Population of Australia and New Zealand with an advanced aboriginal civilization?

[Duke_of_Darkness]

Similar to the New World, Australia had a large population decrease during colonization and only really had 2 centuries to experience major population growth (which has been slowing down a lot recently). New Zealand on the other hand had no people at all before the 15th Century and got colonized by the British even later than Australia. It should come as no surprise that Australia and New Zealand have some of the lowest population densities on Earth. Australia is the size of the contiguous USA but has less people than Texas. New Zealand is even larger than the United Kingdom but has less than 10% of the UK's population.

So let's suppose that pre-colonial Australia is home to a complex Iron Age civilization similar to others in Southeast Asia. This could either be due to a Lands of Red and Gold style timeline or it could be due to Southeast Asians migrating to Australia en masse. As a result, Australia has a much larger and advanced agricultural aboriginal population that is resistant to diseases. New Zealand is also discovered by Polynesians far earlier and many of them settle there. Because of these facts, Australia and New Zealand receive exploitative colonialism instead of settler colonialism.

If Australia and New Zealand possessed a major civilization for over a 1,000 years, what estimated population would it have today? Australia has a lot of desert but it still has a lot of farmland in coastal areas. New Zealand has decent climate but it is also quite mountainous.

 

[kholieken]

My amateur guess is 20-30 million of people for Australia. Modern Australia had 1/3 arable lands of China or India. But it had much lower quality soil and drier weather.

for New Zealand my guess is 300.000 people.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Depends when. I think a premodern indigenous agriculture Australia might only be 10 million or so, especially if it's Southeast Asian-esque since they didn't have large populations either. Water is still going to be a huge issue so it probably would never pass 40-50 million total before future technology (i.e. mass desalination/cheap energy).

New Zealand has the potential to be huge. Assuming Polynesians get the appropriate crops for the cooler weather (kumara isn't high yielding in much of New Zealand), then it could definitely be 5-6 million. With modern agricultural productivity and medicine, then 40-50 million is definitely possible.

 

[CaptainCalvert]

Depends when. I think a premodern indigenous agriculture Australia might only be 10 million or so, especially if it's Southeast Asian-esque since they didn't have large populations either. Water is still going to be a huge issue so it probably would never pass 40-50 million total before future technology (i.e. mass desalination/cheap energy).

New Zealand has the potential to be huge. Assuming Polynesians get the appropriate crops for the cooler weather (kumara isn't high yielding in much of New Zealand), then it could definitely be 5-6 million. With modern agricultural productivity and medicine, then 40-50 million is definitely possible.

Current Australian population is substantially less than the 40million you're suggesting here and the carbon footprint (ie energy/industrial input) is high. I know the grasslands have declined since introduction of rabbits, but there's no way the pre-industrial age could support anything like that.
Given that water constrains pre-industrial lifestyle, and the isolation of Australia I'd suspect the maximum sustainable population was pretty much what it was when Europeans and Asians first came across the place. If I remember correctly this was in the region of 2 to 3 Million.
New Zealand has been occupied at times for something like 1,000 years, and permanently settled from around the 1300s. That's likely not enough time to reach peak population. The rapid adoption of European tools, military technology, animals and crops shows good adaptability and suggests that given more time the population could have grown. However, the absence of any mammals (other than bats) means no domestic working animals, but domestication of birds and some crop improvements could be expected if given more time. It's still hard to see it getting close to the current 5 million.

 

[BiasHangover]

3 million for Australia, maybe 2 million for New Zealand.

 

[Arkenfolm]

Current Australian population is substantially less than the 40million you're suggesting here and the carbon footprint (ie energy/industrial input) is high. I know the grasslands have declined since introduction of rabbits, but there's no way the pre-industrial age could support anything like that.
Given that water constrains pre-industrial lifestyle, and the isolation of Australia I'd suspect the maximum sustainable population was pretty much what it was when Europeans and Asians first came across the place. If I remember correctly this was in the region of 2 to 3 Million.

The maximum population in pre-contact Australia could not have been any higher than 1 million and was probably closer to 750K. This is in line with what we know from similar environments with cultures who lived similar hunter gatherer lifestyles such as indigenous California. Were Australia agricultural, then its natives would have inevitably built canals (which has plenty of regional precedent) and farmed appropriate crops for their environment and like all premodern farming peoples, still hunted and gathered wild plants to supplement their diet as needed.

