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The demographic history of Scotland includes all aspects of population history in what is now Scotland. Scotland may have been first occupied in the last interglacial period (130,000–70,000 BCE), but the earliest surviving archaeological evidence of human settlement is of Mesolithic hunter-gatherer encampments. These suggest a highly mobile boat-using people, probably with a very low density of population. Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements dating from 3500 BCE, and greater concentrations of population. Evidence of hillforts and other buildings suggest a growing settled population. Changes in the scale of woodland indicates that the Roman invasions from the first century CE had a negative impact on the native population. There are almost no written sources from which to reconstruct the demography of early medieval Scotland. This was probably a high fertility, high mortality society, similar to developing countries in the modern world. The population may have grown from half a million to a million by the mid-fourteenth century when the Black Death reached the country. It may then have fallen to as low as half a million by the end of the fifteenth century. Roughly half lived north of the River Tay and perhaps 10 per cent in the burghs that grew up in the later medieval period. Inflation in prices, indicating greater demand, suggests that the population continued to grow until the late sixteenth century, when it probably levelled off. It began to grow again in the relative stability of the late seventeenth century. The earliest reliable evidence suggests a population of 1.2 million in 1681. This was probably reduced by the "seven ill years" of the 1690s, which caused severe famine and depopulation, particularly in the north. The first national census was conducted in 1755, and showed the population of Scotland as 1,265,380. By then four towns had populations of over 10,000, with the capital, Edinburgh, the largest with 57,000 inhabitants. The Highland and Lowland Clearances led to the depopulation of rural areas, but overall the population of Scotland grew rapidly in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By 1801 it had reached 1,608,420 and it grew to 2,889,000 in 1851 and 4,472,000 in 1901. By the beginning of the twentieth century, one in three lived in the four cities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee and Aberdeen. Glasgow emerged as the largest city, with a population of 762,000 by 1901, making it "the Second City of the Empire". Despite industrial expansion there were insufficient jobs and between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression about two million Scots emigrated to North America and Australia, and another 750,000 to England. The Scots were only 10 per cent of the British population but they provided 15 per cent of the national armed forces, and eventually accounted for 20 per cent of the dead in World War I (1914–18). With the end of mass migration, the population reached a peak of 5,240,800 in 1974. Thereafter it began to fall slowly, moving down to 5,062,940 in 2000. There was also a decrease in some urban populations as a result of policies of slum clearance, overspill and relocation to new towns, with the population of Glasgow falling from over a million in 1951 to 629,000 in 2001. Rural areas also saw a loss of population, particularly in the Highlands and Hebrides. ==Prehistoric and Roman eras== At times during the last interglacial period (130,000– 70,000 BCE) Europe had a climate warmer than today's, and early humans may have made their way to what is now Scotland, though archaeologists have found no traces of this. Glaciers then scoured their way across most of Britain, and only after the ice retreated did Scotland again become habitable, around 9600 BCE.〔F. Pryor, ''Britain B.C.: Life in Britain and Ireland before the Romans'' (London: Harper Collins, 2003), ISBN 0-00-712693-X, p. 99.〕 Mesolithic hunter-gatherer encampments formed the first known settlements, and archaeologists have dated a site near Biggar to around 8500 BCE. Numerous other sites found around Scotland build up a picture of highly mobile boat-using people making tools from bone, stone and antlers, probably with a very low density of population.〔P. J. Ashmore, ''Neolithic and Bronze Age Scotland: An Authoritative and Lively Account of an Enigmatic Period of Scottish Prehistory'' (London: Batsford, 2003), ISBN 0-7134-7531-5.〕 Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements, such as the stone house at Knap of Howar on Papa Westray dating from 3500 BCE, and greater concentrations of population. Although the Roman geographer Ptolemy indicated that there were 19 "towns" in Caledonia, north of the Roman province of Britannia, no clear evidence of urban settlements has been found and these were probably hillforts.〔A. Moffat, ''Before Scotland: The Story of Scotland Before History'' (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005), ISBN 0-500-28795-3, pp. 268–70.〕 There is evidence of over 1,000 such forts, most south of the Clyde-Forth line, but the majority seem to have been abandoned in the Roman period.〔J-D. G. G. Lepage, ''British Fortifications Through the Reign of Richard III: An Illustrated History'' (McFarland, 2012), ISBN 0-7864-5918-2, pp. 25 and 31.〕 There is also evidence of distinctive stone wheelhouses (a type of roundhouse, with a circle of stone piers resembling the spokes of a wheel)〔I. Crawford, "The wheelhouse" in B. B. Smith and I. Banks, eds, ''In the Shadow of the Brochs'' (Stroud: Tempus, 2002), ISBN 0-7524-2517-X, pp. 127–28.〕 and over 400 small underground souterrains (underground galleries that may have been used to store food).〔R. Miket, "The souterrains of Skye" in B. B. Smith and I. Banks, eds, ''In the Shadow of the Brochs'' (Stroud: Tempus, 2002), ISBN 0-7524-2517-X, pp. 77–110.〕 Extensive analyses of Black Loch in Fife indicate that arable land spread at the expense of forest from about 2000 BCE until the time of the Roman advance into lowland Scotland in the first century CE, suggesting an expanding settled population. Thereafter, there was regrowth of birch, oak and hazel for some 500 years, suggesting that the Roman invasions had a negative impact on the native population.〔T. C. Smout, R. MacDonald and F. Watson, ''A History of the Native Woodlands of Scotland 1500–1920'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd edn., 2007), ISBN 978-0-7486-3294-7, p. 34.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Demographic history of Scotland」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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