exotic and unusual the ¿ rst Agrarian civilizations were when they appeared.)
In 1000 B.C.E., Agrarian civilizations controlled almost 2.5 megameters
(about 2% of the area of Afro-Eurasia that is controlled by modern states).
By 1 C.E., with the appearance of huge empires in Persia, China, and the
Mediterranean, Agrarian civilizations covered 8 megameters (about 6%
of the area under modern states, and about 40 times the area controlled
by the very ¿ rst states). By 1000 C.E., Agrarian civilizations covered
about 16 megameters, which is still only about 13% of the area controlled
by modern states.
What do these ¿ gures suggest? First, they imply population growth. Agrarian
civilizations included the most À ourishing and productive regions on Earth,
so they were the regions in which populations grew most rapidly, and their
growth is therefore a key ingredient in the growth of world populations. Ten
thousand years ago there were 5–6 million people on Earth. By 5,000 years
ago, there were about 50 million people, so the population had multiplied
by about 10 times in the 5,000 years of the early Agrarian era. By 1,000
years ago, there were about 250 million people on Earth, so the population
had multiplied by about 5 times in the 4,000 years of the later Agrarian
era. These ¿ gures suggest that, though populations continued to grow in
the later Agrarian era, they grew no faster than in the early Agrarian era.
Taagepera’s ¿ gures also remind us that even quite recently many people in
Afro-Eurasia still lived outside Agrarian civilizations, in small communities
of pastoralists, foragers, or independent peasants. However, Taagepera’s
¿ gures also chart a fundamental transformation in human history because
they suggest that within just 4,000 years most humans on Earth lived
within Agrarian civilizations. Agrarian civilizations had become the
normal type of community for human beings in Afro-Eurasia (and probably
throughout the world).
The area under Agrarian civilizations expanded, in part, because tributary
rulers learned to control larger areas. In 3000 B.C.E., states were novelties,
and their rulers were unsure of the best ways of managing such vast and
complex communities. Over 4,000 years, their political, military, and
economic skills improved, and so did their reach and power. The basic
challenge was to maximize the resources rulers extracted from populations
consisting mainly of small-holding peasants. We call resources extracted in