Just curious. If you were reading a work of fantasy fiction, and there was a town out in the middle of nowhere that, without any sort of magic, could literally sustain itself for generations without any outside influence (no outside traders, no visitors from out of town bringing needed revenue/goods, etc.) how big must such a settlement be in order for it to be believable?
And, if you can answer that question, what would you say the general makeup of the population must be? (As in, for example, 30% must be farmers, 5% must be blacksmiths, 10% must be teachers, etc.)
Very curious as to your input.
A lot of that depends on the surrounding environment and it's neighbors. Defense, food, and water would be the critical components, and depending on how easy those were would shape what was sustainable. A village in the middle of the wide open plains would need more people to provide defense, but would have the space to grow more food; a small isolated mountain valley wouldn't be able to provide as much food, but wouldn't need as many people to maintain adequate defenses.
Alright, I'll fill in some of those blanks. Let's say it's a town located along a medium-sized river. (Like, say 150 feet across.) On one side is this river (beyond that is forest, possibly some marshland), and on the other side (a couple miles away) is a massive forest about a hundred miles across. The area is moderately hilly, but no mountains within easy distance- plains all around, and lots of easily-usable farmland. The climate is temperate, the winters aren't very harsh, though the summers can get pretty hot.
As far as protection, the town itself has practically no protection- let's assume, even, that there are no other known settlements within any sort of reasonable distance. So they aren't expecting invasion or anything of the sort. (It's incredibly secluded. For argument's sake, let's say the closest settlement worth mentioning is several months' travel away.)
I'd say a decent village of around 36-48 could do it. At least a third of that being children, ensuring enough survive to marry and produce their own children. A few specialists, i.e. blacksmith, doctor/healer, a few fully trained warriors, teacher/lorekeeper, animal breeders, priest/shaman/wisefolk; those would probably make up about a quarter of the adult population. The remainder of the adult population being farmers, hunters, fisherman, etc, all of which would have basic training in combat, healing, hunting, and other basic survival skills. Access to metal would be a real challenge, but otherwise, they would have ready access to all the other resources required. I could imagine such a village breeding dogs, horses, and other animals to aid them in not only defense, but common day to day tasks.
Any smaller, and you would have a hard time ensuring enough children that survived into adulthood. Any larger, you reach the point where the logistics of managing the village, it's members, and it's available resources becomes more complicated and the procurement of more specialized goods becomes a significant issue. 36-48 seems like the most reasonable number to me to be able to sustain itself in these circumstances while still maintaining a fairly simple power structure.
realistically, a self-sustaining settlement could be as small as a single family of survival farmers. the bigger the settlment, the more specialised you can have the villagers...
for instance, in a moderately sized village you could get away with a single blacksmith and his apprentice provided that everyone has enough smithing knowledge to make basic repairs ect and they only need to go to the specialist when they're out of their league. on the flip side he/she will have a small plot of land to grow some of his/her food, but because s/he's spending most of her day at the forge teaching the next generation and handing down the basics to the sons of the farmers ect s/he can't work very much land and thus barters skills for food. the same can be true of almost any profession that you can get away with knowing just enough about most of the time, such as making dye for sheep (i know it's involved somewhere in the process of getting new sheep... i'm just not sure where exactly!). if your isolated yokals are content to wear home-stitched clothes and can make basic fabric, you can get away without a designated tailor. replace formal boots with leather wrap-arounds tied on with straps and you can do without any cobblers. haircuts are just a matter of grabbing the shears? no need for a barber.
more people allows for specialisation, which means that you get more sophistication... at least in theory. however, i think that the limit you're looking at for your town is going to be an upper limit, rather than a lower one.
also, if there's no external trade then it's likely everyone just goes over to whoever has what they want and tries to barter it off of them. prices will be highly variable if money is used, and it's unlikely that there'll be anything resembling shopkeepers other than the blacksmith and (possibly) the publican (ie: the guy who makes the best moonshine in the area. every family probably has its own secret brew, though.)
Warning: the above is provided without any reguard or reference to real life. any accuricy is purely coincidental. use at your own risk.
The only difficulty with a single family is that they have to have at least some outside contact to bring in new blood to keep themselves going.
The only difficulty with a single family is that they have to have at least some outside contact to bring in new blood to keep themselves going.
unless they're very, very inbred!
ok, i'll admit i didn't think of that one, and it was an oversight on my part.
|
Inbreeding would be be deadly once they met other populations. But as long as they lived in small area and outsiders weren't bringing in new diseases and they were all genetically healthy, they would be good. Sex with your sister is only a problem if you both have genetic defects.
