Diverse groups are thought to have lived in different locations across Africa for the first two-thirds of human history.Īround 8000 B.C.E., the world population was approximately 5 million. Modern Homo sapiens originated in Africa, though the exact location has long been debated.
Current evidence supports modern Homo sapiens appearing around 190,000 B.C.E. The earliest species of the Homo genus appeared around 2 million to 1.5 million B.C.E. The oldest hominins are thought to have appeared as early as 7 million B.C.E.
The estimate, however, does not depend on the number of deaths during any period of time.ĭetermining when humankind actually came into existence isn’t straightforward. What Can We Estimate About Population in Prehistory and History?Īny estimate of the total number of people who have ever lived depends essentially on three factors: the length of time that humans are thought to have been on Earth, the average size of the population at different periods, and the number of births per 1,000 population during each of those periods. Still, with some assumptions about population size throughout human history, we can get a rough idea of this number. No demographic data exist for more than 99% of the span of human existence. To be sure, calculating the number of people who have ever lived is part science and part art. We also estimate that by 2050 another 4 billion births will increase the number of people who have ever lived on Earth to about 121 billion. Taking Poston’s number into account, we came to our revised estimate of 117 billion people born since 190,000 B.C.E. and produced an estimate of around 8 billion births between 190,000 B.C.E. How did we reach this number? Dudley Poston Jr., a prominent demographer at Texas A&M University, extended our original analysis to 190,000 B.C.E. This major change in our understanding of human existence spurred new calculations and consultations with experts, resulting in an estimate that about 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth. Discoveries now suggest modern Homo sapiens existed much earlier, around 200,000 B.C.E. To begin with, when we initially wrote this article back in 1995, “modern” Homo sapiens (that is, people who were roughly like we are now) were thought to have first walked the Earth around 50,000 B.C.E.
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