Hunter–gatherer population growth rate estimates extracted from archaeological proxies and ethnographic data show remarkable differences, as archaeological estimates are orders of magnitude smaller than ethnographic and historical estimates. This could imply that prehistoric hunter–gatherers were demographically different from recent hunter–gatherers. However, we show that the resolution of archaeological human population proxies is not sufficiently high to detect actual population dynamics and growth rates that can be observed in the historical and ethnographic data. We argue that archaeological and ethnographic population growth rates measure different things; therefore, they are not directly comparable. While ethnographic growth rate estimates of hunter–gatherer populations are directly linked to underlying demographic parameters, archaeological estimates track changes in the long-term mean population size, which reflects changes in the environmental productivity that provide the ultimate constraint for forager population growth. We further argue that because of this constraining effect, hunter–gatherer populations cannot exhibit long-term growth independently of increasing environmental productivity.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Cross-disciplinary approaches to prehistoric demography’.

从考古代理和人种学数据中提取的狩猎采集者人口增长率估计值显示出显着差异，因为考古学估计值比人种学和历史估计值小几个数量级。这可能意味着史前狩猎采集者在人口统计上与最近的狩猎采集者不同。然而，我们表明考古人类人口代理的分辨率不够高，无法检测可在历史和人种学数据中观察到的实际人口动态和增长率。我们认为考古学和人种学的人口增长率衡量的是不同的东西；因此，它们不能直接比较。虽然对狩猎采集人口的人种学增长率估计与潜在的人口统计参数直接相关，考古估计追踪长期平均人口规模的变化，这反映了环境生产力的变化，而环境生产力的变化为觅食者人口增长提供了最终限制。我们进一步认为，由于这种限制效应，狩猎采集人口不能独立于环境生产力的提高而表现出长期增长。

本文是主题问题“史前人口学的跨学科方法”的一部分。