As the population continues to grow we wonder how big the population can get? At 7.8 billion people on Earth today it remains to be seen how much longer the planet can sustain increasing numbers. Another way to look at the demands placed on the Earth is to ask just how many people have lived on this planet so far? While almost 8 billion live here now, how many have lived here in total, ever? Before you read on and find out the answer, take a guess, see how close you get.
As you may be aware to find out how many people have lived on earth is part science and part guesswork. While we keep records of everyone today this is a relatively new idea. It is believed that the modern version of homo sapiens, that we may call people, were first found on the planet 50,000 years ago. That would mean that we have no population estimates for 99% of the time people have been on the earth, that does create a pretty big margin for error. Yet with a pencil and a piece of paper we can get a rough idea.
Essentially we just need to estimate how big the population has been at each historic point in time ensuring we take account of any serious events such as Ice ages, plagues and more. Life expectancy is a serious consideration, as well as people, are living longer today than ever before.
Luckily for us, the brilliant mind that is Toshiko Kaneda has done all the maths as part of his research at PRB. He estimates the total number of people who ever lived on the Earth is 108 billion people. This would mean that the current population is around 7% of the total ever seen. By 2050 the figure will reach almost 10 billion. So were you right?
