Population Density FYI
Over 10 million people live in each of 36 megacities and counting. If told that Dunbar’s number for humans (number of people with whom one can maintain stable and trusting social relationships with) is about 150 (range 100–250), they will view the number as a minimum and assume that if forager-nomad ancestors lived in groups of only 20–50, range 5–85, mean 28, that they somehow managed to live in such small groups only because they had to as nomads, and thereby suffered from very low levels of human development.
Oh, but modern humans, especially the urbanized educated elites, are humans of NIMH domesticants whose opinion Gaia may not listen to to determine what works long term to persist.
John B. Calhoun’s first experiment with rats involved wild Norway rats with a Dunbar’s number of about 12. In a large outdoor enclosure/exclosure that prevented escape/predation, five females and enough males were released and provided with illimitable (to them) food and water. After initially exceeding Dunbar’s number, their population stabilized at 12 to 13 colonies of 12 rats each. When the number of rats in a colony reached 12 and neighboring communities were “too” close per evolved limits, the fertility rate declined to maintain a tolerable (low enough stress level) condition.
Calhoun expected the population, with unlimited food, to grow to 5,000, the density domestic lab rats live in. But these were normal rats who gotta know their limitations (modern humans, like other domesticants, don’t know their limitations secondary to dependence on technology and ideology). Wild rats (all normal animals) are not like metastatic r-selected modern humans (and maybe ancestral homininans prior to the arising of metastatic modernity 75k years ago were, like the wild rats, also a functioning, evolvable K-selected species).
For r-selected modern humans to perhaps renormalize, living in groups sizes pushing 50 members/group may be maladaptive. A better plan would be to live in groups of up to 28 for a few generations before experimenting with living in groups of 29–50.
The history of Hutterite groups of farmers is relevant. When the group size reached about 250, group mal-dynamics became intolerable and about 125 would leave to form a new “daughter” group on new land. While a group size of 125 was subjectively much better, no inference can be made that a marginally tolerable group size of 125 was optimal. Soon the group size would exceed 150, and again, by the time it was about 250, social stressors/conditions had deteriorated to below tolerable and a new daughter group would buy new land (because at the time they still could) and the pattern was repeated.
Exogamy is a need, and also an evolved want (with modern exceptions), so more than one community is needed. Per anthropological data of forager-nomads, the number of individuals is also 150, but as a minimum, so 3 groups of 50, 5 groups of 30, or 10 groups of 15 could work. When a young’un comes of age, there are potential mates in other groups they have interactions with to consider. Optimal is closer to 28 interconnected and trusted groups of 28 trusted-with-your-life others in your band-sized group (a condition of trust no modern urban humans , and few rural, live in).
Critically important is understanding trust and the lack of it, that group size matters — that the number of repeat interactions is critical (determinate) to the outcome selected for. A game theory simulation is perhaps key. Play the simulation game, vary the numbers, see/feel the outcome. Copykittens and Trust (skip intro to play the game — a few hours of playing by changing the settings may be revealing, i.e. worth the time spent).
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A group name for renormalizing humans is needed and ‘country’, ‘state’, ‘kingdom’, ‘confederacy’, ‘tribal chiefdom’, ‘dukedom’, ‘principality’, ‘city state’, ‘client’, ‘duchy’, ‘republic’, ‘tribal city state’, ‘nomadic confederation’, ‘tribal confederation‘, ‘empire’, ‘tribal kingdom’, ‘kingdom city state’, ‘khaganate’, ‘tribal principality’, ‘imamate’, ‘tribal federation’, ‘bishopric’, ‘caliphate’, ‘nomadic kingdom’, ‘viscounty’, ‘archduchy’, ‘sultanate’, ‘emirate’, ‘federated city state’, ‘protectorate’, ‘monarchy’, ‘territory’, ‘sheikhdom’, ‘thalassocracy’, ‘commonwealth’, ‘colony’, ‘shogunate’, ‘pontificate’, ‘vassal state’, ‘people’s republic’, …, are all names for political entities, none of whom are remotely viable long term, so a pox on all their houses of malediction.
Trustry: A community of trusted-with-your-life nature centric others with a gifting economy.
Trustate: Largest sized viable socioeconomic-state level group of interacting trusted communities (trustries) with a biophysical economy of enough.
A band-sized group of 20–50, range 5–85, mean 28, provides for enough repeat interactions to select for trust. So a community of 28 (20–50) would be an apolitical trustry, typically a band of sisters (aka ‘the Mothers’) who don’t need political ideology/narratives to know what needs to be done for posterity’s sake. And a set of 28 (3–50) trustries would be a trustate of interacting trustries of viable-sized non-sovereign communities of renormalizing humans. Trustate population range 150 to 2,500. Optimum range of trustate size: 400 to 800; trustry: 20–28.
Band Size Population (dyad number is a measure of social complexity)
Range typically 20–50, so dyad range = about one order of magnitude.
Trustry Overpopulation
The evidence is that a level of complexity over about 10k dyads (Dunbar’s number =142) selects for failure of social groups long term, and per our pre-expansionist human ancestors of six million years, a 20–50 group size is what human biology norms makes work best, and for would-be renormalizing modern humans, keep it closer to 20 than 50, beyond which fully normal homininans may fear to tread. The condition of living in normal for humans group sizes selects for renormalization as observed in cultural isolates. Individuals don’t have to do anything but adapt, however much against their will or wants.
To generalize, envision a trustate of 28 groups/trustries of 28 people as ballpark (784 people living in 28 dispersed communities/trustries with a meet up place that is occupied on occasion, perhaps weekly gatherings of 3–5 nearby trustries hosted in turn by each, to a monthly gathering for a day or two of all 28 trustries in a central area where everyone has a second home/dwelling).
A maximum number of low-intensity agrarian settlements could globally number about 27 thousand tribal-sized trustates/societies/groups of 3–50 trustries/bands/communities totaling 784 people (range 150 to 2500).
But maximizing numbers/quantity is the cultural norm of r-selected modern metastatic human thinking. If a modern human could renormalize, they would think ‘optimal’ or ‘enough’ for humans and the planet (all biotic communities, especially the one they live in).
There are in the early 21st century about 10,000 ethno-linguistic-cultural groups larger than about 10k members, and a founding population of 150 is enough, so minimally a human population of 1.5 million living in 10,000 habitats/trustates would be enough, certainly better (from a human centric POV) than zero humans persisting long term.
The founding population of Clovis who came to occupy North America was 250 (per archaeogenetic estimate), and Zealandia was initially settled by about 400 Polynesians who became the more than one million Māori of today. So a founding population of 700 is quite enough.
Ten thousand groups of trustates averaging 700 members (or 20k averaging 350) makes for a population of 7,000,000 renormalizing humans. After 500 years, the impact of 7 million could be assessed to determine if the impact was compatible with the goal of not causing species extinctions nor preventing new species from evolving as compared to the 80% of the land human do not occupy/use.
Reassessing for degradation of Earth’s life-support system would be ongoing as the millennia passed. Humans could become evolvable animals again. Imagine. Make it so (because you can’t choose not to), or not if you can choose to obfuscate the human condition.
