Environment and Long-Term Population Trends in Southwest Arabia

Abstract

Any paper that claims to present long term population trends of Arabia or any part of it has to face the fact that demographic data is, at best, limited. Nevertheless, that southwest Arabia is a very well populated area today, and may have been so during parts of prehistory needs to be explored. This chapter therefore focuses primarily on emerging archaeological evidence that suggests that this little known, but verdant and agriculturally productive region was during much of the Holocene a significant population center. How far such a model can be projected back in time (for example back into the Paleolithic) is difficult to say, but by laying out the evidence for climatic and population cycles during the past 10,000 years or so it should be possible to suggest what might have prevailed during those earlier periods, and more importantly to seek the relevant evidence for such occupations. It is not the aim of this chapter to present a full and detailed synthesis of the archaeological sites in southwest Arabia; regional syntheses can be found in Breton (1999), Cleuziou and Tosi (1998), Durrani (Durrani (2005), Edens and Wilkinson (1998), and de Maigret (2002). Modern southwest Arabia, mainly the Republic of Yemen and neighboring parts of the province of ‘Asir in Saudi Arabia is one of the more populous parts of Arabia, and indeed was so at least as early as classical times. Nevertheless, the hazards of population estimation for this region are underscored by recent controversies concerning a Swiss study that recorded for the state of North Yemen in 1975 a total population 4,705,336 (Steffen, 1979). This figure was disputed by the government of North Yemen who initiated their own census which resulted in a population estimate of 7,146,341 only 6 years later in 1981 (Wenner, 1991: 19). Clearly with the existence of such disparities today, it must be appreciated that past populations for this region cannot be estimated quantitatively. In this chapter I will therefore examine the question of relative population levels: for example how does the region compare with other parts of Arabia in the past? Was southwest Arabia an ancient population center? Might the existence of such a population center been a significant factor in the long-term movements of people through the region?.