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This article lists current estimates of the
world population In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living. It was estimated by the United Nations to have exceeded 8 billion in November 2022. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for th ...
in history. In summary, estimates for the progression of world population since the
Late Middle Ages The Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Ren ...
are in the following ranges: Estimates for pre-modern times are necessarily fraught with great uncertainties, and few of the published estimates have
confidence interval In frequentist statistics, a confidence interval (CI) is a range of estimates for an unknown parameter. A confidence interval is computed at a designated ''confidence level''; the 95% confidence level is most common, but other levels, such as 9 ...
s; in the absence of a straightforward means to assess the error of such estimates, a rough idea of expert consensus can be gained by comparing the values given in independent publications. Population estimates cannot be considered accurate to more than two decimal digits; for example, the world population for the year 2012 was estimated at 7.02, 7.06, and 7.08 billion by the
United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of th ...
, the
Population Reference Bureau The Population Reference Bureau (PRB) is a private, nonprofit organization specializing in collecting and supplying statistics necessary for research and/or academic purposes focused on the environment, and health and structure of populations. The ...
, and the
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) is part of the United Nations Secretariat and is responsible for the follow-up to major United Nations Summits and Conferences, as well as services to the United Nations Ec ...
, respectively, corresponding to a spread of estimates of the order of 0.8%.


Deep prehistory

As a general rule, the confidence of estimates on historical world population decreases for the more distant past. Robust population data exist only for the last two or three centuries. Until the late 18th century, few governments had ever performed an accurate census. In many early attempts, such as in Ancient Egypt and the
Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Based in Western Asia, it was contemporarily the largest emp ...
, the focus was on counting merely a subset of the population for purposes of taxation or military service. Published estimates for the 1st century (" AD 1") suggest uncertainty of the order of 50% (estimates range between 150 and 330  million). Some estimates extend their timeline into deep prehistory, to "
10,000 10,000 (ten thousand) is the natural number following 9,999 and preceding 10,001. Name Many languages have a specific word for this number: in Ancient Greek it is (the etymological root of the word myriad in English), in Aramaic , in Hebrew ...
 BC", i.e., the
early Holocene In the geologic time scale, the Greenlandian is the earliest age or lowest stage of the Holocene Epoch or Series, part of the Quaternary. Beginning in 11,650 BP (9701 BCE or 300 HE) and ending 8,276 BP (6237 BCE or 3764 HE), it is the earlie ...
, when world population estimates range roughly between 1 and 10  million (with an uncertainty of up to an order of magnitude). Estimates for yet deeper prehistory, into the
Paleolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...
, are of a different nature. At this time, human populations consisted entirely of non-sedentary
hunter-gatherer A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fung ...
populations, with
anatomically modern humans Early modern human (EMH) or anatomically modern human (AMH) are terms used to distinguish '' Homo sapiens'' (the only extant Hominina species) that are anatomically consistent with the range of phenotypes seen in contemporary humans from exti ...
existing alongside archaic human varieties, some of which are still ancestral to the modern human population due to interbreeding with modern humans during the
Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...
. Estimates of the size of these populations are a topic of
paleoanthropology Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinsh ...
. A late human
population bottleneck A population bottleneck or genetic bottleneck is a sharp reduction in the size of a population due to environmental events such as famines, earthquakes, floods, fires, disease, and droughts; or human activities such as specicide, widespread violen ...
is postulated by some scholars at approximately 70,000 years ago, during the Toba catastrophe, when ''
Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture ...
'' population may have dropped to as low as between 1,000 and 10,000  individuals. For the time of speciation of ''
Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture ...
'', some 200,000 years ago, an
effective population size The effective population size (''N'e'') is a number that, in some simplified scenarios, corresponds to the number of breeding individuals in the population. More generally, ''N'e'' is the number of individuals that an idealised population w ...
of the order of 10,000 to 30,000  individuals has been estimated, with an actual "census population" of early ''Homo sapiens'' of roughly 100,000 to 300,000 individuals. Estimates regarding the questions of "how many people have ever lived?" or "what percentage of people who have ever lived are alive today?" can be traced to the 1970s. The more dramatic phrasing of "the living outnumber the dead" also dates to the 1970s, a time of
population explosion Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale m ...
and growing fears of
human overpopulation Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...
in the wake of
decolonization Decolonization or decolonisation is the undoing of colonialism, the latter being the process whereby imperial nations establish and dominate foreign territories, often overseas. Some scholars of decolonization focus especially on separatism, in ...
and before the adoption of China's
one-child policy The term one-child policy () refers to a population planning initiative in China implemented between 1980 and 2015 to curb the country's population growth by restricting many families to a single child. That initiative was part of a much bro ...
. The claim that "the living outnumber the dead" was never accurate.
Arthur C. Clarke Sir Arthur Charles Clarke (16 December 191719 March 2008) was an English science-fiction writer, science writer, futurist, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host. He co-wrote the screenplay for the 1968 film '' 2001: A Space ...
in '' 2001: A Space Odyssey'' (1968) has the claim that "Behind every man, now alive stand 30  ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living", which was roughly accurate at the time of writing. Recent estimates of the "total number of people who have ever lived" are in the order of 100 billion. The answer depends on the definition of "people", i.e., is only ''
Homo sapiens Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture ...
'' to be counted, or all of the genus ''
Homo ''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus '' Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' ( modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely rela ...
'', but due to the small population sizes in the
Lower Paleolithic The Lower Paleolithic (or Lower Palaeolithic) is the earliest subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. It spans the time from around 3 million years ago when the first evidence for stone tool production and use by hominins appears i ...
, the order of magnitude of the estimate is not affected by the choice of cut-off date substantially more than by the uncertainty of estimates throughout the Neolithic to Iron Age. Importantly, the estimate is also affected by the estimate of infant mortalities vs.
stillborn Stillbirth is typically defined as fetal death at or after 20 or 28 weeks of pregnancy, depending on the source. It results in a baby born without signs of life. A stillbirth can result in the feeling of guilt or grief in the mother. The ter ...
infants, due to the very high rate of infant mortality throughout the pre-modern period. An estimate on the "total number of people who have ever lived" as of 1995 was calculated by Haub (1995) at "about 105 billion births since the dawn of the human race" with a cut-off date at 50,000 BC (beginning of the Upper Paleolithic), and inclusion of a high infant mortality rate throughout pre-modern history.


