The agricultural demographic transition, a Bocquet-Appel signature

Abstract

Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel (JPBA) had a broad anthropology vision focused on understanding human and pre-human population dynamics from an evolutionary demographic perspective. He was one of the rare paleodemographer in France with a robust understanding of cultural and biological anthropology and a solid experience in statistics. His large-scale, ‘top-down’ approach led him to test the hypothesis of an abrupt population growth in the major centers of agriculture invention worldwide. The signal of this Agricultural Demographic Transition (ADT) was identified in Europe, North America, and the Levant and characterized by a rapid fertility increase. Also, JPBA was the principal promoter of cementochronology as a solution to individual age estimation techniques.