The chart above illustrates how world population has changed throughout history.
At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million (some estimate 300 million or even 600, suggesting how imprecise population estimates of early historical periods can be), with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year.
A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for world population to reach one billion, the second billion was achieved in only 130 years (1930), the third billion in 30 years (1960), the fourth billion in 15 years (1974), and the fifth billion in only 13 years (1987).
- During the 20th century alone, the population in the world has grown from 1.65 billion to 6 billion.
- In 1970, there were roughly half as many people in the world as there are now.
- Because of declining growth rates, it will now take over 200 years to double again.
A necessary part of this post is to read the post ‘Population’ added on October 9, 1923. It is a scientific report on rat and mouse population studies, which may be more significant today because of the dip at the top of the chart above. Briefly, as the population became excessive, the mouse society behaved just as humans do today with intensely and brutally defined classes from the untouched ‘wealthy’ mice to the militants, and to the deprived and brutalized underclass.
Information that comes from the planet’s side of things may offer collateral proof of the invasion of Homo sapiens:
• According to a new report from the World Wide Fund For Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), there has been an average 60 percent decline in vertebrate animal species population — you know, like mammals, fish, birds, etc. — between 1970 and 2014. “Earth is losing biodiversity at a rate seen only during mass extinctions,” the report reads. The cause? “Exploding human consumption.” [BBC]
• Today, given the vast prairie between the Mississippi River and Eastern Colorado that existed before Europeans visited, only 1% exists today. Further, as a percentage of all living creatures, only 1% is wildlife.
There are just a few stable nation ‘herds’ left – and none have large populations.
Perhaps many of our political concerns may be influenced by this peripheral view of population. Will the new culture be socialistic? corporately controlled? controlled by survival of the fittest? Or, shudder, will humans fix the population issue by tossing about a few nuclear bombs? The mice in the study didn’t have nuclear bombs so there are no statistics about survival.
Ancient Mariner