We have a broad understanding of how world population went from a period of relatively small and stable population numbers to the 7 billion (and still growing) that inhabit the planet today. The introduction of settled agriculture revolutionized the earth’s capacity to sustain human life. During the years leading up to the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the food supply grew and became more reliable. The death rate fell, life expectancy increased, and population growth gradually accelerated. This growth, however, was set back at intervals by famines, plagues, and wars, any of which could wipe out as much as half of the population in a given area. As late as the fourteenth century, the back death ( bubonic plague ) killed one-third of the population of Europe. Despite these catastrophic events, by 1880, the world’s population had grown to almost 1 billion, implying an annual growth rate of a mere 0.08 percent between 1 C.E. and 1800.