land run out. But as long as there was new land, the population would occupy it. As long as there was uninhabited terrain, someone would go settle there. Every farmable place was settled. And even many that were not farmable. Ancient men, with very little in the way of technology, already managed to live in the most desolate reaches of siberia or alaska or upper canada, even in the permanent ice of greenlandand. Everywhere the population grew as long as it could find enough food.

And wars and disasters were not enough to invert the thrend. one third of the european population died in the plague in 13h century, but in a few generations the population already fully recovered. there have been plague outspreads all the time, and constant wars, but that never stopped the population from growing.

In the wheel of time instead the opposite happened. We have no word of major conflicts since the war of hundred years, and it is clear that they have enough igienic notions that they should be safe from most epidemics, yet the population has been dwindling all the time. when perrin and egwene are stranded on the left bank of the arinelle, elias tell them they could walk in a line up until the spine of the world without meeting a single human being. the land seems fartile enough, and in fact they find ruins here and there. why the population left and no one ever resettled? it's not how demographics work. how about the caralain grass, or the area around far madding? all places that seems good to suppor a big civilization, but are only scarcely populated by a village here and there. villagers there should make more than two kids per family, and farm new land to feed them, and so the population should grow, and instead they apparently do the reverse, they make so few children that the land depopulates despite not seeing much war or disease. The only places not depopulated are the borderlands, which are the only places that would have a good reason to depopulate.

What's the problem with this people? did they discover contraception? Was there an artifact of the age of legends that causes radom abortion in a 1000-km radius? maybe they got enough radioactive waste after the war of power that they still have infertility problems?

[Aethling]

Even today, there are large areas of land that have little to no human habitation.

The lack of population in some of the western lands may be attributed to the near-constant border wars that go on in some of them. Most people that I know would not want to live in the middle of an area that is constantly overrun by warring factions.

Some of the various clues in the WoT setting give me the feeling that it is around the late 1500s early 1600s settings. There were still periodic famines and epidemics during these periods, but they were much advanced compared to only a few hundred years before.

There are Aes Sedai around to heal people, true, but most areas have never even seen one even during Rand's time. The daily lives are still run as without magic, indeed some despise it.

The major population boom in Europe happened at the end of the miniature ice age, and that loosely corresponded with the beginning of the Renaissance. Some say that the decreased temperatures had lowered human resistance to where the plagues were more devastating when they came through due to the decreased nutrition available from crops.

The story begins in winter, and we miss much of the first summer due to the portal stone travel. That is followed by an extra long and hot summer and then by a pretty bad winter. We do not really know what the normal weather conditions are like, at least for our story time. They could simply be on the edge of a climatic change that would allow a larger population. Unfortunately, the outside influences changed even that.

Also, as for wars affecting population. Check out the population charts for Germany and Russia in the late 40s through the 50s. There was virtually an entire generation of men missing, and this was especially marked in Russia. The US had a "baby boom" when the soldiers came home, but we did not lose nearly as many men as Germany or Russia. I have never looked into what happened in Japan, but the last I heard they were still suffering from a slow population growth, but that was attributed at the time due to fewer of the women deciding to give birth. China could throw half a billion soldiers into a war, lose every one, and still have a higher population than the US. Their problem resides in the several million men that will not be able to find a mate, but that was intentional on the part of the goverment.

Edited October 20, 2012 by Aethling

[Lady_Yasha]

You're forgetting that they still have had wars in the space of history from Artur Hawkwing. And a large contingent of Hawkwing's army had been sent across the Aryth Ocean to conquer the future-Seanchan lands. Tear and Illian have always been at each others' throats and it was only after the War of the Hundred Years did Andor expand westward to discover the Two Rivers and build Baerlon. Caralain was once a nation itself until its sudden decline which I can only guess was due to bad leadership.

As far as I know, the Caralain Grass had little if any rivers running through it large enough to support trade vessels. With the level of technology in mind at the time, it would have been more beneficial to build large settlements nearer to the main rivers. Possibly another reason for its decline that it couldn't access these vital trade routes effectively to support the basic necessities of its population.

And then came the Aiel War which engulfed most of Cairhien's population and even threatened Tar Valon. Take a look at Andor; one of the greatest nations and it can't even enforce the Two Rivers. It didn't have the man-power to send a military patrol force and tax collectors. With brigands and bandits in the wild no-one would expand into unsettled territory without a military presence.

