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    • Historical Urban Population: 3700 BC - AD 2000

    Metadata Updated: August 22, 2025

    The Historical Urban Population, 3700 BC - AD 2000, originally developed by the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, is the first spatially explicit global data set containing location and size of urban populations over the last 6,000 years. The data set was created by digitizing, transcribing, and geocoding historical, archaeological, and census-based urban population data. Each data point consists of a city name, latitude, longitude, year, population, and a reliability ranking to assess the geographic uncertainty of each data point. Despite spatial and temporal gaps, no other geocoded data set at this resolution exists. It can therefore be used to investigate long-term historical urbanization trends and patterns, evaluate the current era of urbanization, and build a richer record of urban population through history.

    Access & Use Information

    Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

    Downloads & Resources

    References

    https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.34

    Dates

    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date August 22, 2025

    Metadata Source

    Harvested from NASA Data.json

    Other Data Resources

    Additional Metadata

    Resource Type Dataset
    Metadata Created Date November 12, 2020
    Metadata Updated Date August 22, 2025
    Publisher SEDAC
    Maintainer
    Identifier C1527281913-SEDAC
    Data First Published 2018-05-04
    Language en-US
    Data Last Modified 2025-07-17
    Category USPAT, geospatial
    Public Access Level public
    Bureau Code 026:00
    Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
    Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
    Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
    Harvest Object Id 6ea4aee6-a24a-472d-9a8c-9cece1affd89
    Harvest Source Id 58f92550-7a01-4f00-b1b2-8dc953bd598f
    Harvest Source Title NASA Data.json
    Metadata Type geospatial
    Old Spatial -180.0 -60.0 180.0 85.0
    Program Code 026:001
    Related Documents https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.34
    Source Datajson Identifier True
    Source Hash a081cf4cac1536b6acf9b8a535565ef0018b397c8926c7bce2d300158f4eb127
    Source Schema Version 1.1
    Spatial
    Temporal 1700-01-01T00:00:00Z/2000-12-31T00:00:00Z

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