What caused world GDP growth rates to skyrocket around the year 1000 AD

[Wesley_Clark]

I don’t know if this video is accurate or not, but it implies world growth rates were slow then around 1000 AD they started growing much faster.

World GDP Through Time

Rates went from about a billion dollars every few decades to a billion dollars every couple years.

I would assume advances in seafaring in the 1500s or so would lead to economic growth, but don’t know if I saw any changes from that.

Any idea if this video is accurate, and if so what happened around the year 1000 AD to cause faster growth?

[Ludovic]

Do they count service and payment in kind? For instance, I don’t know about the rest of the world but in Medieval Europe there was a movement toward a money economy replacing or supplementing in-kind feudal duties and 1000 sounds like around the right time for it to start happening. Before this there were a lot of unpaid or minimally-paid levies to fight off invasions, and increasingly after this they were supplemented or replaced by mercenaries or paid men-at-arms, but if the compilers of this chart are already counting payments in kind then I don’t know what to make of it.

[Jackknifed_Juggernaut]

I find it curious that it seems to jump exactly at year 1000. I can’t imagine that they could possibly be that precise in even estimating GDP before even 100 years ago. So I suspect the video is BS.

[JohnT]

I don’t think there was any particular event which occurred @ 1000CE, but what may be represented here is the growing availability of data and facts about European and world commerce - as paper gets more and more used, as the records are not as “ancient” and are more extant, the ability to track/estimate GDP becomes easier the closer you come to the modern age.

Other than that, I got nothing. I think it’s more of a visual representation than it is a representation of a particular historical fact or trend.

[JohnT]

OK, here’s your answer:

Global GDP over the long run

The above is a link where the guy got his data. Note that from 0-1,000CE the GDP growth is $28 billion, but from 1000-1500CE GDP growth is represented as being $210 billion. So if you’re going to build a video based upon these numbers, that’s the video which would be created.

Much of the pre-1990 data is the work of a guy named Angus Maddison, whose work can be found here: Groningen Growth and Development Centre | University of Groningen

One of his papers says this:

Before 1820, economic growth was very much slower than it has been since. For the world as a whole the increase in per capita income was hardly perceptible, and productivity growth was slower, as labour input probably increased more than population. Nevertheless Western growth was faster than that in the rest of the world for several centuries before 1820.

It is not possible to construct growth accounts prior to 1820, but one can identify significant and steady technical progress in fields where Western leadership is incontrovertible, notably in navigation and shipbuilding. Progress in these areas permitted Western countries to harness wind power much more efficiently between 1000-1820. Without these advances, the West would not have achieved a dominant role in world trade. Nor would it have discovered and captured huge areas of land, precious metals, and biological resources in the Americas.

Groningen Growth and Development Centre

In short, the numbers are largely guesswork and are backward extrapolations from times when data was easier to get.

[dtilque]

@JohnT

OK, here’s your answer:

Global GDP over the long run - Our World in Data

The above is a link where the guy got his data. Note that from 0-1,000CE the GDP growth is $28 billion, but from 1000-1500CE GDP growth is represented as being $210 billion. So if you’re going to build a video based upon these numbers, that’s the video which would be created.

Looks like a major misunderstanding of what that graph represents. There was no significant change at 1000AD, that was just a convenient round number year to show how much things had changed since the earlier number. It represents a gradual change over time, with no sudden increases. If we had the data and the graph was only between 1 and 1500 AD, you’d see this. Most likely the only sudden changes in that range would be significant drops due to pandemics. (e.g. Black Death, Justinian’s plague, etc.)

[JohnT]

Exactly. He just did the following:

$28 billion/1,000 years
$210 billion/500 years

… and so on, for that entire chart.

[ASL_v2.0]

Given the source’s methodology (as cited by JohnT), perhaps a better way to graph everything up to about 1400 CE would have been GDP as proportional to human population.

[Little_Nemo]

Okay, the methodology of the graph has been explained but there was a major technological breakthrough around that time; hay.

It was around the ninth century, people developed new grasses that could be harvested and stored through the winter. This meant that they could keep herds of livestock alive from year to year.

Prior to this, farmers could only keep a few animals alive over the winter. Most animals were born in the spring and slaughtered in the fall. Hay made it possible for farmers to making herding a year round activity.

One result was the economy of Northern Europe began catching up with the economy of the Mediterranean region and you saw a resulting shift of power.

[GreenWyvern]

@ASL_v2.0

Given the source’s methodology (as cited by JohnT), perhaps a better way to graph everything up to about 1400 CE would have been GDP as proportional to human population.

Both GDP and human population would be wild-ass guesses. We simply don’t have the numbers. They don’t exist.

[GreenWyvern]

@Little_Nemo

Okay, the methodology of the graph has been explained but there was a major technological breakthrough around that time; hay.

It was around the ninth century, people developed new grasses that could be harvested and stored through the winter. This meant that they could keep herds of livestock alive from year to year.

I’m not sure where you got this idea from, but it’s not true.

There is evidence of hay-making in ancient Egypt from the second millennium BC, and the Middle East in general from at least the 7th century BC. It’s mentioned in the Bible. German tribes are mentioned as making hay by Roman writers in the 1st century BC. Other Roman agricultural writers wrote in detail about techniques for making hay. Norse sagas mention making hay.

[Bear_Nenno]

If you download their data file, you will see that they have GDP data for each year from 1950 onward. Prior to that, they only have data for the years 1; 1000; 1500; 1600, 1700; 1820; 1870; 1900; 1913; and 1940. Their graph and video, up until 1950, is just a steady increase that connects those dots.

[Bear_Nenno]

@GreenWyvern

I’m not sure where you got this idea from, but it’s not true.

