Population of Ancient Cities

[Julien]

Is anybody able to give me information on the population of cities like Babylon, Persepolis, Memphis, Athens, Alexandria ... and their evolution through the Antiquity ?

 

[Fayadi]

The world best city in 700 AD is ChangAn in China during Tang Dynasty.The population there is about 1 million only!At that time major cities in the world population do not exceed 2 million!

 

[Kublai-Khan]

I made a thread some weeks before
that youcan still see here,
It is called demography i think.
I think that Persepolis had 50.000
unhabitants when it was conqueres (and destroyed by alexander),
Athens never had much more than 30.000 unhabitants,
wich is almost uncredible
imagine all those great minds in a little 30.000 unhabitants town.
I so a documental when they said that Alexandria was the first city in reaching the 1 million population but i think it may be an exaggeration,
i am quite sure that it was of more than 200.000 unhabitants.

I would like to know more about that
but it is really hard to find info about
population an all that kind of things,
someone suggested me a book in the thread demography.

 

[Andu Indorin]

Here's a link to an old Windows shareware game called Imperial Conquest. The game has the population of 334 cities in the Mediterranean/Middle East in 270 B.C. I can make no claim for the accuracy of the figures; but the game seems to be well-research. Download the game (136k) and check it out!