Oldest Baby Boom in North America Sheds Light on Native American Population Crash

One of the biggest baby booms in North American history didn't occur anytime recently. Instead, it occurred within Native American populations between 500 and 1300 AD. Now, scientists have taken a closer look at this massive baby boom as they learn a bit more about what kind of events led up to the boom and then caused population numbers to rapidly decline.

The researchers looked at a century's worth of data on thousands of human remains found at hundreds of sites across the Four Corners region of the Southwest. After studying these remains and the sites where they were located, the scientists were able to create a detailed chronology of the area's transition from a hunter-gatherer society to a farming society; stone tools revealed a transition from cutting meat to pounding grain.

Maize, or corn, was actually grown in the area as early as 2000 BC; yet it seems as if the people in the region were slow to respond. By 400 BC, though, corn provided about 80 percent of the area's calories. These new farming practices cause populations numbers to rise steadily until about 500 AD. Around 900 AD, populations remained high, but birth rates began to fluctuate. Then in the mid-1100s, one of the largest known droughts in the Southwest occurred. Spurred by this drought and other reasons, from the mid-1000s to 1280, conflicts raged across the northern Southwest.

While there were as many as 40,000 people in the Southwest in the mid-1200s, within 30 years it was empty.

"We can learn lessons from these people," said Tim Kohler, one of the researchers, in a news release, as he spoke about the dangers of overpopulation.

The growth of this population and subsequent crash reveals that too many people can spell disaster for an area, especially when environmental factors, like drought, come into play. While new technology may make things easier for a while, it's obvious that these "good times" don't last forever.

The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.