How many humans have lived on Earth?

Zdenka

Here's a brain teaser (or brain-wrecker!) for everyone! Anyone who can answer this question with an accuracy of +-1 human deserves a Nobel prize in my books! I already know the answer. ;-))

Okay, we all know there are 6+ billion people on earth currently living at this moment. But how many people have lived AND died on earth in the past up to this moment?

Ideally to answer this question we must have some criterias..

1. A living human being is defined as an organic entity that has come out of a Vagina and still breathing. Or even a cizarian. Therefore those that died in the womb should not be factored into the equation. Half human-animal breed do not count, assuming some females have breeded with an animal in Earth's history.

2. How long ago were the first humans were actual humans? This is a difficult thing to classify because, are homo Sapiens really human? I think the best way is start at a point in time.. lets say EXACTLY 1 million years ago was when the first humans started being born. Anything before that is NOT considered a human being. So therefore we should work our answers from this point.

3. You have until exactly midnight this Friday12.00AM universal time to answer the question.. ie how many humans beings have lived up to this EXACT point in time.. Please tell us what formula you have used, as this is a tremendously challenging question, I know! Good luck!!

Phrak

define 'this'

Zdenka

Phrak what do you mean? Maybe I should state "How many human beings have graced the earth starting from exactly 1 million years ago to yesterday at 12:00pm" This should give us a range to work on.

Phrak

I see. Then I'm out of time. Oh well, better luck next time.

cragar

i dont know 10 billion

Pythagorean

42, the rest are just their trolls.

Jimmy Snyder

Can we do Saturn? I know the answer to that one. Also, are solipsists allowed to play?

Dadface

There were three....Gert and Daisy and some geezer whose name I forget.
(It's a nice question and needs some thought)

maze

I looked into this at some point. If I recall correctly the answer is somewhere around 100 billion, which was quite a bit higher than my first guess.

Chi Meson

This is what I'd do, if I didn't have a full day of errands to get to, starting in 15 minutes, ending with me mum's birthday tonight...

find a decent graph of the known human population curve, determine the function it approximates (starting with 100 years ago, and going back), extrapolate to 1 million years ago, divide the "years" axis by 15 or 20 years (assumed historical life span), integrate (count up the "area under the curve"). Then add the population of the last century, which has been following a different function.

Is the method valid?

Now I gotta take my daughter to horseback lessons. See yer tomorrow.

Redbelly98

I remember reading somewhere that over half of all humans that ever lived are still alive today. Makes sense for our recent history at least, since average life expectancy (about 70 years?) is a lot longer than the time it takes the population to double (about 30 years).

If that's true, the answer is less than twice the present population.

maze

That is a common myth.

humanino

Probably this has been debunked.
Fact or Fiction?: Living People Outnumber the Dead

Redbelly98

Thanks for the correction!

So earlier growth rates were a lot slower, about 0.1% per year according to the sciam.com article humanino linked to.

humanino

It seems to me to be a pretty complicated problem actually. SciAm article and wikipedia provide very little details about Haub's calculations, we only can assume he has the correct population growth rate. What I am wondering about is, in his model he starts from just 2 people, his "Adam and Eve". This initial condition is crucial, and I don't quite understand what justifies it. What would result if instead he used two couples ? Maybe twice more total number of people ? Unfortunately, it is difficult to obtain an estimate in this method of the current world population. It seems he can only say "100G humans ever lived" without further reference point to justify the model.

arildno

The question is largely meaningless, due to the impossibility to gain relevant data to any significant extent.

humanino

I'm not sure what you mean. Is it that we can reproduce the experiment many times, like in cosmology ? Or is it that we can not gather more than old remnants of the experiment, like in cosmology ?