On Theoryland there's a rumour - a pretty good one - that Ishamael instigated conflicts intermittently in an effort to depopulate and destabilize the world in time for Tarmon Gai'don. Also, while you're in that thread CTRL+F "heartleaf" and you'll find that there is a herb used for contraception.

All I can give you is that the culture and mindset of WoT's people is very different to our own.

[king of nowhere]

I wasn't talking about governments, but about population. that large swats of land are not claimed by any government is not that strange. in europe the rival nations would contend for land and absorb every place that was not reclaimed by another, but in other parts of the world many places lacked central government and were no part of any nation. north america, at the time of discovery, had no nations, only tribes. but still it had over ten millions inhabitants. Also large parts of asia didn't have any government, but they still had sparse villages.

All those explanations about wars and famine could hold for many of the unpopulated places, but not for all. the ones I picked as examples were the ones that did look fertile and not in conflict. lack of rivers in the caralain grass may be a reason, however. lack of commercial routes should not stop the rising of villages (we know some of them exist because verin mentions stopping at some of them when crossing the place between book 2 and 3), but maybe there isn't enough water to sustain more than a few villages and nomaddic tribes.

As for the left bank of the arinelle, that one has good access to water, a main commercial route, good land, and no conflict - so I see no reason why it should not be populated. It is probably the only place left for which I can't find a reasonable expalantion.

the presence of a known and widely used contraceptive is another good point that I missed. THat, along with a certain kind of culture, would prevent population growth and could therefore explain all the discrepancies.

Edited October 20, 2012 by king of nowhere

[Riddlesinthedark]

I wasn't talking about governments, but about population. that large swats of land are not claimed by any government is not that strange. in europe the rival nations would contend for land and absorb every place that was not reclaimed by another, but in other parts of the world many places lacked central government and were no part of any nation. north america, at the time of discovery, had no nations, only tribes. but still it had over ten millions inhabitants. Also large parts of asia didn't have any government, but they still had sparse villages.

All those explanations about wars and famine could hold for many of the unpopulated places, but not for all. the ones I picked as examples were the ones that did look fertile and not in conflict. lack of rivers in the caralain grass may be a reason, however. lack of commercial routes should not stop the rising of villages (we know some of them exist because verin mentions stopping at some of them when crossing the place between book 2 and 3), but maybe there isn't enough water to sustain more than a few villages and nomaddic tribes.

As for the left bank of the arinelle, that one has good access to water, a main commercial route, good land, and no conflict - so I see no reason why it should not be populated. It is probably the only place left for which I can't find a reasonable expalantion.

the presence of a known and widely used contraceptive is another good point that I missed. THat, along with a certain kind of culture, would prevent population growth and could therefore explain all the discrepancies.

We do see a lot of examples of this. In book 2, off Kinslayers dagger, there are a lot of small towns and population. When the Borderlanders meet in the Black Hills north of Andor.

Also, the trade routes through areas like the Caralain grass seem few, dominated by two massive, north-south rivers that are navigable from the Blight to Illian and Tear respectively. It would be like the dry, grassy steppes of Central Asia, without the Silk Road, and without hydroelectric and irrigation products.

And if I recall, there was something about the DO/Ishi touch on the world suppressing government's and possibly the population as well.

But I know how you feel, it did always seem a little empty to me too. In some ways more conflicting or disputed baronial city-states/non-nations like found within the Holy Roman empire might have made more sense to me. Despite the setting of 15 to 17th century tech that Jordan was shooting for, we have 19th and 20th century nationalism, even in Murandi and Altara.

Also, doesn't the 10 million NA inhabitants include the very populated Aztec and Maya areas? Tenochtitlan was one of the very largest cities in the entire world.

[king of nowhere]

Also, doesn't the 10 million NA inhabitants include the very populated Aztec and Maya areas? Tenochtitlan was one of the very largest cities in the entire world.

I was ccounting that in central america. As far as i know 10 millions is a good estimate for american indians, and i was counting only those since I was mentioning lands there didn't have a central governemnt but were still widely populated (at least by that time standard).

[Aethling]

If you figure ten million across the entire continent, that isn't all that much.

