population of the roman empire at its peak
Demography of the Roman Empire At its peak, after the Antonine Plague of the 160s CE, it had a population of about 60â€“70 million and a population density of about 16 persons per square kilometer. In contrast to the European societies of the classical and medieval periods, Rome had unusually high urbanization rates. During the 2nd century CE, the city of Rome had more than one million inhabitants. No Western city would have as many again until the 19th century.
World population Estimates of the population of the world at the time agriculture emerged in around 10,000 BCE have ranged between 1 million and 15 million.[26][27] Even earlier, genetic evidence suggests humans may have gone through a population bottleneck of between 1,000 and 10,000 people about 70,000 BCE, according to the Toba catastrophe theory. By contrast, it is estimated that around 50â€“60 million people lived in the combined eastern and western Roman Empire in the 4th century CE.[28]