Was there more people than is reported?

[Delaven]

https://populationmatters.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_image/public/Historical%20human%20population%20growth%20-%20no%20logo_3.png

I was inspired by this thread https://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?303853-Countries-by-population-2100

The world population will be soon approaching 8 billion people. We have been rapidly expanding but we are slowing bit by bit according to experts. This graph states the world before 1850 has been steadily below 1 billion people. I think there have been periods before then where there were more than a billion. They were likely uncounted. There may have been more population reducing events back then but we don't know the reality of the past. How did the experts come to this conclusion? It was likely concluded back then that there were no count of how many people there are(Pre-roman times). I remembered when women and children were not counted in the census and only able bodied men eligible for the draft.

Population figures for Africa are purely estimated as they hire the UN to do it for them.

Tell me your theories, hypothesis, and opinions on this.

[sean]

I don't actually think they had an accurate estimation of the population of the world in the past. However, rapid population collapse was enormously detrimental to the ruling elite. Take the Black Death in Europe for example. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.

The massive labour shortage caused by the plague meant that peasants had more land, craftsmen had fewer competitors, new labour-saving technologies spread to compensate for the loss of so much of the labour force, and feudal lords had to compete for peasants' loyalty lest they switch allegiance to a new lord offering a better deal, while the Catholic Church faced a severe crisis in confidence as prayer seemed wholly ineffective at stopping the ravages of the plague.

The Europe that emerged from the Black Death was not the old one that had been dominated by the elites of the medieval era, but conversely, one with a leveled playing field where the elites' power was sharply curtailed.

So one could think that, instead of depopulation, the elites would instead have wanted overpopulation so as to create a world where the teeming masses are too busy fighting each other for what little scrap of the world's finite resources they can in order to put up any serious resistance to their masters.

[Delaven]

I don't actually think they had an accurate estimation of the population of the world in the past. However, rapid population collapse was enormously detrimental to the ruling elite. Take the Black Death in Europe for example. The Black Death is estimated to have killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population.

The massive labour shortage caused by the plague meant that peasants had more land, craftsmen had fewer competitors, new labour-saving technologies spread to compensate for the loss of so much of the labour force, and feudal lords had to compete for peasants' loyalty lest they switch allegiance to a new lord offering a better deal, while the Catholic Church faced a severe crisis in confidence as prayer seemed wholly ineffective at stopping the ravages of the plague.

The Europe that emerged from the Black Death was not the old one that had been dominated by the elites of the medieval era, but conversely, one with a leveled playing field where the elites' power was sharply curtailed.

So one could think that, instead of depopulation, the elites would instead have wanted overpopulation so as to create a world where the teeming masses are too busy fighting each other for what little scrap of the world's finite resources they can in order to put up any serious resistance to their masters.

That's a very interesting thought which goes to show elites are mostly mortal.

P.S. I thought this topic was going to have more people adding. Oh well, Newbie Syndrome.

[Annihilus]

Humans before that time couldn't control the environment enough to allow for larger populations.

[Not a Cop]

At some times there may have been more people, like in China f.e. there population fluctated a lot.

[sean]

I thought this topic was going to have more people adding. Oh well, Newbie Syndrome.

I don't think there is a lack of interest in these threads. There are just so many junk threads to sort through that they die off or are killed before we can find them. It's necessary to secure one of the first 5 spots for maximum visibility. Some members keep spamming their pictures all day or post trash topics and become attention whores, and I use my brain to filter through them.

[Delaven]

Humans before that time couldn't control the environment enough to allow for larger populations.

Makes sense. What about the humans that knew how to adapt to that?

[Annihilus]

Makes sense. What about the humans that knew how to adapt to that?

It's not really adaptation. Human knowledge had to reach a certain treshold making them able to control so much that their numbers could exceed what naturally was possible before that. To an extent, that was always the case with humans but on a much smaller scale and with far less impact.

Also it should be noted that this growth is not sustainable because we can't control everything. We are lucky if we can keep the numbers we have now in the short future. The next boom will probably happen when we can colonize other planets but that is very far in the future and frankly I don't think we will be around then.

[Delaven]

It's not really adaptation. Human knowledge had to reach a certain treshold making them able to control so much that their numbers could exceed what naturally was possible before that. To an extent, that was always the case with humans but on a much smaller scale and with far less impact.

Also it should be noted that this growth is not sustainable because we can't control everything. We are lucky if we can keep the numbers we have now in the short future. The next boom will probably happen when we can colonize other planets but that is very far in the future and frankly I don't think we will be around then.

How many people do you estimate Earth's population can peak up to before it drops?

How far into the future is colonizing other planets? (decades, centuries, millenia)