Colin Axon wrote:
>Ok Thomas. If you will change 1945 to 1900, I will go along with you.
>This is not actually as earth-shattering as it all seems. Given that
>more than 75% of all humans who have ever walked on the earth in its
>entire existence, are currently alive, so lo and behold, most of the
>science has done in a current life span. This is no great revelation.
It just isn't true that 'more than 75% of all humans who have ever walked on
the earth in its entire existence are currently alive'. There are currently
around 5.9 billion people in the world, so that would mean that less than 2
billion people have lived and died in human history. The correct figure is
subject to some disagreement, but I've read figures more like 80-100
billion. The real difficulty is when you define 'people' as beginning.
Although world population at any one time was no more than a few million
until 10,000 years ago, it makes a difference of tens of billions whether
you define 'people' as starting 100,000 years ago with the first moderns or
include Neanderthals and other archaics going back to say 500,000 years ago.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|