The Great Flood and the current population of the world ...?

Question

Today, there are about 6,500,000,000 people in the world. If the Great Flood occured in around 2345 BC, are there enough generations, assuming everyone is a descendent of Noah and his wife, to account for the current population?

(my kid suggested this question, so don't blame me if you don't like it)

According to the world fact book, the world population is currently 6,602,224,175 (July 2007 est.)

Answer 1

I believe that this question (tell your kid this was an interesting question, by the way), is actually pretty simple to answer. Most population growth has been in the last few centuries; prior to this the world population was relatively low (I cannot recall the exact figure during the Roman Empire of the world population, but it was a fraction of todays). Mathematically, if one were to make a population growth as listed in the Bible (not in the small percentages of the last few thousand years), it would add up REAL quick to big numbers.

Answer 2

Yes But, There Were More Than Just Noah And His Wife Their Children And Some Grand Children (And Some Servants By Some Estimations) Were Also Aboard.

ALSO: In Noah's Time And For Many Thousands Of Years Later Children Were Considered Wealth. The More Children You Had, The More Flocks Of Sheep And Cattle You Could Tend And The More Land You Could Farm.

Also, It's Only Been The Last Generation (The Last 20 Years) That People Have Had Small Families, (1, 2 Or NONE) In The 1940's (After The War) 1950's And 1960's People Had As Many As 10 Children Per Couple (Average) And From The 1970's-1980's It Was Not Uncommon To Have 5 Or 6 Per Couple (Average)

Answer 3

Assume that the average family has 4 children who later have families of their own, and that each set of parents lives to see all their grandchildren. For these conditions which are not at all unreasonable, the population at the end of 5 generation would be 96, after 10 generations, 3,070; after 15 generations, 98,300; after 20 generations, 3,150,000; and after 30 generations, 3,220,000,000. In one more generation (31) the total would increase to 6.5 billion.

The next obvious question is: How long is a generation? Again, a reasonable assumption is that the average marriage occurs at age 25 and that the four children will have been born by age 35. Then the grandchildren will have been born the parents have lived their allotted span of 70 years. A generation is thus about 35 years. Many consider a generation to be only 30 years. This would mean that the entire present world population could have been produced in approximately 30 x 35, or 1,050 years.

Because of things like wars, plagues, etc, it has taken more than 1,050 years for the world to reach its present population. But the math saws it is not only possible, but probable that the world would reached its current population in the time between Noah's flood and now.

If the Flood story was NOT true, the human population would have to much much higher then it is today.

Answer 4

No, not when you consider the Bubonic Plague dropped the population of Europe by about a third.

Big families were the norm a few hundred years ago - it's not uncommon to see families with 15-19 kids, but only half of them, if they were lucky, made it to adulthood as infant and child mortality until the modern era has been very high.

Edit: what people also do not realize is yes each generation doubles on it's way back but not always the number of people. Many people have repeat ancestors that have more than one designation due to cousin marriages (which at one time were perfectly acceptable) and from one man having multiple wives and a person being a descendant of two of the mans wives. If you trace your history back far enough (usually 1600-1700's will do it) you will find this.

Answer 5

The Flood of Noah is not only in the Bible, but it is in every culture and nation. Too much evidence for the flood as far as ancient written history is concerned. Many scientists find evidence of a flood throughout the world. Even the Egyptian pyramids contain sea salt. Why would every culture have a flood story in the culture if it never happened?

Answer 6

Yes, in theory the human population could increase quickly enough to get 6.5 billion from 8 over that period. (Population can expand exponentially).

However, assuming an even rate of growth, the total population of the earth at the time of the building of the Great Pyramid would have been only 100, and at the time of the Roman Empire about 100,000.

There is also the problem of current human genetic diversity. If all present day humans are descended from only four couples 4300 years ago, the rates of mutation would have had to be many times faster in the past than they are currently.

Answer 7

So that makes it 4345 years ago, which is about 197 generations assuming 22 years per generation. Assuming every married and each couple had 4 children who lived to be s, the population today would be 2^197 or 284,069,197,010,545,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.00.
I am pretty sure that is more than enough time given those assumption. Even if you assume just over 2.3 children per couple living to hood, you would have 972,351,905,998.96 people. This is just from 2 people.

To answer your question, the answer is a clear yes.

Answer 8

No, there are not enough generations to explain this.

I wonder why kangaroos are only in Australia? And how did they get all of those species to specific areas of the world. Why don't we have giraffes in America? ;-) There are many things that explain the World Flood away.

Actually, it's a good question. One most extremely religious Adults don't stop to ponder. The just dodge it... look at some of the other answers here lol

Answer 9

if Noah had three kids and those three kids had over 5 kids each, and those fifteen kids had over 5 kids each again (remember now that during that time the number of kids signified your importance) It's actually not far fetched. That's like saying Since this many Jews were killed in the Holocaust was there enough Jews left to repopulate in the given amount of time?

Answer 10

well this story has been pretty much proven to be false. do some research but a global flood never happened, and his boat wouldnt have been big enough to hold 2 of every animal anyways let alone the fact that for some animals he supposedly took 7. there was at that time a small local flood which he might of thought was global.....