Energy flows through the food chain. As each recipient devours energy, they use it for their growth, their body’s maintenance and the growth of young. For example, the moose, a very large herbivore, must eat to grow, keep eating to power its body and eat some more to make more moose. A successful being carves a niche into the food chain so that it can acquire all the energy and material needed for survival and proliferation.
Moose are common throughout the northern hemisphere. They reside about swampy areas so as to eat the fresh, local bush. But a typical adult male moose, weighing 360 kg, will go through 32 kg of forage daily which contain about 46 MegaJoules of energy. Because of this, moose can’t exist in herds and usually live solitary lives. As a result, where ecosystems provide, their density varies from 5 to 39 moose over a range of 10 000 hectares.
Similarly, human’s living at a civilization level of a hunter gatherer likely had a density of 50 people per 10 000 hectares. Our current population density is about 2000 people per 10 000 hectares. And, this assumes we’re spread evenly over all the land surface. This shows that our civilization can’t return to its past without some drastic changes.
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