title: Evolutionary demography of agricultural expansion in preindustrial northern Finland.
abstract: A shift from nomadic foraging to sedentary agriculture was a major turning point in human evolutionary history, increasing our population size and eventually leading to the development of modern societies. We however lack understanding of the changes in life histories that contributed to the increased population growth rate of agriculturalists, because comparable individual-based reproductive records of sympatric populations of agriculturalists and foragers are rarely found. Here, we compared key life-history traits and population growth rate using comprehensive data from the seventieth to nineteenth century Northern Finland: indigenous Sami were nomadic hunter-fishers and reindeer herders, whereas sympatric agricultural Finns relied predominantly on animal husbandry. We found that agriculture-based families had higher lifetime fecundity, faster birth spacing and lower maternal mortality. Furthermore, agricultural Finns had 6.2% higher annual population growth rate than traditional Sami, which was accounted by differences between the subsistence modes in age-specific fecundity but not in mortality. Our results provide, to our knowledge, the most detailed demonstration yet of the demographic changes and evolutionary benefits that resulted from agricultural revolution.
authors.affiliation: Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland sayrhe@utu.fi.
authors.forename: Samuli
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Helle
authors.affiliation: Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Jon E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Brommer
authors.affiliation: Section of Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Turku, 20014 Turku, Finland.
authors.forename: Jenni E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Pettay
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK.
authors.forename: Virpi
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Lummaa
authors.affiliation: Department of History, University of Oulu, 90014 Oulu, Finland.
authors.forename: Matti
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Enbuske
authors.affiliation: EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Institute of Integrative Biology, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland ETH-Zürich, Institute of Integrative Biology, 8600 Dübendorf, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Jukka
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Jokela
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000266:history*; D000822:Animal Husbandry / Q000266:history*; D000818:Animals; D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D001723:Birth Rate / Q000208:ethnology; D003710:Demography / Q000266:history*; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008428:Maternal Mortality / Q000208:ethnology; D011157:Population Dynamics / Q000266:history*; D012053:Reindeer; D035503:Sociobiology
keywords: agricultural revolution; herding; historical records; hunter–gatherers; population growth