Based on plausible indigenous agriculture packages like LoRaG, something imported like Austronesian agriculture, or a hybrid of the two (maybe an indigenous plant is domesticated that can grow in the cooler temperate areas of Australia since taro, bananas, etc. would hit a limit around the 30th parallel south), the population would logically be far higher. While pre-industrial societies cannot replicate modern Australia's canals and irrigations, they can do a very job approximating it and make up for it by the fact that pre-industrial societies seem more likely to exploit marginal lands for lack of better options (i.e. Norse farming/pastoralism in Greenland). As for the issue of bad soil in Australia, every farming society in history has discovered ways to improve the soil. Even OTL Aboriginals had a method with how they set controlled burns to improve plants available to be gathered. I could imagine charcoal, dung from livestock, and other substances being used to improve the soil along with agricultural methods used in OTL drier climates.

New Zealand has been occupied at times for something like 1,000 years, and permanently settled from around the 1300s. That's likely not enough time to reach peak population. The rapid adoption of European tools, military technology, animals and crops shows good adaptability and suggests that given more time the population could have grown. However, the absence of any mammals (other than bats) means no domestic working animals, but domestication of birds and some crop improvements could be expected if given more time. It's still hard to see it getting close to the current 5 million.

OP specified earlier settlement so I'd assume chickens, dogs, and pigs would arrive there as well. I was presuming they'd be able to obtain crops from elsewhere, like maybe quinoa, maize, or potatoes from South America in addition to kumara. Or perhaps they'd obtain it from Southeast Asia. Either way, it's huge butterflies and means a radically different Maori society, or likely multiple different societies, since even OTL there's the example of the Moriori (an early Maori offshoot) and the Maori in the southernmost part of South Island who were very distinct (and ended up mostly destroyed/absorbed by refugees from further north during the Musket Wars).

 

[Tosa Inu]

Have the Hindu (later Muslim) traders and fishermen from Makassar and Mollucas ended up colonizing North Australia somewhere in 8th-9th Century instead of treating the Southern Landmass as the "Mystical Crocodile Kingdom" they're known in pre-colonial Indonesia.

An Indo-Hindu colonization of North Australia, before gunpowder become known, would give Australian Aboriginal population more Chance to develop better technologically, as stone and wooden clubs and spears would have easier time fighting Steel Spesrs, as Infonesian warriors of that time generally fight bare-chested. Later Islamic invasion might also worked, but at the same time, it is, by necessity, would convert Australian Aborigines into Muslims.

Onlu after that tech boost, the Australians ATL could grew into some sort of 40-50 millions.

 

[Jared]

Off the top of my head, an Australia with its own agriculture, could easily have 10+ million people, and New Zealand at least 3-4 million. That's not based on anything in particular, though.

 

[Gloss]

Off the top of my head, an Australia with its own agriculture, could easily have 10+ million people, and New Zealand at least 3-4 million. That's not based on anything in particular, though.

Isn't 10 million quite high? South East Asia itself despite 4 millennia of local agriculture(even if imported from outside) ended up with not that many people until like the early modern period despite the presence of states and complex societies.
If we mean in the sense of "maximal pre-industrial agricultural" population you could be correct but arguably most of the world never reached this potential and places like Australia are the least likely to given their isolation.

 

[Jared]

Isn't 10 million quite high? South East Asia itself despite 4 millennia of local agriculture(even if imported from outside) ended up with not that many people until like the early modern period despite the presence of states and complex societies.
If we mean in the sense of "maximal pre-industrial agricultural" population you could be correct but arguably most of the world never reached this potential and places like Australia are the least likely to given their isolation.

Depends on the nature of the crops, but overall, 10 million is quite conservative for an Australia which has Australian-adapted crops in place. My previous post was a bit flippant - these are the numbers I used for Lands of Red and Gold, not numbers I picked out of the air.

