On Jul 23, 2004, at 11:42 AM, Jose Marquez wrote: > Philip Hart wrote: >> On Fri, 23 Jul 2004, Ken Koester wrote: >>> This seems much too conservative. Agrarian France had 26M+; Britain, >>> 5.6M+. Europe as a whole could not have been less than 60M, and the >>> Empire is *at least* as large as Europe, to judge from travelling >>> times >>> (before teleportation, that is). China must have had at least 100M. >>> . . >>> . ah, I just pulled out my Braudel. In 1650, he cites a population >>> for >>> europe (including European Russia) of 100M; for Asia, of 250-330M; >>> for >>> Africa, of 100M. Your figures would lead to an extremely depopulated >>> Empire, by human--er, Easterner (-: --standards. Not impossible, if >>> the >>> birthrate is extremely low. But to be that low, I'd say that all our >>> expectations of what an Empire is, or does, or functions would be >>> wildly >>> off; the scale simply wouldn't translate to any experiences you care >>> to >>> name. >> I've long wondered how the agrarian Dragaerans (say that 3x fast) >> managed >> to cope with the overcast. Perhaps they've been experiencing >> diminishing >> crop yields for many cycles now... >> Also maintaining good topsoil for 200k years is probably difficult. > > Magic? Thats the big thing that changes the standard equation; magic.