The population grew from the South Asian Stone Age in 10,000 BC to the Maurya Empire in 200 BC at a steadily increasing growth rate, before population growth slowed down in the classical era up to 500 AD, and then became largely stagnant during the early medieval era up to 1000 AD. The population growth rate then increased in the late medieval era (during the Delhi Sultanate) from 1000 to 1500. India's population growth rate under the Mughal Empire (16th–18th centuries) was higher than during any previous period in Indian history. Under the Mughal Empire, India experienced an unprecedented economic and demographic upsurge, due to Mughal agrarian reforms that intensified agricultural production, proto-industrialization that established India as the most important centre of manufacturing in international trade, and a relatively high degree of urbanisation for its time; 15% of the population lived in urban centres, higher than the percentage of the population in 19th-century British India and contemporary Europe up until the 19th century. Under the reign of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) in 1600, the Mughal Empire's urban population was up to 17 million people, larger than the urban population in Europe. By 1700, Mughal India had an urban population of 23 million people, larger than British India's urban population of 22.3 million in 1871. Nizamuddin Ahmad (1551–1621) reported that, under Akbar's reign, Mughal India had 120 large cities and 3,200 townships. A number of cities in India had a population between a quarter-million and half-million people, with larger cities including Agra (in Agra Subah) with up to 800,000 people and Dhaka (in Bengal Subah) with over 1 million people. Mughal India also had a large number of villages, with 455,698 villages by the time of Aurangzeb (reigned 1658–1707). In the early 18th century, the average life expectancy in Mughal India was 35 years. In comparison, the average life expectancy for several European nations in the 18th century were 34 years in early modern England, up to 30 years in France, and about 25 years in Prussia. The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire years. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation. Life expectancy from 1881 to 1950  The population of India under the British Raj (including what are now Pakistan and Bangladesh) according to censuses:  Studies of India's population since 1881 have focused on such topics as total population, birth and death rates, growth rates, geographic distribution, literacy, the rural and urban divide, cities of a million, and the three cities with populations over eight million: Delhi, Greater Mumbai (Bombay), and Kolkata (Calcutta).