Period accurate population numbers, density and roads/trade networks

[Josh Foreman]

I'm curious if anyone has any resources for researching this sort of thing in order to inform my worldbuilding and map making. I found this cool site about Roman trade networks, but in general I'm having a hard time finding what I'm looking for. https://orbis.stanford.edu/?fbclid=I...6Pl0Y2I7CAPdyg

I want to know how to space my cities, towns, villages, farmsteads, ranches, etc. in a roughly Renaissance era on an earth-like planet. I've seen all sorts of rules of thumb about 5 miles to travel by foot to a market, which is great, but does not solve for places where that rule is inevitably broken. At SOME point there are vast stretches of road that don't have a village or inn every 5-10 miles. Anyway, if anyone knows of good places to research that sort of thing I'd appreciate it!

[Falconius]

There's a fair amount of discussion about this on the forum. Here is one link:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=42749
Everyone also likes to refer to the Medieval City Demographics by S. John Ross manual, but I don't have a working link.

[Tiana]

At SOME point there are vast stretches of road that don't have a village or inn every 5-10 miles.

Sure. So that's a starting question. Why is no one there?

From there, you might ask yourself, historically where they live, what changes have happened that resulted in there not being a village or inn every 5-30 miles?
-It used to be wilderness and people only went that way if they HAD to.
-It used to be held by violent groups of warring hill bandits and anything smaller than a town was constantly raided into submission.
-People always take the river because of the weekly boat.
-There's a train through the longest stretch.
-If you go by carriage you can make it 40 miles and no one wants to walk on these hot days, so all that's between is a couple of stoic farmers who take the trek into town with their twelve boys when the herd's big enough for slaughter. They don't mind it because their people have always been herdsfolk and they're always on horseback. In fact they'd rather villages stay away and leave them be with their sixty sisters, only three of whom have ever been seen in town of late.
-There's the five mills along the river and if you need a place to stay they'll always make a bed for someone out in the loft over the grindstone. Bit of a chilly place to stay, but travellers are always safe within the mills and waterwheel houses.
-On a good day you can make it over the rope bridge, but if it's windy, it's not safe so you're forced to walk five miles to the bridge.
-People used to live around the mine until it caught on fire. Even though things are burned out now it's still a bad omen to live by the burned forest.

I think there are less rules and more stories about the land that shape where people ultimately land. Why this river? Why this valley? What does this valley trade to the valley over, and when would they make those journeys. What lies between? What dangers are there on the road, what ease of passage causes people to favor this way over that, meaning there's not so much over east, because the easy dip through the mountains is west and only miners go the hard way into the eastern portion where there's no pass, and it's thick with caves, bears, and bandits who regularly steal from the gold miners.

There's always a reason why no one's settled in those close, easy to access jumps from village to village. The reason is always a human one. He hated his brother, so they moved over the river from each other so they didn't have to see each other's faces except at market. She liked how the sun hit the side of the valley on the may morning they arrived in their cart. They stayed because the apples grew to the size of their fists and the grapes were as long as their father's fingers, and it was worth the trek over the plateau to reach the road. They left because on the fifth winter, the doors were iced shut and they couldn't get into the barn and two of the cows froze overnight from the severity of the blizzard, and it just wasn't worth the view to stay. They left because of threats from a nearby family. They left because nothing grew in the chalky soil except the blistering crabweed that stuck its claws out of everything left unattended by their futile attempts to till it. They left because they were afraid the drowned sailors would return as ghosts, and fled inland to try forget their faces, and the story of the drownings stuck around even centuries later.

Every settlement has a very small, simple human story behind it to justify why they stayed, or why they left even if it seems like someone should live there, right? Ruins can tell the story of what used to be. In my country, I often see ruins of settler's houses, farmhouses, the forgotten tales of the first farmers. Density will convey the sort of traffic that goes through a region. A coast rich in trade will see many small settlements along the main road. It might be a serious undertaking to get to the western mines, though, because most people who go there stay there, and only return on retirement or death. So there's like three settlements along the way, one of which was formed around one mightily prolific family that makes a killing off pigments sourced from rock and they see traffic infrequently for extremely large amounts of money, maintaining an inn along the way to keep themselves occupied in the long summer.

