If the world's current human population is about 6 billion, I was just curious about approximately how many humans have ever lived, since the beginning of modern humans.
2007-07-02 08:52:49 · 5 answers · asked by learp17 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Biology
You can't PROVE how many people have ever lived, but you can certainly estimate it.
And your estimates are going to vary depending on exactly what assumptions you use to justify it. Birth rates, when the first 'humans' appeared, and exactly how many of them there were are all matters of almost complete speculation. The best we can do is use reasonable guesses and compare them to the few known population counts we have in history.
One set of calculations (link 1) that seemed pretty sound to me assumed that the first instance of what we would call 'humanity' appeared about 50 thousand years ago and used pretty rough estimates about birth rates and generation times, but at least when it was compared to fairly well accepted benchmarks of population it worked out well.
According to this estimate, 110 billion people have ever lived, leaving about 5% of the total population ever alive being still around today (and making around 100 billion dead people, in round numbers).
2007-07-02 11:38:33 · answer #1 · answered by Doctor Why 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Total Population On Earth
2016-11-01 22:09:52 · answer #2 · answered by digman 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Its very difficult to determine. I am sure there are some good educated guesses out there but there are many factors. Censuses haven't been around as long as people. Censuses can also be inaccurate and biased. Records of epidemics and natural disasters may be flawed or missing. There are groups of people that may be living in places we have no idea about, like in the rain forests.
Basically it boils down to the records we have for keeping track of people now is a relatively modern development. There just aren't good records on everyone since human life began.
2007-07-02 08:58:43 · answer #3 · answered by Lady Geologist 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
This is a great website that I found while doing research for a calculus assignment! I could not use it for what I was looking for but maybe it will give you an idea of how many people could have been on the earth since the begining!
http://www.ldolphin.org/popul.html
2007-07-02 09:06:14 · answer #4 · answered by Heather P 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
It's unclear there are actually more answers to the question...
2016-08-24 07:28:55 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