Frequent disturbances enhanced the resilience of past human populations (original) (raw)

The record of past human adaptations provides crucial lessons for guiding responses to crises in the future. To date, there have been no systematic global comparisons of humans' ability to absorb and recover from disturbances through time. We present results of the rst attempt to synthesise resilience across a broad sample of prehistoric population time frequency data, spanning 30,000 years of human history. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of population decline show that frequent disturbances enhance a population's capacity to resist and recover from later downturns. Land use patterns are important mediators of the strength of this positive association: farming and herding societies are more vulnerable but also more resilient overall. The results show that important trade-offs exist when adopting novel or alternate land use strategies. Main Text Understanding the range of past responses of human societies to disturbances is a global priority across the social and natural sciences and will support the development of solutions to future crises 1-3. Numerous case studies have addressed past cultural collapse, transformation, and persistence, although debate surrounds how to best characterise these processes 4. A major unresolved issue is the