How Many People Have Ever Lived On Earth?

Earth’s population is approaching 7-billion people. And even though some countries are experiencing negative population growth, the population is many third world countries is exploding. But how many people have there been since humans first appeared on earth?

Tough question because we can only come up with an estimate of how many people ever existed because in the whole history of the humanity we can only be certain of one percent of it. The other 99 percent is unknown.

The best guess is the first humans appeared about 50,000 BC. 42,000 years later experts estimate the earth’s population stood at around 5-million. During that period 1.1 billion people had been born and died.

By 1 A.D. the population was up to 300-millon world-wide. The total number of people who had been born and died to that point is calculated at 46-billion.

The world population reached one-billion around 1800. Then jump ahead to 2012 and right now earth’s populations stands at around 6.3 billion and rapidly growing. The number of people who’ve ever existed is an estimated 107-billion.

So, if you do a little math – a little less than seven percent of the people who’ve ever lived on earth – in a period of more than 52-thousand years – are alive today.

SOURCE: Population Reference Bureau