The registered population of China during the Six Dynasties would seem to have fluctuated between approximately 23 million and 50 million. Based on the number of government seats from the district (xian) level up, this number may well have been growing over time. At the end of the Han dynasty, the total of these entities numbered more than 1,100, but by the end of the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there were approximately 1,700 government seats in the North and South combined. No data remain on the total population in these towns during this period. If research on the Northern Song dynasty and later is any indication, the population of those living in towns did not exceed 10 percent of the total population. Therefore, one may conclude that over 90 percent of the population lived in the world of villages below the administrative level of the district, and perhaps even more so during the Six Dynasties.