[QUOTE=Adrian Thompson;11748182]
Quote:
Originally Posted by stevej37
This silly myth has been around since I was in elementary school and doesn't even pass the most basic critical thinking. Modern humans have been around for 200K years. If we use 20 years as a generation then there have been 10,000 generations. There are currently 8 billion people on earth. Divide 8billion people by 10K generations and you'd only need 800,000 per generation to equal the current population. And while humans started as a small group, there have been over a million since the emergence of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, it's simply silly. I'm sure there are better answers out there on the internet though.
Quick edit. Google tells me the accepted figure is approx. 117 billion people (Modern humans) have lived and died so far on earth. So approx. 15 times the current population.
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Thanks for debunking that for me. Just goes to show you can't believe all you read on the Internet.
Maths wise, all you need is for the rate of growth to be maintained at such a level such that the number of people born within one human lifespan is sufficient to double the population, and you would have the stat true. So on a prima facie basis it didn't seem implausible at all, given current growth rates.
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