A principle of demographic uniformitarianism underpins all research into prehistoric demography (palaeodemography). This principle—which argues for continuity in the evolved mechanisms underlying modern human demographic processes and their response to environmental stimuli between past and present—provides the cross-disciplinary basis for palaeodemographic reconstruction and analysis. Prompted by the recent growth and interest in the field of prehistoric demography, this paper reviews the principle of demographic uniformitarianism, evaluates how it relates to two key debates in palaeodemographic research and seeks to delimit its range of applicability to past human and hominin populations.

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

人口均变主义原则支撑着对史前人口学（古人口学）的所有研究。这一原则——它主张现代人类人口过程的进化机制及其对过去和现在之间环境刺激的反应的连续性——为古人口学重建和分析提供了跨学科的基础。在史前人口学领域最近的增长和兴趣的推动下，本文回顾了人口均变论的原则，评估了它与古人口学研究中的两个关键辩论的关系，并试图界定其对过去人类和古人类种群的适用范围。

本文是主题问题“史前人口学的跨学科方法”的一部分。