Australia has a much bigger area than SE Asia (around 7.5 to 4.5 million square kilometres, depending on what's counted as part of SE Asia). Yes, a lot of Australia is desert, but a lot of pre-modern SE Asia was also covered in jungle which was incredibly hard to clear en masse with the tools available at the time. The accessible arable areas of Australia are bigger than those of SE Asia.

More importantly, most of Australia also lacks the array of tropical diseases which afflicted SE Asia of the area. There was malaria present in northern Australia, but not over most of the continent, and the mosquito species which carry malaria in Australia aren't as efficient at spreading it as those in SE Asia. Most other tropical diseases were not found in Australia.

 

[The Tai-Pan]

Off the top of my head, an Australia with its own agriculture, could easily have 10+ million people, and New Zealand at least 3-4 million. That's not based on anything in particular, though.

OP did actually reference your TL so he seems to be aware of your take.

(which, I should add, is really good and anyone here that hasn't read Lands of Red and Gold, go read it. Better yet, go buy it and read it).

 

[Jared]

OP did actually reference your TL so he seems to be aware of your take.

(which, I should add, is really good and anyone here that hasn't read Lands of Red and Gold, go read it. Better yet, go buy it and read it).

I knew the OP was aware of LoRaG at least to some degree, but figured I'd point out the numbers I came up with. Which are certainly open to debate, but some thought has gone into them.

 

[Gloss]

Depends on the nature of the crops, but overall, 10 million is quite conservative for an Australia which has Australian-adapted crops in place. My previous post was a bit flippant - these are the numbers I used for Lands of Red and Gold, not numbers I picked out of the air.

Adapted crops leading to these population densities by themselves seems a bit of questionable concept, plenty of locally adapted plants hardly ended up supporting massive local populations in the regions they were domesticated or at least cultivated for extremely long times(up to 6 millennia), some regions like the Fertile Crescent seem to have largely stagnated on a macroscopic perspective from the Late Bronze Age to basically 1900(obviously with a lot of growth and decline within this 3 millennia period), at least compared to how other regions grew.
I'm not saying they are impossible, just that instead of being a conservative figure or a figure that could "easily" be achieved they would be a medium-high figure based on the assumption that Australia would develop agriculture more advanced than most of South East Asia did until basically the early modern period(including Polynesia) and even most of Africa and the Americas outside of the 2 main civilizations.
I guess this could be what OP mean by "advanced civilization"(although he referenced South East Asia as well) but it's important to remember, there is a huge difference between the Eastern Sea board and the Mississippi valley and Mesoamerica or between 1000 CE India and China and South East Asia or Iron Age Italy and Iron Age Poland/northern Germany

The Maori themselves were barely able to reach 1 person/km2 in the North Island after 4-5 centuries being there.
Papua seemingly developed agriculture by itself and had 3-4 million people in 1960 I believe which is something like 4-5 people/km2.
Java island had a population of 5 million either around the 14th century or even up to 1800(probably somewhere in between) and today it has 150 million people, having grown 30 times in about 4-7 centuries from a level that was reached after a bit more than 3 millennia of continuous local cultivation.
It easy to tunnel vision and imagine a chain of event where Australia somehow ends up on a fast track in developing the right tools to deal with their diverse environment but it's important to remember that countless people "failed" to match such advancement throughout history even if in hindsight you could imagine a way they could have replicated successes seen in the Yellow Valley, Ganges, Fertile Crescent, Mesoamerica etc.

Australia has a much bigger area than SE Asia (around 7.5 to 4.5 million square kilometres, depending on what's counted as part of SE Asia). Yes, a lot of Australia is desert, but a lot of pre-modern SE Asia was also covered in jungle which was incredibly hard to clear en masse with the tools available at the time. The accessible arable areas of Australia are bigger than those of SE Asia.

As far as I'm aware the barrier to population growth in South East Asia were the crops themselves or the way they were grown, not literal physical incapability of cutting down tree, which I'm unsure as to why it would stop anyone ever if cutting these trees actually allows you to expand your population and farmed areas, surely in 3 millennia you could cut down any jungle regardless of which tools you use especially if each square kilometer cut is used productively.

More importantly, most of Australia also lacks the array of tropical diseases which afflicted SE Asia of the area. There was malaria present in northern Australia, but not over most of the continent, and the mosquito species which carry malaria in Australia aren't as efficient at spreading it as those in SE Asia. Most other tropical diseases were not found in Australia.

