Quote Originally Posted by Caesar View Post
I would disagree with that analysis. Infant mortality, followed by early child mortality, are the two biggest factors in human mortality overall, with infant mortality being significantly greater. Infant mortality in 3rd world, rural environments hovers around 10% or more. This is in the modern world, where those people have access to more food and technology than they would have in a stone-age setting, but lets take it as such more or less. Now the human population took tens of thousands of years to break out, with an exponential growth of only about 0.5% per year for most of our early history (70,000 years!). So you can see, it doesn't take a lot of numbers much higher than this to flatline the human population, and this was in a world full of food and resources, where we are the apex species.
As I said, the concept I presented is not a scientific representation in any way.

But look at that 10% number, and consider that this is occurring in the exact same place that our population is growing fastest. The industrialized nations with access to good medical care also have easy access to contraception, and growth rates in China, Europe, and the US are virtually stagnant. But the human race is growing at an accelerating pace, on a global average, because of the mothers of the third world nations.

Infant mortality is not a real issue until it reaches rediculously high levels compared to historic norms. Maternity mortality is a more significant issue, but again, this is highest in the fastest growing populations.

So, if you would like to delve into the issue you are welcome to do so. For my purposes the scattershot illustration of the issue is sufficient to prove my point, which is that the potential for infant mortality to limit racial growth exists, but would require numbers not seen by the human race in the real world outside of specific historical periods of ecological disasters such as plagues, (and these were, so far, temporary setbacks.)