Before the Roman conquest in 52 BC the great Celtic city of Bibracte had more than thirty thousand inhabitants.[1] protected by a huge stone wall of the Murus Gallicus type enclosing an area of 135 hectares. -- Quoth the wiki.
For those following along, 135 hectares is ~ 0.5 square miles. 30,000 people in half a square mile is the population density of manhattan.
The ancient world is remarkably impressive.
Yes, this is about necromancers. This is still really cool!
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As I continue to research I am astonished at the urban density in the ancient world. We build 10, 20, 30 and more floors, but somehow they had the same number of people per square foot of real estate.
ReplyDeleteMaybe its just that we have so much more space -- and demand it! -- but damn. I expected modern cities would have higher urban density than ancient ones. Apparently not really.
Damn. That density would put this into the top 20 cities worldwide now.
Yeah, when you have a family of six or seven in one bed, or a flophouse where you rent a plank to sleep on for the night, in a room lined with planks, you can fit a lot of bodies in a little space.
ReplyDeleteWell that's about half the area of London England proper (the walled part of the city) which in Roman times had a population of roughly 60,000 so comparable to density.
ReplyDeleteLiving in a city that dense where every third person is actually a zombie would be thoroughly grim.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. The last couple of thousand years have seen astonishing changes in quality of life.
ReplyDeleteAs for the necromancers: My current planned city is about 10,000 people in 4 square miles. That's a third the people in 8 times the size, so one 24th the density of this crazy.
I may well change that -- and, of course, the cities of Azithan have parks, schools, and bathhouses. The health and consent of the population matters.
Josh Roby Yeah, but how high can you go?
ReplyDeleteLike, we live in 700 square feet in a building twenty floors high with, I think, 300 units. Nothing in the ancient world was that high -- even the roman insulae were maybe seven, and they were death traps.
Joseph Teller Thanks! I've been looking for densities of ancient cities. Know where I can find a list?
ReplyDeleteI had that from research I did for a Roman Era campaign some 7 years back, I don't have the list of my references for it, not even sure if I would have the books since some were from the library.
ReplyDeleteI will point out that Wikipedia has good page for research on it with some good numbers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_demography
(useful references and bibliography)
And there's also some info at :
http://www.ancient.eu/city/
If you try to do a google search AVOID results that point to historum.com they seem to have been compromised and have some sort of scam program that tries to convince you there is a virus on your machine etc.
Joseph Teller Thanks. If wikipedia has a problem, its search. I've been looking for "ancient city size", "how big were ancient cities", etc. Either my google fu is weak (well ... I mean, it is but not thhaaaaat bad), or these things aren't indexed easily.
ReplyDeleteI'm betting its their indexing being bad.
ReplyDeleteGoogle fu is hit and miss. I can get exactly what I want some days and other days I can miss a keyword and end up nowhere in a search that is useful. Their algorithms are imperfect as well and sometimes try to second guess what you want badly.
The walled part of Ancient Athens was under a square mile.
ReplyDeleteJeebs. Tiny!