Spatiotemporal shifts of population and war under climate change in imperial China

Abstract

Studies on the spatiotemporal relationship between historical climate change and the patterns of population and war are rare. In this research, statistical methods (such as correlation test and Granger causality analysis) and visualization technique are applied to demonstrate how temperature, in terms of long-term trend and cyclic mode, fundamentally affects the temporal-spatial variations of population center and war center during imperial China (5–1911 CE). Results show that (1) the consistent southward migration of population center and war center overall accords with the macro-trend of temperature cooling over the last two millennia. (2) The extent of the outward expansion of the Chinese Empire is measured by the population center–war center distance that lengthens during warm periods but shortens in cold phases, which correspond to the north/west/northwestward advancement and south/east/eastward retreatment of war center, respectively, while population center moves within a small range. (3) The shift of population latitude precedes that of war latitude, indicating the change from ecological-demographic to social-political sphere in space. We suggest that similar to population center, the temperature-influenced ancient Hu Line, which symbolizes the disparity of population density in different regions of China, may shift by several hundred kilometers; latitudinal rather than longitudinal variations of population center and war center are more robust in history. We also find that precipitation controls war center and population center on the multicentennial scale, but not the scale focused upon in this study. These findings provide new insights and theoretical implications into the in-depth understanding of the nature–human nexus.

Spatio-temporal variations of the major meteorological disasters and its response to climate change in Henan Province during the past two millennia

“…Human beings were vulnerable to drought, insect pests and other meteorological disasters due to the weak resistance to natural disaster and were mostly dependent on heaven for food ( Lee et al, 2017 ; Fang et al, 2015 ; Wan et al, 2017b ). Furthermore, household registration data, the historical population size in the middle and lower Yellow River showed a progressive population growth during the last 2,000 years ( Yang, 1993 ; Zhang, Zhang & Pei, 2021 ), which corresponds with the increase of the meteorological disasters ( Fig. 3 ).…”

Centralization or decentralization? A spatial analysis of archaeological sites in northern China during the 4.2 ka BP event

“…The null hypothesis states that the means of different groups are equal, and the alternative hypothesis states that at least one of the group means is different from the others (Lee, 2008). It has been widely used in previous studies to determine the significant differences of population dynamics, frequencies of Malthusian population checks (Lee and Zhang, 2010;Lee and Zhang, 2013;Lee et al, 2016), and battle coordinates with a few categories of war defined (Zhang S et al, 2021) between warm and cold periods. In this study, the cultural end or start rather than the climatic phase was chosen as the independent ANOVA factor, while the coordinates of archaeological sites were input as the dependent ANOVA factor.…”