If the earth is actually millions of years old how come the earth is not overpopulated?

Question

If the earth is as old as scientists say how come the population of the earths peoples are consistent with a society that existed about 4200 years ago (around the time of the flood) and not consistent with a society that would have existed millions of years ago?

Answer 1

In 1999, the human population passed six billion. In 1985, it passed five billion. In 1962, it passed three billion. In 1800, it passed one billion. In 1 AD, the world's population, according to the censuses taken by the governments of that time, was only 250 million. At the current human population growth rate, considering wars and famines and all such variables, it would take approximately 5,000 years to get the current population from two original people.

Investigate More Now!

The oldest living things on earth, the bristle cone pine trees in Nevada and California, are 5,000 years old. California redwoods are 4,000 years old. If trees can live that long, why couldn't they live several thousands of years longer? Why are there no trees older than 5,000 years?

Answer 2

Wow! finally an original and challenging question to totally blow the idea of an old Earth right out of the water! Why has no-one thought of this before?

The problem is that it's completely and easily debunked. We have good estimates of the worlds population to at least 10,000 BCE. Many people trying to use world population to estimate the age of civilisation simply fail to forget that the population growth over time does not follow a simple mathematical function. Population rates change due to the ways man interacts with the environment. The population growth of today cannont be used as a model for earlier times where infant mortality was much higher.

Basically, people who take modern population growth rates and extrapolate backwards are themselves backwards. They are ignoring the statistics of modelling population growth. Here is a more accurate representation of world populations in history:
Estimates of World Population
Population in millions
Year Population
BC 10000 4
5000 5
1000 50
1 AD 170
600 200
1000 265
1500 425
1600 545
1700 610
1800 900
1900 1,625
2000 6,078
Sources: McEvedy, Colin and Richard Jones, 1978, "Atlas of World Population History." and U.S. Census Bureau
If you examine the figures closely, you'll see this is not a linear expansion and clearly doesn't begin at the supposed time of the flood. There is simply too much evidence to show that the world is much more than 6000 years old, and that civilisation as we know it began more than 4200 years ago.

Answer 3

Your questions has incorrect assumptions. Modern humans have not been around for millions of years so the question is senseless. As to the population being consistant with 4200 years ago ( a time when you think there was only one inbreeding family) such calculations are the done backwards. Figure out how many people are alive now, how many generations should have passed, and come up with the average birth rate to make your two numbers fit. Then pretend you did it in the other direction.

Answer 4

Because population is exponential. If you've ever seen an exponential function on a graph, you would see that we're headed for a lot of trouble. The population would generally stay level for a very long period of time (other devices like disease and things would keep it in check as well). We're getting to the point where the increase in population is starting to become vertical. If you've ever looked into overpopulation, you'll see that we're going to be in trouble really soon.

Keep in mind also that the known earth 4200 years ago was a very small in comparison to what it is today. We have since inhabited the Americas. Try to imagine putting all of the people in North and South America into Europe, Africa, and Asia (the known world 4200 years ago). You'll see that the population has increased immensely compared to what it was 4200 years ago.

Answer 5

You are obviously confusing religion with science here.

Human tools and human artifacts date back to 4m years ago, that is a fact. There are plenty of reasons we haven't overpopulated the planet. Various natural disasters, flood, disease, war, poor living conditions etc kept the survival rate relatively low for a LONG time.

Recent (last few thousand years) medical advances, living conditions, technological advances, etc are responsible for making us survive longer and reproduce more, thus our population is swelling.

The age of the earth also has nothing to do with how long humans have been on it. The earth was formed like 4 billion years ago.

Answer 6

It is likely that natural disasters (such as your flood) and astronomical catastrophes (such as meteors, etc.) are the cause of societal demise. This could have happened over and over again. You also are overlooking scientific evidence of species evolution (Darwin Theory), which says that survival is only granted to the fittest. Many societies could have failed because they were not physically or mentally fit to thrive. Another interesting point is that the mortality rate was considerably higher in history than it is today. People are being born quicker than they are dying, compared to long ago when people didn't live as long. Take the change over thousands of years, and that might be your answer all to itself. Furthermore, we are killing ourselves off at a much higher rate than we've seen in early history. Being at the top of the food chain, we are responsible for our own population control. The human species achieves this through wars and sexually transmitted disease. Because war has become more globally reaching, it's alot easier to reach out and touch someone. Disease spreads for the same reason. (no pun intended).

Answer 7

The truth is the earth isn't millions of years old. The current world population numbers is only consistent with the young earth theory. You are correct and this is simple....do the math. To believe the earth is millions of years old you must also believe in the global flood as this is the only way to reconcile current population numbers.

Answer 8

The ability to produce food to sustain large populations, plus the pre and post natal care necessary to insure the continuance of life through the first years, didn't exist until relatively recent times. In other words, for generations, nature was thinning out the weakest of our herd and kept us at sustainable levels. Now that we're overcoming some of these natural processes, our population has, in fact, ballooned to unnatural and unsustainable levels of growth.

By the by, I love thinking about how clever you must have imagined this question to be, when really, it's just about the most uninformed question I've seen in a long, long time. The only reason I even bothered to answer it was due to the fear that someone might think your question made some sense.

With love,

Lazarus

Answer 9

Plagues! lol! Remember the black one in Europe? Good form of population control. There have been a couple of those that have wiped out huge parts of the population in verious parts of the world. And sadly parts of the world ARE overpopulated.. China and India are notorious for the size of their populations and the conditions in which some people live.

Answer 10

Wow. Did we upgrade to the full version or what?

Outside of what I believe, how can I accept what you just stated? I had to stop and try to figure out if you are comparing land usage/population of the area to what is worldwide now.... or not. Where do you have evidence of what a million year old society should look like? Do we claim to be millions of years old?