For example, geneticists estimate the Americas were settled by a population that was had around 70 original people. But by 1491 they were around 100 million but they then died at a rate of around 28/1 (as compared to settlers bringing in smallpox etc) from introduced disease over the next few centuries.
|
I have seen a documentary about the settlement of Australia and it said that the lowest number of couples to be able to have few issues with inbreeding would be about 50. Now if you average 2.5 kids for each couple that gives them around 125 kids. If you add in say 1/2 that for elderly you get around 63 old folks. Giving you roughly 288 people.
So just guessing at a vibrant self sufficient group in an area like you are talking about, with little or no inbreeding I would say 300 is a nice round number. You can change that up or down as you like, with different factors feeding into it, like there was a plague or drought or some such.
Just my 2cp.
One note on inbreeding that I think should also be mentioned. It seems that positive traits can form if the inbreeding is not with a close relation. Evidence on this has been shown in the nation of Iceland. Because of geographical separation almost everyone is related distantly to everyone else. Close inbreeding especially in multiple generations can bring on sometimes many poor results, such as blue tinged skin and/or other blood diseases such as hemophilia.
Contact with a non-native virus or other disease would make an isolated community easy prey and could very well wipe that community out, regardless of how distantly they are related to anyone else in the region.
Alright, great points all around. One more question: How important is this level of realism in your fantasy fiction? If a novel or whatever talks about a settlement of, say, 150 that apparently hasn't had any significant contact with any other settlements in several generations, is your first thought going to be, "Pssh, this is unrealistic. Screw reading this," or would you be more inclined to just roll with it?
I know for a fact that such secluded communities existed in the north of Norway until well into the previous century. (Even tax collectors did not come there.) These are usually small villages or a cluster of small villages. Because of the landscape (mountains and cold climate) most of the year they could not reach other villages. Some lived so secluded that they could not even understand the dialect in the next village (on the other side of the mountain). I do not know how large these villages were, but they cannot number more than 1,000 inhabitants.
In Switzerland there were such secluded valleys as well, e.g. Lötschental (they had their own language as well), which has been opened up by a tunnel only mid 20eth century. There should be information about these communities on the internet.
If they are all summoners I think the number will go down of actual people because then they bind outsiders. Hmm isolated village of summoners with a tradition that is not visited by the locals because they think it is cursed seems interesting.
I would say that in some ways after a certain point the larger the settlement the less believable it is. After all, the settlement is going to need food, so a town will have to have outlying farms at least, and a city will almost certainly need other settlements devoted to food production that they get food from.
|
|
Alright, great points all around. One more question: How important is this level of realism in your fantasy fiction? If a novel or whatever talks about a settlement of, say, 150 that apparently hasn't had any significant contact with any other settlements in several generations, is your first thought going to be, "Pssh, this is unrealistic. Screw reading this," or would you be more inclined to just roll with it?
Yes, I'd read it. One group I might look at to make it 'believable' this is Pueblo Indians. Up til this century they mostly married within the village. Most had very low numbers and only one was abandoned in the 200 years.
Contributor
|
I think this page may have links to some of the stuff for which you're looking.
From that page, this one for occupation breakdowns
This one for full kingdoms.
Hope that helps. If not, hope its interesting.
Awesome. Thanks a lot, everyone!
|
|
I have seen a documentary about the settlement of Australia and it said that the lowest number of couples to be able to have few issues with inbreeding would be about 50.If I'm not mistaken, a number that low as a starting seed number would require the women to be almost constantly pregnant.
Also keep in mind that Australia was used as the penal dumping ground the American colonies were once targeted for, so you had an ongoing population influx.
The documentary was on Natives, who were there long before anyone else had a clue that the place on the other end of the world existed. The DNA evidence suggested that yes it was in fact approximately 50 couples. So yeah maybe the women each had a brood after they settled. I wasn't there so I couldn't tell you.
|
|
Alright, great points all around. One more question: How important is this level of realism in your fantasy fiction? If a novel or whatever talks about a settlement of, say, 150 that apparently hasn't had any significant contact with any other settlements in several generations, is your first thought going to be, "Pssh, this is unrealistic. Screw reading this," or would you be more inclined to just roll with it?
Depends on the level of details as presented in the story.
Another interesting utility is Chaosium's Cities [Stephen Abrams & Jon Everson].
It has a chapter on populating cities that notes that, bsed on Medieval/Rennissance yields, it would take 3-5 acres to feed one person, and that 1/3 of the land would usually be left fallow.
These rates me4an 1 sq mi of farmland (60 acres) feeds/supports 80/130 people.
It slso notes an average rate of 6-8 people/building; varing baed on culture.
Uncrowded western/nortern europe: 6-8
Denser population/Middle East flavor: 8-10
Extended/multiple families or traditional Asian: 10-15
A five mile square/hex area (25/22 sq mi) could feed a population of 1750-2800.
The book further notes that the actual population density of medieval cities varied between 100 & 400 people/hectare (100x100 meters).