Key Terms
This term refers to the statistical study of human populations, including their size, structure, distribution, and changes over time.
What is demography?
Before 10,000 BCE, humans sustained themselves through this lifestyle, keeping global population low at around 2 to 3 million.
What is hunting and gathering (hunter-gatherers)?
This term describes a region with very few people per square kilometer, such as Antarctica or the Sahara Desert.
What is sparsely populated?
In 18th-century Britain, life expectancy was under 40 years mainly due to diseases spreading through this contaminated source.
What is drinking water (or river water polluted with sewage)?
This general term refers to the movement of people from one place or country to another.
What is migration?
This population metric represents the average number of years a newborn baby can expect to live.
What is life expectancy?
Around 10,000 BCE, human population began its first major upward curve because societies learned how to do this.
What is farming (agriculture)?
Densely populated urban centers and agricultural plains like those in East and South Asia are described using this contrasting term.
What is densely populated?
This medical innovation protects infants from infectious diseases like smallpox, significantly increasing life expectancy.
What is a vaccine?
Favorable conditions that attract a person to settle in a new area—such as jobs, safety, or better climate—are called this.
What are pull factors?
Calculated by subtracting the Crude Death Rate (CDR) from the Crude Birth Rate (CBR), this value measures natural population growth.
What is natural increase?
Beginning in Britain around 1760, this major historical era kicked off a massive global population explosion.
What is the Industrial Revolution?
Roughly 90% of global trade in goods occurs by ship, making this geographic feature a primary driver of dense human settlement.
What is a coastline (or coastal access)?
Statistically, this gender group tends to have a longer average life expectancy (e.g., 83 years vs. 79 years in the UK).
What are females (women/girls)?
Unfavorable conditions that force people away from an area—such as war, famine, or extreme weather—are known by this term.
Push factors
This official survey or questionnaire is conducted by governments (often every 10 years) to collect detailed data on population numbers and demographics.
What is census?
According to historical population timelines, the world population reached its first 1 billion people in this year.
What is 1804 (or 1800)?
In desert countries like Egypt, population is concentrated along a narrow green corridor created by this major river.
What is the Nile River?
This demographic term measures the number of infants who die before reaching their first birthday out of every 1,000 live births.
What is infant mortality?
This term specifically describes a person who is forced to leave their home country due to safety risks, war, or persecution.
What is a refugee?
This graphical model illustrates how birth and death rates change over time as a country transitions through different stages of economic development.
What is Demographic Transition Model (DMT)?
During the Bronze Age and Iron Age, improvements in metallurgy helped boost population growth primarily by improving these essential implements.
What are farm tools (e.g., iron ploughs)?
Flat, low-lying land is preferred for dense settlement over mountainous regions for these two primary reasons.
What are ease of farming/soil retention and ease of building infrastructure?
An outbreak of typhus in historical family records was often spread by these tiny insects, flourishing in conditions of poor hygiene.
What are lice?
While immigration means entering a country to settle permanently, this term means leaving one's home country to live elsewhere.
What is emigration?