Filling Today's Census Links You to Millennia of Population Counting

When people sit down to complete the census this week, they are participating in a practice that stretches back to Babylonian record-keeping around 3800 BC, where clay tablets listed people, livestock and food stores. Early Greek, Israeli and Egyptian counts served military and labor needs, while the Romans under King Servius Tullius created a detailed register of citizens’ ages, property and residence to allocate taxes, troops and voting rights.

The tradition persisted through the Roman Republic and Empire, even featuring in the biblical narrative of Mary and Joseph traveling for an Augustus-ordered census. In Australia, a “muster” in Sydney Cove in 1788 estimated colony supplies, and the first coordinated national count took place on 2 April 1911, recording 4,455,005 residents. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples were excluded until constitutional changes in 1967 and their first full inclusion in the 1971 census. Modern forms still echo many of the original questions, linking today’s data collection to a long historical lineage.