Since the emergence of the first humans in Africa over two million years ago the world’s population has ballooned, with only fleeting pauses to the increasing number of people sharing planet Earth.
As the global population teeters on eight billion — a milestone expected to be reached next week — we take a look at the main chapters in the growth of humanity.
FIRST HUMANS
Photo: AFP
The oldest fossils from the earliest known humans date back 2.8 million years and were found in east Africa.
But estimates of the number of people that populated the earth remained highly unreliable until the 19th century.
What we do know is that our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, who had few children compared to later settled populations in order to maintain their nomadic lifestyle.
Photo: AFP
The planet’s population was sparse also partly because hunter-gatherers needed a lot of land to feed themselves — around 10 square kilometers per person, according to Herve Le Bras, a researcher at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED).
The globe’s population did increase over time but very, very slowly.
FIRST BABY BOOM
The introduction of agriculture in the Neolithic era, around 10,000 BC, brought the first known major population leap.
With agriculture came sedentarization and the ability to store food, which caused birth rates to soar.
“Mothers were able to feed infants gruel, which sped up the weaning process and reduced the amount of time between births, meaning more children per woman,” Le Bras said.
The development of permanent settlements also brought hazards, however, with the domestication of animals causing humans to contract new deadly diseases. Child mortality rates were particularly high, with a third of all children dying before their first birthday, and another third before they turned 18.
“There was huge mortality but also a permanent baby boom,” Eric Crubezy, anthropologist at the University of Toulouse in France, said.
From around six million in 10,000 BC, the global population leapt to 100 million in 2,000 BC and then to 250 million in the first century AD, according to INED estimates.
BLACK DEATH
The Black Death brought the population to a sudden halt in the Middle Ages.
The pandemic, which emerged in Central Asia, in what is modern-day Kyrgyzstan, reached Europe in 1346 on ships carrying goods from the Black Sea.
In just eight years, it wiped out up to 60 percent of the populations of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
As a result of the Black Death, the human population dropped between 1300 and 1400, from 429 to 374 million.
Other events, like the Plague of Justinian, which hit the Mediterranean over two centuries from 541-767, and the wars of the early Middle Ages in western Europe, also caused temporary dips in the numbers of humans on Earth.
EIGHT BILLION, AND COUNTING
From the 19th century on, the population began to explode, due largely to the development of modern medicine and the industrialization of agriculture, which boosted global food supplies.
Since 1800, the world’s population has jumped eight-fold, from an estimated one billion to eight billion.
For Crubezy, the development of vaccines was key, with the smallpox jab particularly helping zap one of history’s biggest killers. The 1970s and 1980s brought another small revolution, in the form of treatment for heart disease, which helped reduce mortality among over-60s.
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
RSS