Human intelligence must be facing Malthusian predicaments headlong for the first time. Local over-exploitation dramas must have happened many times before, with various outcomes: migration to (or concurring) other region was probably most frequent solution. But for the first time really, we won't have the option to migrate, so it's gonna be "interesting". We should not rely on the empirical intuition that laisse faire nature runs no real risk of catastrophic collapse.
For quite a few centuries, around the Roman invasion, between 10th-14th century and from the 16th onward, France's population remained near the Malthusian maximum. And it wasn't wars that kept the population in check, but rather regular famines - due to lack of food. Hardly more Malthusian. Famines didn't cut the population in half like the Black Death, but rather killed a few percentages here and there, the poorest and weakest... And were a regular occurence. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium; atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
European populations have been alternating between increasing (short term) carrying capacity and hitting the limits of existing capacity, with the usual round of death and famine that happens around that point.
The challenge this time seems to be to manage the death and famine intelligently, rather than have them just happen.
