How Many People Have Lived On Earth So Far?

At some point , somebody has probably told you that the number of people alive on Earth mighty now outnumber the number of dead who have ever hold up .

It might seem a plausible theme . The human universe – fire by industrialization and farming improvements – grew significantly in the last two centuries , from 1.6 billion in 1900 to just over8 billiontoday . It would be reasonable to assume that peradventure the population arise so quickly at some point during the century that the life briefly outnumber the numb .

However , you ’d be faulty , according to the data point and calculate we have on it .

Around 1800 , universe data became much good .

" Once you have written records , once you have censuses , when nation pop out to pick up revenue enhancement , you start developing write disk , " Wendy Baldwin of the Population Reference Bureau ( PRB ) excuse to theBBCin 2012 . Given that the first modern humankind left Africa60,000 yearsago , that ’s quite a lot of time where we have to rely on estimates .

" Average life expectancy in Iron Age France ( from 800 B.C.E. to about 100 C.E. ) has been estimated at only 10 or 12 geezerhood , " thePRBexplained , releasing their latest universe estimate . " Under these conditions , the birth rate would have to be about 80 alive births per 1,000 people just for the specie to pull round . To put that in perspective , a high birth rate today is about 35 to 45 live births per 1,000 population , and it is follow in only some sub - Saharan African countries . "

The PRB used universe estimates from various points in history and prehistory , and applied an assumed birth rate ( which got lower over sentence , to reflect the declining nascency pace ) . The method gave a rough appraisal of the act of births ( and therefore deaths , unless there are some 700 - year - olds criticize about and keeping quiet ) , though it would of course have been better if ancient people had taken time away from being illiterate and hunt to do some better record book - keeping .

According to their estimate , about 117 billion births have taken place since 190,000 BCE , far outnumbering the 8 billion people who are alive today .

" If we were to challenge our conclusion at all , it might be that our method underestimates the number of birth to some grade , " they added . " The assumption of constant rather than extremely fluctuating population growing in the earlier period may underestimate the average population size at the clip . "