Celts - do you find it Gauling how rulesets treat them...

[aligern]

I think that is now discredited Andreas ( That earlier farmers could not cope with heavy soils,) I read some time ago that the indicator of this, the Celtic field systems on  higher, lighter, chalky soils  only survive because they represent the farming of marginal land, by a larger population) and that the heavier soils  were farmed, but traces of that farming have been lost under subsequent tilling because the alluvial soils were richer and were in constant use from the iron age onwards.  Its probably part of the upward revision of populations in this period.

I expect Jim will tell us.
Roy

[Erpingham]

It is certainly true that in one of the things I looked at trying to answers Doug's question, the authors noted that the old view Gallic heavy clay soils were not settled has been overturned by better detection methods.  Roy's idea of continuous cultivation leaving less fossilised landscapes goes along with this.

[Tim]

According to that very reliable source Wikipedia, the population of France in 50 BC was 2.5 million. Their source is "Population totale par sexe et âge au 1 er janvier 2017, France métropolitaine−Bilan démographique 2016 - Insee". Insee.fr.

[Erpingham]

For those wanting to look at Tim's source, it is on the Demographics of France page.  It gives the population at 1 A.D. as 5.5 million, a huge increase in 50 years.

The long time series no longer seems to be available at insee.fr - things seem to start at 1901 now - so I can't check the basis of the figures.

[Jim Webster]

Agricultural history was never my strong point, but I seem to recall that in pre-medieval times, the tech wasn't there to realize the potential of the heavier soils of central Europe, and France/Gaul was effectively less fertile than Italy.

not sure, the problem is that Italy became a net grain importer but then their agriculture moved away from staples into supplying Rome with other stuff and importing grain
But I think that 225BC is before major importing started although Roman armies were often supplied not from Italy but other places

[Dangun]

This thread grew quickly.
It reminds me of the discussions regarding Herodotus' Persian millions and what's the appropriate skepticism to apply to a unique literary history.

[Jim Webster]

This thread grew quickly.
It reminds me of the discussions regarding Herodotus' Persian millions and what's the appropriate skepticism to apply to a unique literary history.

I did a lot of reading as a result of that thread and came away from it all agreeing with the saying that's often attached to the Peninsular war, "small armies are defeated and big armies starve"

[Erpingham]

This thread grew quickly.
It reminds me of the discussions regarding Herodotus' Persian millions and what's the appropriate skepticism to apply to a unique literary history.

It follows many similar lines.  We have discussed the overall military capacity, based on demographic estimates.  We have shown in absolute terms that there were no shortage of men.  However, absolute numbers are not a major part of the puzzle.  We still stuggle with the capability (organisational, logistical, political) question.  In this case, we cannot fall back on "the most highly organised empire the world had ever seen" argument to make up for the gaps.  Here we have loose temporary alliances, a lack of co-ordinated long term logistical planning, an uncertainty about what proportion of the hypothetical manpower would be expected to, or be capable of, fighting.  We might also note that field armies in this area rarely reached more than 50,000 before the 17th century and even this was a great advance on the Middle Ages, where keeping a force of 25,000 in one place was an achievement.  So, a certain amount of scepticism is certainly warranted.

[aligern]

Scepticism is indeed warranted, though we do have to beware of relying entirely on the idea that 50,000 was a large army in 1650  ir in 550 and that constrains the numbers that  might be fielded throughout earlier history.
The debate about Persians brings back the argument that the  army was fed by sea and there were enough ships to accomplish this and that  extra grain had been planted and stired three years ahead and so on. The line tgat never was pursued back tgen was the size of Indian and Chinese armies. I wonder if anyone expert in those areas might shed light on army sizes?
Some at least of Caesar's numbers stand independent of tge logistics argument.  If tge Gallic relieving army at Alesia all brought their own food tgen a campaign for as long as the food lasts is fair enough, they just coukd not stay concentrated beyond that.  That there were 420,000 Usipetes and Tencteri looks an impossible number, unbeleivably large and uncountable . However, that the Helvetii and their allied tribes held a census before setting out is entirely pkausible...its the total number that seens high.  If there were around 40 tribes in Gaul and 4 million peopke that woukd be an average tribal size of 100. thousand souls and that does sound a lot.....an awful lot . But if we took Jim's comparison with Southern Utaly, its not outlandish and if they have a million man potential then some of the numbers, for a major national effort or an alliance of several tribes might not be such an exaggeration?
Roy

[DougM]

All seems highly implausible this supposed census in a society with no written records.

[Duncan Head]

Gauls do have written records; Caesar says that the druids write down their teachings using Greek characters. And he explicitly says that he knew the Helvetian numbers from captured census records written in Greek. You can doubt the numbers, but doubting the existence of some sort of written record is a big step further.

Edit:

According to the Recueil des Inscriptions Gauloises, nearly three quarters of Gaulish inscriptions (disregarding coins) are in the Greek alphabet.

[Erpingham]

Scepticism is indeed warranted, though we do have to beware of relying entirely on the idea that 50,000 was a large army in 1650  ir in 550 and that constrains the numbers that  might be fielded throughout earlier history.

Wouldnt dream of using it as our only evidence of the constraints but it does help to contextualise the numbers. 

[aligern]

Diesn't  Caesar say that Vercingetorix orders a register of 'all' the archers in Gaul to create a force that can operate with the Gallic cavalry. Tgat sounds to me like a list made up by tribe that  can be counted and levied?
Gaul has quite a lot of trade going on. by implication  everywhere south of the Belgae is importing Roman goods. so are the Southern British tribes, to the point where martial spirit was diminished. Writing is not absolutely necessary for trade, but its likely that many merchants were literate and, more importantly numerate.
Roy

[aligern]

Interesting, the Spanish quote. Large armies starve, small armies get beaten. Indeed, but I wouldn't  be surprised if both the allies and the French had something like a half million men each engaged in Spain. That's an awful lot of troops if my guess is right.  Well probably too many, the Spanish aimed at 500,000, but must have delivered far less. There were of course 90,000 Brits and Portuguese.  Tge French possibility  had 500,000 men there but not all at obe tine.  However, bringing more than 100,000 of them to one place was a major effiort..

Roy

[Jim Webster]

Gauls do have written records; Caesar says that the druids write down their teachings using Greek characters. And he explicitly says that he knew the Helvetian numbers from captured census records written in Greek. You can doubt the numbers, but doubting the existence of some sort of written record is a big step further.

In the article it there was a comment along the lines of 'how many wagons were used to carry the wax tablets with all the information on.

I suspect that the census records could well have been somewhat less detailed than ours. I can see that the Helventian census was something like in Numbers 26 where you get the tribe, the names of the major clans within the tribe and the total number of men over 20 in the tribe. The whole thing comes to less than a thousand words and tells you pretty much what you need to know 

Obviously you could, for example at the total number of women and children (which would include males under 20) and that would give you a figure that might be useful logistically)
But at this level each tribe is probably barely a full wax tablet.
I can imagine no point in recording names of individuals.