Historically, cities and towns have been at or near a source of water. Lakes and rivers give sources of food and drinking water. Seas give abundant food supplies. Any of them can be used for trade, though that may not be a major factor in primitive societies.

A town just wouldn't stay viable for very long if it was a hundred leagues from a water supply. A single family farm would just be too open for raiding by banditsif people knew it was a week or more away from the nearest help.

Until relatively modern times, the number one cause of death for women was childbirth. Imagine having a pregnant wife and being a week or more away from help. If anything goes wrong, the mother and child would probably die. That would leave the man out in the middle of nowhere by himself. Almost any farm accident would probably result in a serious condition, if not death.

Jordan says pretty early on that it is rare for someone to leave their town or village, with Tam leaving and coming back with a wife being a rarity. Doesn't Rand think or say at one point that he would probably never have left the two rivers region if Moraine had not come there? Andor hadn't sent a tax collector to the region in several generations, and even Elayne knows that she holds the region on paper only.

Humans are primarily a social being. They tend to flock together, if the resources are not there to support a population, the area will probably not be settled, except for the occasional pioneer family. Sure, people are encouraged by free land to call their own, but if you tell them they will probably have to fight for their lives on a daily basis against bandits, scarcity of water, scarcity of supplies, lack of other people, unknown/unreliable weather conditions, human frailty, lack of game, and zero trade, there probably wouldn't be too many people that would rush to take the land. Imagine having to travel for a week or more each way just to get a wagon full of ale barrels.

[Ryan]

I blame the Shadow. It's their fault the Tower has been dwindling (the Black Ajah guiding Tower policy in ways that reduce headcount over time), and it's their fault the population has been dwindling. I believe that this is what Darkfriends have been doing - starting wars, sowing discontent, engineering the downfall of nations. Oh, sure, now they have more specific goals, but what about all the years before the Dragon was Reborn? They've been making the world, its peoples and its cultures, as weak and antagonistic towards one another as they can, the better to ensure they can't survive the Last Battle.

[name_here]

I assumed that the Dark One was radiating a generic depopulation field. It seems like the population has been falling since the War of the Hundred Years for no readily identifiable reason. Sure, plagues, famines, and wars can take a big bite out of the population, but it doesn't seem like they've been frequent enough to explain a majority of the land area being basically abandoned. The birthrate just doesn't seem to be high enough for a sustainable population given the massive childhood mortality rate typical before modern medicine.

[king of nowhere]

as far as medicine goes, they knows the basic principles of hygiene, and that alone puts them on a totally different level than our middle age. their child mortality should be pretty low, except for modern first world standards.

On the other hand, I realized that the concept of "sparsely populated" is pretty different now from what it was once. The roman empire was estimated to have some 60 millions inhabitants, and it covered all the mediterranean basin, while today that is the population of italy alone. And roman empire was heavily populated for the standards of the time. And the story of leonidas at the thermopylae says there was only one road in that mountain range that could be passed by carriages, and that was in greece, another populated place.

So maybe having one village of 500-1000 inhabitants (including surrounding farms) every 20-30 or even 50 kilometers is a normal population density when the main economic activity is subsistence agriculture.

[Lady_Yasha]

Also, you're forgetting that the continent is as large as America is and if you've ever been to America it's sprawling cities surrounded either by smaller towns or big swathes of nothing and trees. Considering that Randland has had to deal with hordes of Trollocs, malevolent magic users, the Forsaken tampering with governments, and recovering from a near-apocalyptic event, the population recovery rate is going to be drastically different than our world.

Sure, we've fought wars since the dawn of time, but when have we ever had to fight off packs of thousands of blood-thirsty polar bears from the Arctic in armour, wielding swords, scythes, and axes? Randland is set roughly in our 17th century; looking at statistics there was only between 500,000,000 and 600,000,000 people around the globe. When you consider a country as large as America holds half that and there are other lands such as Shara, the Sea Folk, Seanchan - were a large contingent of Randlanders were sent to by Hawkwing - combined with the aforementioned threat of constant war and conflict and the recovery after the Breaking then that estimate is going to be lower for their world. It doesn't surprise me that there are sparse lands around the continent.

And of course then you have to deal with pestilence, plague, disease, famine; all of which might have arised from the Dark One's touch on the world and natural causes like lack of technology and knowledge of modern science.