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How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?
- swombat 17y agoThat probably vastly under-estimates the number (depending on whether you call babies "people"). The population in 8,000 BC might have been 5 million, but each of those was probably the one surviving sibling out of 6 or so.
- TheSOB88 17y agoYes, there were many dead babies per living baby, but if each pair of parents only had one child, the population would halve each generation. More likely, there were some families that had a higher survival rate and kept the death babies in check.
- ra 17y agoThe growth from 1950 to 2002 is staggering
- viggity 17y agoIf my Japanese classes from high school serves me correctly, the translation of "bakadesuyo" means "idiot indeed" or its a forceful way of saying "idiot".
- stretchwithme 17y agoA lot of guesswork and bs. Two people alive in 50,000 BC? I guess they found a wedding announcement stating there were no guests at that wedding.
- amock 17y agoIf you read the article you'll see that they made that assumption because they wanted a conservative estimate of the population and that's the minimum possible number for a successful species.
- mortenjorck 17y agoIs two really the minimum for a successful species? For the next generation to reproduce, it will have to resort to either incest (dangerously similar genetics) or interspecies mating (dangerously different genetics). Then again, I'm not a biologist, so maybe one can correct me here.
- jws 17y ago5% of the people who have ever lived are alive now. 50% of the people who have reached 65 years are alive now. [ http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100 http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100 ]
- ice_man 17y agoOn a related note, I have always found this fascinating: How many n * "great" grand parents do you have? Up to 2^(n+2) (Assuming an ancestral tree (as opposed to a graph) (i.e. no inbreeding). Assuming a 20-year generation length, that means that you have somewhere on the order of 10^6 great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grand parents, all of whom were frolicking all over the world in the 1600s.
- lurkinggrue 17y agoAt some point you will have to define exactly what you include as "People."
- wlievens 17y agoI doubt that makes a noticable dent in the total tally, though!