The thing is that India and most of China itself also had malaria and that hasn't stopped them from achieving higher densities earlier, seemingly what stopped South East Asia was some other factor.

 

[Jared]

I'm not saying they are impossible, just that instead of being a conservative figure or a figure that could "easily" be achieved they would be a medium-high figure based on the assumption that Australia would develop agriculture more advanced than most of South East Asia did until basically the early modern period(including Polynesia) and even most of Africa and the Americas outside of the 2 main civilizations.

I did preface it by "depending on the nature of the crops", but I actually thought 10 million was a conservative estimate given the agricultural package in question for Australia.

10 million over Australia as a whole (including Tasmania) is a population density of about 1.3 people per square kilometre. Even if we assume that half the continent is desert and thus very thinly populated, that gets to 2.6 people per square kilometre - hardly a high population density.

The Maori themselves were barely able to reach 1 person/km2 in the North Island after 4-5 centuries being there.
Papua seemingly developed agriculture by itself and had 3-4 million people in 1960 I believe which is something like 4-5 people/km2.
Java island had a population of 5 million either around the 14th century or even up to 1800(probably somewhere in between) and today it has 150 million people, having grown 30 times in about 4-7 centuries from a level that was reached after a bit more than 3 millennia of continuous local cultivation.

The Māori had literally one domesticated crop (kumera aka sweet potato), and it was a tropical-adapted one that barely grew in most of New Zealand, and two other semi-domesticated ones (cabbage trees and bracken fern) which were very low yield. 1 person / km2 is understandable in those circumstances, but not comparable to if there is a suitable crop package in place.

PNG had the double barrier of being both incredibly mountainous and full of jungle. Getting to 4-5 people per km2 isn't bad in those circumstances.

If we take the population of Java as 5 million, then that's a population density of a bit over 31 people per km2. Java, of course, was (and is) by far the most populous part of Indonesia.

Compared to that, a population density of 2.6 people per km2 in an alternate Australia (which assumes that the drier half of the continent has near-zero population) doesn't seem all that unreasonable to me.

It easy to tunnel vision and imagine a chain of event where Australia somehow ends up on a fast track in developing the right tools to deal with their diverse environment but it's important to remember that countless people "failed" to match such advancement throughout history even if in hindsight you could imagine a way they could have replicated successes seen in the Yellow Valley, Ganges, Fertile Crescent, Mesoamerica etc.

As far as I'm aware the barrier to population growth in South East Asia were the crops themselves or the way they were grown, not literal physical incapability of cutting down tree, which I'm unsure as to why it would stop anyone ever if cutting these trees actually allows you to expand your population and farmed areas, surely in 3 millennia you could cut down any jungle regardless of which tools you use especially if each square kilometer cut is used productively.

The thing is that India and most of China itself also had malaria and that hasn't stopped them from achieving higher densities earlier, seemingly what stopped South East Asia was some other factor.

Tropical soils are in general poorer than those further from the equator (high rainfall leading to greater leaching of soil nutrients is the explanation I've seen). Malaria is the worst tropical disease, but not the only one, so other regions having malaria doesn't make them fully comparable. There may be other factors as well, but those two go a long way toward explaining the population difference.

Large-scale jungle clearing in preindustrial cultures was extremely rare. The Classical Mayans are the only example I can think of offhand, and even they collapsed fairly quickly (see tropical soils being poorer in nutrients, especially when cleared). So it's not surprising that it didn't happen that much in most of SE Asia. Maybe Java? I'm not sure how much they cleared, but they had a much higher population density than the rest of the region, so that would make sense.

 

[Gabingston]

Large-scale jungle clearing in preindustrial cultures was extremely rare. The Classical Mayans are the only example I can think of offhand, and even they collapsed fairly quickly (see tropical soils being poorer in nutrients, especially when cleared). So it's not surprising that it didn't happen that much in most of SE Asia. Maybe Java? I'm not sure how much they cleared, but they had a much higher population density than the rest of the region, so that would make sense.

I'm guessing Java was (and still is) able to support a higher population due to the volcanoes refreshing the soil from time to time.