If the culture is such that strangers can stay with farmers, then maybe there's no call for as many inns. Maybe an innkeeper mafia cuts down all startup bed and breakfasts along the route, forcing all to stay at their mighty 100 bed inn, the only one you can possibly reach along a major road before dark hits and leaves you in the mountainside probably flush with bandits hired to keep the inn full.

Why do they move along a road? How do they move? How often do they move? The greater traffic, the more unusual services may be found. I like to decide who settled here and when, then extrapolate what services they might inspire based on their original goals. People who live further from a market are inevitably forced to be independent, and must have access to all the food they need to survive on their own, and may only travel to town for unusual needs they cannot acquire on the homestead. Thus people who are hermits would only live in extreme conditions if there is no other choice... there is always some resource that attracts a natural settlement, and desperation breeds survival in the most unlikely of places.

Tell the story of the land and the settlements should evolve organically.

I know you probably want a list like "for every 100 people there is one doctor" but the reality is more "depending on how many and how far apart the people the doctor serves are located, that determines the quality and frequency of your care." Working in this sort of narrative detail will push your story's worldbuilding to the next level, but, if your desire is to create a survey spreadsheet for a game, alas, it probably will not help you with that.

The closest thing I have to a resource is, uh, Chaotic Shiny's random generators. Some real good worldbuilder generators in there.

[Greason Wolfe]

Resources are also a factor. In areas where there are few to no resources (I.e. farmable land, mines, lumber, and so on), people are less likely to settle in for the long haul. How easy is it to get to those resources? How easy is it to retrieve/distribute those resources. As Tiana said, it is sometimes easier to approach things from a direction of deciding why people did or didn't settle in a particular location.

[Azélor]

This is a link the medieval demographic made easy, keep in mind that this is Euro-centrist and a simplification of reality.
This is an interesting paper about italian demographics in the renaissance period. Northern Italy was considered very urbanized at the time compared to Europe's average.
The central place theory can help in placing settlements. Even today, in many places you can see that cities of the same size tend to be spaced more or less evenly if the geography allows it. Yet the model doesn't work for very large cities (metropolises).

Also, these 2 threads try to have a realistic demographic :
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=45391
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=38899

[Antoine.L]

This is a link the medieval demographic made easy.

Thank you Azelor, Very interesting and usefull resources.

[eepjr24]

I don't think this was linked yet and I liked the points he made:

http://ravenswing59.blogspot.com/201...one-right.html

[Ultrahuntr]

Thanks all for sharing these resources! They're gonna come in handy.

[NeonKnight]

OK...I've been gone a LONG time from the foum, but here is some info I do know.

First and Foremost, believe it or not, but of all the resources (wood, timber, water, metal etc) the one no-one thinks of, but is by far the single most important for settlement location is.....SALT. Good Ol Sodium Chloride:

https://seasalt.com/history-of-salt


As to roadways...

**EDIT*** Found my old Post:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...l=1#post102116
In a nut shell, think of it this way. ALL animal life (and that will include humans, and fantasy creatures as well) are inherently lazy. And what I mean by this is, 'we' want to expend as little energy as possible. So we will travel in straight lines, choose to go around a hill rather than over it, etc, etc. so there's that. Further, it takes a lot of energy to make a road in and of itself. so why do that when the animals that cam before have already done a lot of that work by making their own trails already. Early settlers often used Game trails as their early roads as they already led to points of importance (fresh water, food, etc), and so only a little work was required to clear these trails to make roads

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_road_transport

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news...390-story.html

EDIT #2 - More Animal Trail Info

https://www.deersolution.com/blog/creatures-of-habit