This article reports the results of a collaborative effort to estimate agricultural productivities in past societies using Seshat: Global History Databank. We focus on 30 Natural Geographic Areas (NGAs) distributed over 10 major world regions (Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Central Eurasia, North America, South America, and Oceania). The conceptual framework that we use to obtain these estimates combines the influences of the production technologies (and how they change with time), climate change, and effects of artificial selection into a Relative Yield Coefficient, indicating how agricultural productivity changed over time in each NGA between the Neolithic and the 20th century. We then use estimates of historical yield in each NGA to translate the Relative Yield Coefficient into an Estimated Yield (tonnes per hectare per year) trajectory. We tested the proposed methodology in two ways. For eight NGAs, in which we had more than one historical yield estimate, we used the earliest estimate to anchor the trajectory and compared the ensuing trajectory to the remaining estimates. We also compared the end points of the estimated NGA trajectories to the earliest (the 1960s decade) FAO data on crop productivities in the modern countries encompassing Seshat NGAs. We discuss the benefits of this methodology over previous efforts to estimate agricultural productivities in world history.

本文报告了通过使用Seshat：全球历史数据库估算过去社会中农业生产率的共同努力的结果。我们专注于分布在10个主要世界地区（欧洲，非洲，西南亚，南亚，东南亚，东亚，中亚欧亚大陆，北美，南美和大洋洲）的30个自然地理区域（NGA）。我们用来获得这些估计值的概念框架将生产技术的影响（以及它们如何随时间变化），气候变化以及人为选择的影响综合到相对产量系数中，表明每个NGA中农业生产率如何随时间变化在新石器时代和20世纪之间。然后，我们使用每个NGA中的历史产量估算值将相对产量系数转换为估算的产量（吨/公顷/年）轨迹。我们以两种方式测试了所提出的方法。对于我们有多个历史收益估算值的八个NGA，我们使用最早的估算值来锚定轨迹，然后将随后的轨迹与其余估算值进行比较。我们还比较了估计的NGA轨迹的终点与粮农组织最早的（1960年代十年）有关Seshat NGA的现代国家的作物生产力数据。我们讨论了这种方法相对于先前估计世界历史农业生产力的努力的好处。