How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? Year In all likelihood, human populations in different regions grew or declined in response to food availability, the variability of animal herds, periods of peace or hostility, and changing weather and climatic conditions. It’s difficult to come up with an average world population size for this period. to 300 million in 1 C.E.-results in a very low growth rate of only 0.05% per year. (Table 1 displays very rough figures representing averages of an estimate of ranges given by the United Nations and other sources.) Slow population growth over the 8,000-year period-from an estimated 5 million in 8000 B.C.E. Diverse groups are thought to have lived in different locations across Africa for the first two-thirds of human history.Īround 8000 B.C.E., the world population was approximately 5 million. Modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa, though the exact location has long been debated.

Current evidence supports modern Homo sapiens appearing around 190,000 B.C.E. The earliest species of the Homo genus appeared around 2 million to 1.5 million B.C.E. The oldest hominins are thought to have appeared as early as 7 million B.C.E. The estimate, however, does not depend on the number of deaths during any period of time.ĭetermining when humankind actually came into existence isn’t straightforward. What Can We Estimate About Population in Prehistory and History?Īny estimate of the total number of people who have ever lived depends essentially on three factors: the length of time that humans are thought to have been on Earth, the average size of the population at different periods, and the number of births per 1,000 population during each of those periods. Still, with some assumptions about population size throughout human history, we can get a rough idea of this number: About 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth. No demographic data exist for more than 99% of the span of human existence.

Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and InclusionĬalculating the number of people who have ever lived is part science and part art.

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I have lived a thousand years timeline