There is evidence of hay-making in ancient Egypt from the second millennium BC, and the Middle East in general from at least the 7th century BC. It’s mentioned in the Bible. German tribes are mentioned as making hay by Roman writers in the 1st century BC. Other Roman agricultural writers wrote in detail about techniques for making hay. Norse sagas mention making hay.

Hay (that animals eat) is different than straw (mentioned in the bible). Perhaps that is the discrepancy? I don’t know much more about either hay or straw, and certainly couldn’t post intelligently about when they were invented. I just wanted to make sure we’re all talking about the same stuff, here. Because straw is often called hay. Being a city boy, I only recently realized the difference during a trip to Romania. Hell, I didn’t even realize that straw was wheat!

[GreenWyvern]

@Bear_Nenno

Hay (that animals eat) is different than straw (mentioned in the bible). Perhaps that is the discrepancy? I don’t know much more about either hay or straw, and certainly couldn’t post intelligently about when they were invented. I just wanted to make sure we’re all talking about the same stuff, here. Because straw is often called hay. Being a city boy, I only recently realized the difference during a trip to Romania. Hell, I didn’t even realize that straw was wheat!

Hay in the Bible (6 instances)

[Elmer_J.Fudd]

Yeah, a boring misleading chart explanation solves the mystery, but IF a drastic jump in economic growth did exactly take place around the year 1000, my WAG would be that Christians were slagging off during the 900s expecting the world to end at the conclusion of the First Millennium. When it became clear in the first years of the Second Millennium that the end was not necessarily nigh, people started to take long term economic development seriously.

[GreenWyvern]

@Elmer_J.Fudd

IF a drastic jump in economic growth did exactly take place around the year 1000, my WAG would be that Christians were slagging off during the 900s expecting the world to end at the conclusion of the First Millennium. When it became clear in the first years of the Second Millennium that the end was not necessarily nigh, people started to take long term economic development seriously.

It’s a myth that Christians made a big deal of 1000 AD.

See this article in the New York Times.

When Patricia Bernstein, a Houston writer long fascinated by the Middle Ages, began research for an article about the year 1000, she was under an impression shared by many educated Americans.

The turn of the last millennium, she believed, was a time of apocalyptic panic, fevered preaching, penitential excesses and, for the Christian faithful, ominous signs and wonders. Daily work was set aside and property, even family, abandoned as Christian Europe waited in both dread and hope for the end of the world and the Last Judgment.

Call it the Y1K problem, if you will. All very exotic, very dramatic and, as it turned out, very likely untrue.

…

‘‘Medieval folk lived in a more or less constant state of apocalyptic expectation,’’ said Bernard McGinn, a leading scholar of medieval religion at the University of Chicago. The problem, Mr. McGinn wrote in the ‘‘Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism’’ (Continuum, 1968), is that ‘‘it is by no means clear that fears of the end were more general circa 1000 than at other periods in the Middle Ages.’’

So how did the idea of millennial frenzy a thousand years ago originate, and why? For Ms. Bernstein, that became the real question. And the answer, as she recounts it in the most recent issue of Smithsonian magazine, has a lot more to do with modern beliefs than medieval ones.

[septimus]

Making a graph of “World GDP” starting in the Neolithic and continuing to the present might be a fun cooperative project for Dopers. Even coming up with a starting graph for debate and development would be a difficult, but perhaps fun, project. That YouTube ain’t it.

[Bear_Nenno]

@GreenWyvern

Hay in the Bible (6 instances)

Care to add a comment with your link? Did you read actually read any of those verses? Whether you realize it or not, you’re making my point. I don’t know about all of those verses, but definitely in at least some of those verses, “hay” is talking about “straw”.

“as the hay on the housetops, that is dried up before it comes to maturity.”
Nobody was thatching roofs with hay (grass/alfalfa). They used straw (wheat stalks).

“He causes the hay to grow for the cattle and grass for the service of man, that he may bring forth bread out of the earth”
Bread was made from wheat. The reference to hay in this verse is talking about straw. It was used for cattle, but not as food.

[GreenWyvern]

@Bear_Nenno

“as the hay on the housetops, that is dried up before it comes to maturity.”
Nobody was thatching roofs with hay (grass/alfalfa). They used straw (wheat stalks).

They had flat roofs, as in the middle east today, not thatched roofs. They were presumably drying hay on the roofs, which is a logical place to dry it.

Anyway, not to split hairs or get into unproductive arguments, the point is that hay-making was known long before the ninth century.

[Wendell_Wagner]

Can anyone give us a table with these numbers instead of a graph? A graph is often very deceptive for something that grows geometrically instead of arithmetically. I don’t know of any such table, but let me make up some numbers and show you how deceptive this is. Suppose the GDP for the world is as follows (with the dollar values being for the equivalent value of the GDP in present-day American dollars):

100 A.D. $10 million
200 A.D. $20 million
300 A.D. $40 million
400 A.D. $80 million
500 A.D. $160 million
600 A.D. $320 million
700 A.D. $640 billion
800 A.D. $1.28 billion
900 A.D. $2.56 billion
1000 A.D. $5.12 billion
1100 A.D. $10.24 billion
1200 A.D. $20.48 billion
1300 A.D. $40.96 billion
1400 A.D. $81.92 billion
1500 A.D. $163.84 billion
1600 A.D. $327.68 billion
1700 A.D. $655.36 billion
1800 A.D. $1.31072 trillion
1900 A.D. $2.62144 trillion
2000 A.D. $5.24288 trillion

Now make a chart for this with the dollar values on the vertical axis and the years on the horizontal axis. Let a hundred years be one inch on the chart and one billion dollars be one inch on the chart. Or let them be any other values you can fit on a single piece of paper. When you chart values that grow geometrically on a table where the values are marked on the axes with arithmetic values, it always looks like the values grow slowly at first and then grow very fast at the end.