What was the population of Earth 10 000 years ago?
From 1 million humans in 10,000 B.C., all the way to 7.02 billion. The journey of our kind on Earth, all in numbers! By 10,000 B.C., the world's population was around 1 million. 2,000 years later there were about 5 million people on Earth—the same number that live in Finland today.
Ancient and post-classical history
Estimates of the population of the world at the time agriculture emerged in around 10,000 BC have ranged between 1 million and 15 million.
Just 11,000 years ago, there were only roughly 5 million humans who lived on the planet Earth. The initial population growth was slow, due largely to the way humans were living - by hunting.
11,000 Years Ago: Farming Sparks a Boom
That transition helped catapult the world's population from perhaps 6 million on the eve of the invention of agriculture to 7 billion today.
The Stone Age
During this era, early humans shared the planet with a number of now-extinct hominin relatives, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. In the Paleolithic period (roughly 2.5 million years ago to 10,000 B.C.), early humans lived in caves or simple huts or tepees and were hunters and gatherers.
This is when the United Nations estimates that the world's population reached each billion milestone: one billion in 1804; two billion in 1927 (123 years later); three billion in 1960 (33 years later);
World population did not reach one billion until 1804. It took 123 years to reach 2 billion in 1927, 33 years to reach 3 billion in 1960, 14 years to reach 4 billion in 1974 and 13 years to reach 5 billion in 1987.
The map begins at 1:18, showing human population a little more than 2,000 years ago, with each yellow dot representing 1 million people in an area. At this point, there are 170 million people on Earth.
Roughly 10,000 years ago, Earth was experiencing a time of critical change. The planet was leaving the Ice Age, near the end of a much larger pattern of warming and cooling climate events. This led to major changes in the environments people were living in.
What did humans look like 10,000 years ago?
Humans looked essentially the same as they do today 10,000 years ago, with minor differences in height and build due to differences in diet and lifestyle.
It was a time when the world population is estimated to have been somewhere between five and 20 million people. To leave such a stark genetic imprint behind, as many as 9.5 million men must have been killed. Why? The Stanford University team blames “competition between patrilineal kin groups.”

October 31, 2011 • The U.N. says today symbolically marks the moment when the world's population reaches 7 billion. A little more than two centuries ago, the global population was 1 billion.
Day of Eight Billion
On 15 November 2022, the world's population is projected to reach 8 billion people, a milestone in human development.
Full Transcript. At one time or another, you've probably said, “It's a small world.” Well, it used to be much, much smaller. Because according to scientists from the University of Utah, about a million years ago our ancestors numbered fewer than 20,000.
Humans first evolved in Africa, and much of human evolution occurred on that continent. The fossils of early humans who lived between 6 and 2 million years ago come entirely from Africa. Most scientists currently recognize some 15 to 20 different species of early humans.
Between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, Homo sapiens began migrating from the African continent and populating parts of Europe and Asia. They reached the Australian continent in canoes sometime between 35,000 and 65,000 years ago.
In the Middle Palaeolithic era, 250,000 to 50,000 years ago, two humanoid species lived in the Old World at the same time: Neanderthal man and modern man (Homo sapiens). The Neanderthals lived in Europe and Central Asia whereas modern man lived in Africa at that time.
The population of the world was about 300 million at the time of Christ and changed very little in the next thousand years. The population of the world reached one billion in 1804, three billion in 1960, and rose to about 6.8 billion in 2010.
The UN estimated that the world population reached one billion for the first time in 1804. It was another 123 years before it reached two billion in 1927, but it took only 33 years to reach three billion in 1960.
How many humans have lived since 1 AD?
The number of humans ever born is probably around 80 billion, though many died in infancy. Out of this total, almost half have been born in the last two millennia (since the year 1 AD). One human in five (15 billion) was born during the last two centuries and almost one in ten (8 billion) is still alive.
The world's largest nationality group is Chinese, with Mandarin being the world's most spoken language in terms of native speakers. The world's population is predominantly urban and suburban, and there has been significant migration toward cities and urban centres.
Earth's capacity
Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion to 10 billion people. [ How Do You Count 7 Billion People?] One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources.
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When Did the World Population Reach Other Milestones?
Population Milestone | Year Reached |
---|---|
2 Billion | 1927 |
3 Billion | 1960 |
4 Billion | 1974 |
5 Billion | 1987 |
No demographic data exist for more than 99% of the span of human existence. Still, with some assumptions about population size throughout human history, we can get a rough idea of this number: About 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth.
By 1650, the world's population had risen to 500 million, although the Black Plague, which began in 542 A.D. in western Asia and killed 50% of the Byzantine Empire in the sixth century (a total of 100 million deaths), had slowed the rate of growth.
World population projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. The current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new United Nations report being launched today.
For the time of speciation of Homo sapiens, some 200,000 years ago, an effective population size 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.
500 years BCE it was 100 million, and in the year 0 around 200 million people were estimated to live on Earth.
