June 2021
Census Analysis (1 of 2)
A census is the procedure of systematically enumerating, and acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. From the beginning of civilization (towns and cities), governments have needed periodic counts of how many people lived under their rule. They needed these figures to know how many people they could feed and water, how many they could tax, and how many able-bodied men they had to dig irrigation channels and to defend the community when under attack.
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April 2018
The Census: Counting On It.
In antiquity, our numbers grew enough to give rise to towns and cities, kingdoms, and empires. Rulers needed to know how many and what kind of people lived in their realms. The first city-state, Sumeria (4000 BC) located on today?s Iraq and Iran border, had agriculture heavily dependent on irrigation systems. Because the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were too unreliable to feed the growing population, irrigation canals were built, systems depending on human labor. Rulers and priests needed accurat more...