Historical population


Before 1950

The following table uses
astronomical year numbering Astronomical year numbering is based on AD/ CE year numbering, but follows normal decimal integer numbering more strictly. Thus, it has a year 0; the years before that are designated with negative numbers and the years after that are designated ...
for dates, negative numbers corresponding roughly to the corresponding year BC (for example, −10000  =  10,001  BC, etc.). The table starts counting approximately 10,000 years before present, or around 8,000 BC, during the middle
Greenlandian In the geologic time scale, the Greenlandian is the earliest age or lowest stage of the Holocene Epoch or Series, part of the Quaternary. Beginning in 11,650 BP (9701 BCE or 300 HE) and ending 8,276 BP (6237 BCE or 3764 HE), it is the ear ...
, about 1,700 years after the end of the
Younger Dryas The Younger Dryas (c. 12,900 to 11,700 years BP) was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, c. 27,000 to 20,000 years BP). The Younger Dryas was the last stag ...
and 1,800 years before the
8.2-kiloyear event In climatology, the so-called "8.2-kiloyear event" was a sudden decrease in global temperatures that occurred approximately 8,200 years before the present ( BP), that is, 6,251 BC. It defines the start of the Northgrippian age in the Holocen ...
. From the beginning of the early modern period until the 20th century, world population has been characterized by a faster-than-exponential growth. For the period of
Classical antiquity Classical antiquity (also the classical era, classical period or classical age) is the period of cultural history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD centred on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ...
to the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
, roughly 500  BC to AD 1500, there was also a general tendency of growth (estimated at a factor 4 to 5 over the 2,000-year period), but not strictly
monotonic In mathematics, a monotonic function (or monotone function) is a function between ordered sets that preserves or reverses the given order. This concept first arose in calculus, and was later generalized to the more abstract setting of order ...
: A noticeable dip in world population is assumed due to the
Black Death The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...
in the mid-14th century.


1950 to present

For times after
World War A world war is an international conflict which involves all or most of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World WarI (1914 ...
 II, demographic data of some accuracy becomes available for a significant number of countries, and population estimates are often given as grand totals of numbers (typically given by country) of widely diverging accuracies. Some sources give these numbers rounded to the nearest million or the nearest thousand, while others give them without any rounding. Taking these numbers at face value would be
false precision False precision (also called overprecision, fake precision, misplaced precision and spurious precision) occurs when numerical data are presented in a manner that implies better precision than is justified; since precision is a limit to accuracy ...
; in spite of being stated to four, seven, or even ten digits, they should not be interpreted as accurate to more than three digits at best (estimates by the
United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of th ...
and by the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
differ by about 0.5–1.5%).


By world region

Population estimates for world regions based on Maddison (2007),Angus Maddison, The World Economy: Historical Statistics, Statistical Appendix (2007, ggdc.net). Estimates cited are for the beginning of the 1st millennium ("year 0"), the beginning of the 2nd millennium ("year 1000"), and for the beginning each century since the 16th (years 1820 and 1913 are given for the 19th and 20th century, respectively, as Maddison presents detailed estimates for these years), and a projection for the year 2030. in millions. The row showing total world population includes the average growth rate per year over the period separating each column from the preceding one.


World Population Estimates, 20 Countries and Regional Totals, 0–2000 AD (in thousands)


References


Further reading

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External links


Historical Estimates of World Population
United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System, responsible for producing data about the American people and economy. The Census Bureau is part of th ...
{{Population
Estimates {{otheruses, Estimate (disambiguation) In the Westminster system of government, the ''Estimates'' are an outline of government spending for the following fiscal year presented by the cabinet to parliament. The Estimates are drawn up by bureaucrat ...
Demographic history