1 billion in 1804 | |
---|---|
2 billion in 1927 | (123 years later) |
3 billion in 1960 | (33 years later) |
4 billion in 1974 | (14 years later) |
5 billion in 1987 | (13 years later) |
Did humans exist in 10000 BC?
People living in Mesopotamia around 10,000 B.C. were probably hunter-gatherers. They hunted wild animals, gathered berries, nuts and mushrooms, and caught fishes. They used axes whose heads were made of flint. They moved their campsite regularly, following the trail of food.
According to reports, there have been five major incidents where humans came close to extinction. Around 75,000 years ago, the Toba volcano in Indonesia erupted. According to scientists, this volcanic eruption was the largest in two million years.
How Human Beings Almost Vanished From Earth In 70,000 B.C. : Krulwich Wonders... By some counts of human history, the number of humans on Earth may have skidded so sharply that we were down to just 1,000 reproductive adults.
According to the company, humans in the year 3000 could have a hunched back, wide neck, clawed hand from texting and a second set of eyelids.
From about 1.2 million years ago to less than 100,000 years ago, archaic humans, including archaic Homo sapiens, were dark-skinned.
The skull will get bigger but the brain will get smaller
Humans in the year 3000 will have a larger skull but, at the same time, a very small brain. "It's possible that we will develop thicker skulls, but if a scientific theory is to be believed, technology can also change the size of our brains," they write.
Changes to a more sedentary lifestyle and larger settlements are widely thought to have contributed to a worldwide human population explosion, from an estimated 4-6 million people to 60-70 million by 4,000 B.C.
Our estimate of the number of people living in the Americas in 1492 CE is 60.5 million, with an interquartile range (IQR) of 44.8–78.2 million, using the FFT approach (Fig. 4A). An alternate Monte-Carlo approach to combining the data results in a similar best estimate of 64.1 million (IQR 48.4–82.3 million; Table S2).
10,000 years ago (8,000 BC): The Quaternary extinction event, which has been ongoing since the mid-Pleistocene, concludes. Many of the ice age megafauna go extinct, including the megatherium, woolly rhinoceros, Irish elk, cave bear, cave lion, and the last of the sabre-toothed cats.
The world population has grown rapidly, particularly over the past century: in 1900, there were fewer than 2 billion people on the planet. The world population is around 8.05 billion people in 2023.
What will the planet population be in 2030?
New York, 21 June – The current world population of 7.6 billion is expected to reach 8.6 billion in 2030, 9.8 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion in 2100, according to a new United Nations report being launched today.
#3: The time to add 1 billion
It took all of human history until 1803 to reach the first billion in population. The next billion took 124 years, and the next 33 years. More recent billions have come every dozen or so. So why then, are future billion people additions projected to take longer and longer to achieve?
Sadia Sultana Oishee, an 11-year-old from Bangladesh, who is the seventh-billionth child in the world, is aware of her fame. She was born in 2011, and according to her parents, her birth was nothing short of an event, with politicians and television crews swarming around her mother to get a look at her.
The projected world population on Jan. 1, 2023, is 7,942,645,086, an increase of 73,772,634, or 0.94%, from New Year's Day 2022.
- Generously fund family planning programs.
- Make modern contraception legal, free and available everywhere, even in remote areas.
- Improve health care to reduce infant and child mortality.
- Restrict child marriage and raise the legal age of marriage (minimum 18 years)
Fossils of the oldest known algae, ancestor to all of Earth's plants, are about 1 billion years old, and the oldest sign of animal life — chemical traces linked to ancient sponges — are at least 635 million and possible as much as 660 million years old, Live Science previously reported.
The First Humans
One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Resequencing studies have estimated the ancestral effective population size at 12,800 to 14,400, with a 5- to 10-fold bottleneck beginning approximately 65,000 to 50,000 y ago (although see ref. 15 for a bottleneck to only 450 individuals).
1000 years BCE the world population was 50 million people. 500 years BCE it was 100 million, and in the year 0 around 200 million people were estimated to live on Earth.
They spent a large part of each day gathering plants and hunting or scavenging animals. Then, within just the past 12,000 years, our species, Homo sapiens, made the transition to producing food and changing our surroundings.
When did world population reach 4 billion?
World population did not reach one billion until 1804. It took 123 years to reach 2 billion in 1927, 33 years to reach 3 billion in 1960, 14 years to reach 4 billion in 1974 and 13 years to reach 5 billion in 1987.
By 3,000 years ago, the experts wrote in Science magazine, the planet had been “largely transformed by hunter-gatherers, farmers, and pastoralists.” People farmed, burned forests and grazed their goats, sheep and cattle.
The First Humans
One of the earliest known humans is Homo habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Earth's capacity
Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion to 10 billion people. [ How Do You Count 7 Billion People?] One such scientist, the eminent Harvard University sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, bases his estimate on calculations of the Earth's available resources.