
How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth? - robg
http://www.bakadesuyo.com/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth
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swombat
That probably vastly under-estimates the number (depending on whether you call
babies "people"). The population in 8,000 BC might have been 5 million, but
each of those was probably the one surviving sibling out of 6 or so.

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TheSOB88
Yes, there were many dead babies per living baby, but if each pair of parents
only had one child, the population would halve each generation.

More likely, there were some families that had a higher survival rate and kept
the death babies in check.

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ice_man
On a related note, I have always found this fascinating: How many n * "great"
grand parents do you have? Up to 2^(n+2) (Assuming an ancestral tree (as
opposed to a graph) (i.e. no inbreeding). Assuming a 20-year generation
length, that means that you have somewhere on the order of 10^6 great great
great great great great great great great great great great great great great
great great great great great grand parents, all of whom were frolicking all
over the world in the 1600s.

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stretchwithme
A lot of guesswork and bs. Two people alive in 50,000 BC? I guess they found a
wedding announcement stating there were no guests at that wedding.

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amock
If you read the article you'll see that they made that assumption because they
wanted a conservative estimate of the population and that's the minimum
possible number for a successful species.

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mortenjorck
Is two really the minimum for a successful species? For the next generation to
reproduce, it will have to resort to either incest (dangerously similar
genetics) or interspecies mating (dangerously different genetics). Then again,
I'm not a biologist, so maybe one can correct me here.

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ra
The growth from 1950 to 2002 is staggering

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jws
5% of the people who have ever lived are alive now.

50% of the people who have reached 65 years are alive now. [
<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627550.100> ]

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lurkinggrue
At some point you will have to define exactly what you include as "People."

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wlievens
I doubt that makes a noticable dent in the total tally, though!

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viggity
If my Japanese classes from high school serves me correctly, the translation
of "bakadesuyo" means "idiot indeed" or its a forceful way of saying "idiot".

