ANALYSIS
The simplest way of estimating total Thug killings is to multiply the only fairly complete, well-documented number (40,000/yr in 1812) by the 600 years of activity = 24 million, which leaves most people shaking their heads in disbelief. Twenty-four million based on a single statistic? That can't be right, can it?
So, then, most people drop the idea of attaching a number, and just declare that the Thugs killed "millions". Later estimates then translate "millions" conservatively: "over a million", "two million or more", like that.
Another approach would be to take Bruce's estimate that, on average, each Thug went on ten hunting expeditions during his lifetime and participated in ten attacks on each expedition. That makes an average of 100 murders per Thug. The approximately 4,500 Thugs at work in the early 19th C. would then be responsible for 450,000 murders all told. With each generation of Thugs having a productive life of about 33 years (ages 17-50), that means that each century would see 3 generations (1,350,000 murders/century). In 600 years, that would come to 8.1 million.
An even more complicated calculation would be to figure the average number of killings per year per Thug
Well, we only have 2 specific lifetime totals -- Rumzam @ ca. 30/yr and Behram @ ca. 20/yr -- and these are the extrordinary cases.
Of the three gangs whose statistics are given
201/60/0.67=5 murders per year per Thug
108/125/0.25=3.5 murders per year per Thug
Rumzam's gang: 2-3 murders per year per Thug
@ 2 to 5 murders per-year-per-Thug and 4-5,000 Thugs, we get 0.8M to 2.5M killings per century. Picking the mid-factors (3.5 x 4500) we get 1,575,000 in a century, or 9.45M in 600 years.
Or, instead, we could approach this from a per-gang average ...
The mean size of the gangs listed (or implied) here is about 80.
Average number of gangs at work: 4500 Thugs divided into gangs of 80 = 55 gangs ±
The mean number of murders per gang per year is about 275. That comes to 15,125 Thug murders per year, or 9,075,000 in six centuries.
CONCLUSIONS
My various calculations come to 24.0M or 9.5M or 9.1M or 8.1M Thug murders in 600 years, so nine million is a possibilty. But then so is Dash's 50,000, so who knows?
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