Based on the historical estimates from Toshiko Kaneda and Carl Haub (Population Reference Bureau) and the UN Population Division. Based on a design by Oliver Uberti OurWorldinData.org - Research and data to make progress against the world’s largest problems. Licensed under CC-BY by the author Max Roser
I suppose I’d call myself more curious than sceptical - I could look shit up and I can’t be bothered - but how do you define when humans became humans? I imagine its an estimate based from anthropological and fossil records and stuff
They’re just taking an educated guess. Based on fossil records we’ve estimated that homo sapiens sapiens emerged about 200k-300k years ago. I’m not sure if they assumed a middle ground estimate of 250k years here, but it was probably something like that. If we’re measuring by years, the margin of error is huge, but when we’re estimating the total number of people, it doesn’t matter that much, because there were so few of us for so long.
What are you sceptical about? This is just a visualization of established scientific knowledge.
Data and methods, please. Why are you not skeptical?
Sources and attribution at the bottom Daddio.
I suppose I’d call myself more curious than sceptical - I could look shit up and I can’t be bothered - but how do you define when humans became humans? I imagine its an estimate based from anthropological and fossil records and stuff
They’re just taking an educated guess. Based on fossil records we’ve estimated that homo sapiens sapiens emerged about 200k-300k years ago. I’m not sure if they assumed a middle ground estimate of 250k years here, but it was probably something like that. If we’re measuring by years, the margin of error is huge, but when we’re estimating the total number of people, it doesn’t matter that much, because there were so few of us for so long.