78
votes
Why are many African-Americans in Mississippi concentrated in the northwestern area?
You are describing part of what is referred to as the Black Belt in the American South. It can be seen here in a map of majority-black US counties.
Your suspicions for the reason for this are quite ...
- 118k
52
votes
Accepted
Why did the population of Descartes, France increase by so much in the 1960's?
Based on this page from the French School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, it appears that the neighbouring Balsesmes merged into La Haye-Descartes in 1966, before the combined commune was ...
- 97.5k
44
votes
Why are many African-Americans in Mississippi concentrated in the northwestern area?
T.E.D.'s answer (+1) is complete with regard to the human history of the Americas, but the rich soil in the "cotton belt" or "black belt" has a geological explanation as well. The article "How ...
- 27.6k
40
votes
Accepted
When and how did the Han ethnic group become by far the biggest ethnic group in China?
China is a continental scale country, thus "Han" is a category sorta like "European". One visit to Beijing or Shanghai will make it obvious that China is indeed a cosmopolitan, ...
- 7,477
37
votes
Accepted
Why did the population of Anchorage, Alaska, increase by so much in the 1970s?
There were two major, interrelated events that caused this population boom in the 1970s.
The first was the discovery of oil on Alaska's North Slope at Prudhoe Bay and elsewhere in 1968 and 1969. The ...
- 104k
36
votes
Accepted
Why are the majority of Dresden inhabitants atheists or agnostics?
For the vast majority of Germans, religious and non-religious alike, religion matters little in daily life. In some families, the babies are baptised, marriages have both civil and religious ...
- 16.8k
28
votes
Why did the population of Anchorage, Alaska, increase by so much in the 1970s?
University of Alaska, Anchorage published a study into People and Economy of Alaska, which can be viewed here.
From that source, I'd say there are following reasons for their population boom:
...
- 8,185
28
votes
Accepted
What was the ratio women to men after World War 2 in the Soviet Union
According to this article the ratio rose from 1.10 to about 1.54 (ratio of men/women fell from 0.91 to about 0.65) between 1941 and 1946 in the draft-age group (people born around 1887 to 1927), which ...
- 8,875
28
votes
Demographics: Were diseases the sole reason for the decrease in native Hawaiian population?
There's nothing really odd about this. The same thing historically has happened all over the globe any time an immunologically naïve population meets up with one that is tapped into all of the ...
- 118k
27
votes
Why are the majority of Dresden inhabitants atheists or agnostics?
80% does not seem to be way off compared with other industrial countries like
Sweden (85%),
Denmark (80%),
Norway (72%),
Czech Republic (61%),
Finland (60%)...
- 2,066
21
votes
Why are the majority of Dresden inhabitants atheists or agnostics?
German here. You see here a chart of the predominant confessions in Germany:
Wikimedia Commons, Martin Sander, CC BY-SA 3.0, 2013-06-23
As you see, approximately one third is Roman-Catholic (yellow),...
- 5,166
17
votes
What was the ratio women to men after World War 2 in the Soviet Union
The Soviet population in 1941 was 196,716,000. In 1946, it was 170,548,000.[1] That's a difference of 26,168,000 people. According to a study published by the Russian Academy of Science[2], there were ...
- 4,338
16
votes
Are there any examples of overpopulation?
Because people are quibbling in comments over the meaning of "overpopulation", it might suggest that this question is broad or unclear. So let's look at it from a different angle.
In the 1960's, Dr. ...
- 5,275
13
votes
When did Northern India and N. China begin to dominate in global demographics?
Using the delta areas as proxies for the entire river valley systems:
The area of the Ganges delta (about 59,000 km2) is nearly 4 times as large as Mesopotamia (about 15,000 km2), and 3 times as ...
- 72.3k
13
votes
Are there any examples of overpopulation?
Maybe not
Joseph Tainter argues, in Archeology of Overshoot and Collapse, that so far there is no evidence of a Malthusian catastrophe. Whether you follow Tainter in this assertion will in part depend ...
- 4,754
12
votes
Are there any examples of overpopulation?
As noted in the discussion on the question, there are two kinds of overpopulation which I'll call "chronic" and "acute". Chronic overpopulation, where the full production capacity of agriculture in ...
- 7,596
12
votes
Accepted
Were death rates greater than birth rates in premodern urban populations?
While Peter Turchin has overstated the case, it is most likely that this was usually true. Infant mortality rates were very high until they started to decline in the early decades of the 20th century (...
- 108k
11
votes
Why were there more Catholics in Lancashire than other parts of England around the time of the Jacobite rebellions?
Even in the early 1700s, the North of England was a long ways away from the centers of power in the South. It was a lot further away in the 1500s when Catholicism was being overthrown by Puritans who ...
- 7,596
10
votes
What was the estimated population living in Egypt around 1446 BC?
Population estimates
A number of estimates have been made for the population of ancient Egypt but, as the article The people of ancient Egypt says,
Egyptologists tend to dodge the issue of ...
- 108k
10
votes
Accepted
Are there any scientific estimates for the population of Mycenaean Greece?
There are no really reliable estimates for the population of Mycenaean Greece, although scholars have supplied some (more or less educated) guesses. On the more conservative end of the scale, Stanford'...
- 97.5k
9
votes
Are there any examples of overpopulation?
Easter Island is one example. From the Wikipedia article:
It is believed that Easter Island's Polynesian inhabitants arrived on
Easter Island sometime between 700 and 1100 CE. They created a
...
- 99
9
votes
When was the deadliest year in human history in absolute terms?
You're probably correct, it seems to be this year.
To start with, our inquiry can most likely be safely restricted to the last few decades. As this graph from Wikipedia establishes, in absolute terms,...
- 97.5k
9
votes
Accepted
Why do Eastern European countries have the greatest female-to-male ratio?
War, an aging population, and alcohol. From an article from Pew Research:
This region has been predominantly female since at least World War II, when many Soviet men died in battle or left the ...
- 3,048
8
votes
What caused the rapid African population growth in the last decades?
There is something called "demographic transition": birth rates take some time to adequate to reduced mortality rate. For one generation at least, people keep reproducing as if mortality was still ...
- 4,338
8
votes
Why are the majority of Dresden inhabitants atheists or agnostics?
An addendum to all the answers given so far:
None of the statistics given and discussed are a reliable indicator for what the question asked
An important reminder for all statistics from Germany on ...
- 80.8k
8
votes
Demographics: Were diseases the sole reason for the decrease in native Hawaiian population?
Although disease was probably the primary factor, as other answers have addressed, there was another factor that negatively impacted the native population of Hawaii: emigration. Hawaii was an ...
7
votes
Accepted
Had there been a significant physiological difference between the Vikings and the Europeans (around the 11th century)?
The Romans did notice a physiological difference between themselves and Germanic Tribes, as already mentioned by DevSolar. The Arab traveller Ahmad ibn Fadlan aswell noted down in his journals when he ...
- 391
6
votes
Accepted
Is there any information on what numbers of American families have what numbers of children, for any time period?
You can download Census microdata at IPUMS USA here: https://usa.ipums.org/usa/
Since a large number of births occurred to married women historically in the United States, you could also use ...
- 76
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible