Talk:World population

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Contents 1 Area where world population would fit 2 Untrue claim 3 Inconsistency 4 the 6th billion 5 Copyedit 6 Questionable numbers in first paragraph 7 Reciprocal population 8 NPOV - Biblical Creationism 9 Section 2: Forecasts of World Population 10 Removed from article 11 Clean-up tag? 12 Ludicrous 13 Total number of human beings 14 World Population at 0 AD 15 History of population 16 Exact date for 6.5 billion mark? 17 Section: World Population History 18 Material lost in this article, perhaps belonging to Population growth 18.1 Rate of population increase 19 Contradiction 19.1 Total population 20 Aborigines 21 Population Chart Inconsistencies 22 The Americas 23 Reference 11 duplication 24 Needs a clean up 25 NPOV

[edit] Area where world population would fit

While reading this with my son we wanted to know how large an area the world population would fit in.

If you assume that everyone is standing, and takes up 2 square feet, it would be 472 square miles. The area would expand 10 acres every day. I don't think that should be part of the article though.

[edit] Untrue claim

Is it absolutely necessary to first make an untrue claim and then explain that it is untrue? Would it not be better to give the number rounded to the nearest million and then parenthetically provide specific reported numbers along with dates? Fredrik | talk 01:35, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

also, if this number is constantly changing by the second, shouldn't there be an indication of when this number was posted?

Furthermore, given that the population of some countries, most notoriously Nigeria and Lebanon, is known so imprecisely (in Nigeria's case, perhaps only to the nearest 10 million), such precision is surely meaningless? Batmanand | Talk 13:53, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inconsistency

Image:Population curve.png shows a violent exponential increase in population growth while Image:World population increase history.png shows that th world population has actually decreased over the last years. I suppose I'm reading it wrong but if I am, chances are other people are as well...? Celcius 21:35, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

There are two main differences:

1. Image:Population curve.png covers the last 12000 years but Image:World population increase history.png only covers the last 50 years

2. Image:Population curve.png plots the world population, while Image:World population increase history.png plots the increase of this population in a given year. Even if the increase in population goes down, the total population still increases, only less rapidly.

UnHoly 23:43, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] the 6th billion

On what base the 6th billion was born in Ukraine in that family? roscoe_x 15:35, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

By looking at number from censuses from the past years and at the rate of growth, the United Nations Population Fund calculated that this child would be born (approximately) on that particular day. They wanted to make a ceremony to celebrate that fact, but of course no one actually keeps count or could tell which particular baby was the 6 billionth. They chose Sarajevo (which is in Bosnia, not Ukraine) because the city was just out of a long and bloody war, and this was a strong symbol of hope. Then, they just waited in a hospital until a baby would be born. UnHoly 16:13, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copyedit

copyedit: It seems to me more accurate to say:

• world population reached 6 billion on 12 october 1999

than:

• 12 October 1999 is the approximate day on which the the six billionth baby was born, somewhere in the world

The second phrase implicitly says : "counting from the first baby born in the history of mankind".

It is generally estimated that about 60 billion men have lived so far.

(I moved this entry from above the table of contents, which seemed an odd place for it. It has apparently already been addressed. As an aside, I note the 60B number seems low. I've seen several independent estimates, all more like 100B.) Anon 00:15, 27 March 2006

[edit] Questionable numbers in first paragraph

The first paragraph says Approximately one fifth of all humans that have existed in the last six thousand years are currently alive. This seems rather iffy, so it would be worth including a cite.

Why iffy? Does the "six" in six thousand years sound like it should be meaningful? Would a 4 or 8 or 10 be different? Well, world pop is an order of magnitude down from 1 AD, so not so much. It's a game of choose a fraction which gives you a population which gets you to, say, 4 kyr back, and then rack up millennia. The sentence could as well have been Approximately one fifth of all humans that have existed in the last few thousand years are currently alive.

But is the first part even believable? 1/5, so 30B? A 1/4, 24B, would be a bad joke. And not even 1/6, or 1/7, 1/8, 1/9, or even 1/10, would get you past a plausible estimate like this.

Leaving us with A fraction of all humans that have existed in the last few thousand years are currently alive. Might be 1/5, 1/10, or 1/20. And 4, 6 or 10 kyr. A mere "Approximately" hardly seems adequate to non-misleadingly characterize this.

So two very overly precise, even meaningless, numbers, staking out a rather extreme position, in a high uncertainty domain. Which makes me think of propaganda, or a journalist dropping context. So a cite would be helpful.

This question was what lead me to this article. It is answered (as best it can be) in an article entitled "How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?" from "Population Today", as cited in http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html, which I think should be used as a reference for the green growth graph on the left. FWIW, Haub estimates 106 billion people in total, with by far the majority after 6,000 BC, which makes the fraction far lower than the above. He estimates that 5.8% of people ever born were living in 2002 (note that 'born' includes young deaths, which were obviously far greater pre-18th century and esp. pre-historic)

[edit] Reciprocal population

In the Image:AreaPerCapita_500_BC_to_2050_AD.PNG, there is a clear dip indicated by a vertical line. However, there is no indication of what year this line corresponds to, nor what event triggered it (collapse of the roman empire maybe?)

UnHoly 16:08, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

Judging from the position, I'd guess that the line just shows the year 1. No guess on what caused the dip. Illuvatar 16:56, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I have updated this image, adding numbers to the axes. Yes, the line was AD 1 (or actually year 0, which in this graph means 1 BC). Note that a minimum point in this reciprocal graph represents a maximum point in the population. The periods with declining population are, roughly:

• 80 BC - AD 200 (why? wars?)
• AD 400 - AD 490 (fall of the Roman empire, ensuing wars?)
• 1300 - 1380 (little ice age, Great Famine of 1315-1317, black death)

(The exact beginning and end of each decline here is an artefact of the smoothing used in creating the graph from a limited number of estimates.)

Anyway, I contributed this graph and the doubling sequences. Honestly, do you think these contributions are useful? I think they are illustrative, but some may find them confusing, e.g. mistaking ups and downs in the receiprocal graph. I have added labels "100 million", "200 million", ..., "5 billion" to the graph; I hope that helps. Should I be bold and increase the image size - like this? --Niels Ø 09:55, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

This is much clearer now, thanks. Is there a specific reason why you use the reciprocal? As for the size, sure, go ahead, as long as it looks nice in the article. UnHoly 07:30, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Why? Well, I've tried different representations - linear, semi-log, log-log etc. - and I find this is the simplest one that gives a "neat" picture. Most people should be able to understand it if explained as "land area per capita", or the like.--195.231.197.164 06:42, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

195.231.197.164 is in fact me - sorry I forgot to log in!--Niels Ø 13:35, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The authors have not explained why reciprocal population is a meaningful quantity. The reciprocal population graph is useful in showing population trends for times when the population is very large, and when it is very small. However, a logarithmic plot or a log-log plot would be much more meaningful, useful, and is the canonical way to show such data. I have a hunch that the reciprocal population graph was created by someone who was very creative, yet naive of log plots. Unless someone makes clear why the quantity 1/population is meaningful and useful for more than just making pretty graphs, I will replace the reciprocal population graph with a logarithmic graph.⇝Casito⇝Talk 17:26, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear Casito. I made that graph, I put it in - and I expected comments like yours. I'm surprised it took so long... I was in no way naive of log plots, in fact I've taught them for years (I'm a high school math teacher in Denmark, and lin-log and log-log plots are curriculum). I'll tell you how I came to produce the reciprocal graph - and by telling that, I'll supply ammunition to anyone who may want to claim that it's original research.

First, I extracted the data from Ponting: A Green History of the World. (I have since double checked with other sources, but that hasn't changed much, prossibly because the sources aren't really independent. The data begins year 10000 BC, but I've omitted the first 9500 years in the graph I submitted here.) Then I produced a regular linear graph - and as expected, it blows up in the 20th century. So I produced a lin-log graph (i.e. linear time axis, logarithmic population axis) - and it too blowed up in the 20th century!

Then I considered a log-log plot, but the resulting graph would depend crucially on the choice of zero point for the time axis. So I tried different choices, in the past as well as in the future. To my surprise, I could "civilise" the population explosion into a reasonably linear graph, but only by defining year 2034 AD (plus/minus 10 years or so) as the zero point for my time axis. Today - year 2006 - is then "year 26 BA" (Before the Asymptote). With this time axis, the log-log plot fitted a straight line reasonably well for years AD 1400-2000, and remarkably well for AD 1700-1980. And the gradient turned out to be -1 (plus/minus 0.03), so the expression for this line was P(t)=k/(2032-t), where t represents year AD.

That result made me realise that a plot of 1/P vs. t should produce a straight line too - and so it does.

Now, is that interesting? I think so. And is it relevant to the article? I'm not sure; I put it there to see what reactions it would produce. But I do think a wikipedia reader with sufficient mathematical insight to understand the implication of the line intersecting the axis in 2032 would find the graph instructive.

Here's some quotes from the summary page for this image at wikimedia (written by me):

Shows development in available land area, or in any other constant resource, per capita. (The actually arable land area has not been a constant resource in that period.)

Note the almost linear decrease AD 1400 to 2000, pointing towards zero around AD 2030. As this would correspond to an infinite population, it cannot really happen.

This linear decrease corresponds to a growth form where the doubling time required for each doubling of the population is half of that for the previous doubling. A mathematical model leading to this form of growth is one in which the relative growth is proportional to the population. This can be contrasted with exponential growth, where the absolute growth is proportional to population, i.e., where the relative growth is constant.

Perhaps some of the observations in this discussion could be included in the article, thereby making the relevance of the graph clearer - but, to avoid accusations of original research, I'll leave it to others to do so - or to remove the graph.

I have an Excel spreadsheet comparing data from several sources, and including lin-lin, lin-log, log-log, and lin-rec graphs. The image I've submitted is the lin-rec graph, post-processed a bit in a graphics program. I'll be happy to e-mail this spreadsheet to anyone interested (I don't think one should upload Excel files to wikimedia, am I right?). Use my talk page to get in touch with me. I have uploaded the raw data here.

--Niels Ø 19:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to be demeaning when I wrongly accused you of being naive of logarithmic plots, and I'm sorry if I have offended you. I think that in many ways we are both trying to solve the same problem. Global population is highly nonlinear, and in fact, chaotic. Thus, no curve fit will really do it justice as we both realize. I think that the second graph should not intend to make some profound statement about population trends, but rather should just allow the reader to see population trends for both really small and really large populations. A log-y plot is the typical way to do that. Sure, the curve will not be a straight line, but it will still allow the reader to see population trends over all times, which is the idea. A log-log plot might also be a good choice, since recent data is more dese than ancient data. On the other hand, as you described above, logrithmic time is a strange animal, since there is no zero time datum. In fact, making time a log scale is very uncommon and can be confusing to the reader, thus it's probably best avoided.

Regarding the hyperbolic fit you described, how are you weighting your data (I'm just curious)? Are you giving each data point the same weight? Uniform weighting of interpolated points? or something more complicated?

I agree that unless we can find some literature that a certain curve fit of population versus time is accepted or used by the scientific community, we should probably avoid trying to insinuate that such a fit exists, as that would border on origional research.⇝Casito⇝Talk 16:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm in no way offended; I'm actually happy to see some reactions. I like my reciprocal plot, and perhaps the fact that it has been allowed to stay in the article for a year indicates that others do too - perhaps not. I agree a lin-log plot could do some good. - As for weighting the reciprocal population data in my linear regression, I just used the points I had (see my raw data; I used the data labelled "Ponting" as far as they go, and then "UN medium"), uniformly weighted. Of course, as you suggest, other weightings could be used, but I don't think the results would change much.

Let t = years AD, and let P = population in billions.

Using data t = 1400 to 2000, a power law regression of P vs (t₀ - t) gives the highest R² with the zero point for time at t₀ = 2034.5:

• P = 250×(2034.5-t)^-1.0228, with R² = 0.9966.

I cite the R² value, but it's really more relevant to observe that the model stays within 10% of all the data points (with largest deviations -8% in AD 1600, +7% in AD 1700, and +10% in 2000), while the population grows by 1639%.

Inspired by the proximity of the exponent to -1, I did linear regression of 1/P vs t. If 1/P = -at+b, we have P = (1/a)×(b/a-t)^-1.

• Using data t = -500 to 2050, I get P = 324×(2087-t)^-1, with R² = 0.9364.
• Using data t = 500 to 2050, I get P = 290×(2069-t)^-1, with R² = 0.9867.
• Using data t = 1400 to 2000, I get P = 222×(2035-t)^-1, with R² = 0.9956.
• Using data t = 1700 to 1990, I get P = 200×(2025-t)^-1, with R² = 0.9995.

--Niels Ø 09:10, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a nice looking graph, but I think a lot of people are going to be confused by it. I mean I understand what it's saying and I have trouble relating it to meaningful numbers... TastyCakes 05:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I just noticed a new section added below in this discussion, #Removed from article. The paper mentioned there deals with the same type of models as I do above, and thus adds support to the sensibility of a reciprocal plot. However, I agree with the decision to remove the section as it was, but perhaps someone can add a brief reference to this stuff in the article, near "my" graph?--Niels Ø 13:32, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV - Biblical Creationism

"In line with population projections, this figure continues to grow at rates that are unprecedented prior to the 20th century."

The 6,000 years scale implies that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and therefore reeks of Christian Creationism. 172.192.130.56 06:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Living happily in a country where fundamentalism and creationism are not (yet) seen everywhere, I had not made that connection - and I don't think it "reeks". It's an interesting fact(oid), and extending the time span further back would include periods where estimates of population and life span are less certain. On the other hand, it IS certan that the population was so much lower than today that I think extending the time span all the way back to Lucy, or at least to the birth of agriculture approx. 10000 BCE wouldn't make much difference.--Niels Ø 07:04, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Section 2: Forecasts of World Population

The section on population predictions should include proposed answers to the following questions: How big will world population get? How will the transition from current rapid growth phase to a sustainable stable phase occur? Will this be an easy or difficult transition? -- Huysman^talk 19:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed from article

In 1960 von Foerster, Mora, and Amiot published, in the journal Science, a striking discovery (Foerster, H. von, P. Mora, and L. Amiot. 1960. Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026. Science 132: 1291–5). They showed that between 1 and 1958 CE the world's population (N) dynamics can be described in an extremely accurate way with an astonishingly simple equation: Nt = C/(t0 - t), where where Nt is the world population at time t, and C and t0 are constants, with t0 corresponding to an absolute limit ("singularity" point) at which N would become infinite. Of course, von Foerster and his colleagues did not imply that the world population on that day could actually become infinite. The real implication was that the world population growth pattern that was followed for many centuries prior to 1960 was about to come to an end and be transformed into a radically different pattern. Note that this prediction began to be fulfilled only in a few years after the "Doomsday" paper was published: Korotayev A., Malkov A., Khaltourina D. Introduction to Social Macrodynamics: Compact Macromodels of the World System Growth. Moscow, URSS, 2006 (ISBN 5484004144), Chapter 1.

This recent addition is overly enthousiastic and badly formatted. -- Ec5618 10:45, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Clean-up tag?

What is particularly wrong with this article that it requires the (always ugly) clean-up tag? Marskell 21:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

- For one, I think the subheading "doomsayers" lacks neutrality, in that it implicitly dismisses concerns about the very real and present effects of population growth as doomsaying.

[edit] Ludicrous

Why is the population of north America in 1750 listed as 2 million? That seems absurdly low. In the "population history of native americans" article its is states that at LEAST 8 million INDIANS ALONE lived in the Americas. Please reveiw.

Pre-1500 I would think what you're saying is true, but I believe by 1750 old world germs (and to a lesser extent weapons) had killed off a huge portion of that population. TastyCakes 17:05, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

What the hell? 50 million africans were taken from africa during the slave trades. These were documented (also that half of them died on their way fro mthe continent). The population would still be fairly large.

-G —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.117.157.7 (talk) 21:18, 11 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Total number of human beings

Has anyone ever tried to calculate the total number of human beings there have been since creation? For example, there could be a total number of 4 trillion human beings that have lived on the Earth (not at the same time obviously). That is, how many individual human beings have there been? I hope this question is clear enough.

I guess it was a harder question then I thought.

Like so much else, it has been on this page, but has been removed. Of course, nobody really knows, and quite different answers has been given. Some years ago, I in several different places came across the claim that more than half of all humans who have ever existed are alive today, but as far as I remember the material that used to be on this page, that was an exaggeration.--Niels Ø 18:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] World Population at 0 AD

I remember reading Durant some while back and also references in the World Almanac that gave the population of the world at 0 AD as 200 million and not 300 million. The references given at the end of the article go to links that do not give references. There is also a very small jump from 0AD to 1000AD. The existance of agriculture in general has allowed a greater number of persons on the earth in comparison with numbers that existed at 3000BC or before, when writing and agriculture did not exist in most areas, with a somewhat gradual increase in human population since then. Can someone give more references to the 300 million figure versus the 200 million figure, including sources for the UN figures at the UN website, or if not that then revise down the figures?

There are a lot of high powered sources that in the past have tended to give a world population of about 200 million for 0AD. A cool looking map from NOVA and even an unreferenced source page from the UN are not enough to challenge the figure of 200 million without further data given. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.220.138.243 (talk • contribs). 02:51, 20 September 2006

First, a little nitpicking: There is no year 0 AD, as year 1 BC was followed by year AD 1. Anyway, let me remind you of the page Talk:World population/data, also linked above in this discussion, where I have collected data from various sources. It seems you are right: Most sources give values like 200 million or less around year "0", not 300 million.--Niels Ø 08:16, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

So what you are saying is that the year before Christ is followed by the year after Christ. Then where did the year of Christ go?83.118.38.37 10:38, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, according to legend, he was born close to new year, so that's not really the problem. Of coures, we know the historical Jesus was actually born a few years earlier, but all the same...--Niels Ø 19:25, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

AD is not after death it is Anno Domani, in the year of the Lord, as in after Christ's birth. Since Christ rose from the dead according to Christian belief, it is still a year of our Lord, and that is why AD is continuing to be used and why 1 AD comes right after 0 BC Jztinfinity 04:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Except it doesn't - it comes right after 1 BC, which is what I attempted to explain above.--Niels Ø 07:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

How did people in BC number their years? Because I'm sure that they didn't count down to AD... --YeoungBraxx 20:46, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

See AD, quote: "Anno Domini" dating was first calculated in 525. Before - and many places after - AD 525, years could be counted as "in the third year of the reign of King Zorro the 5th", or the like.--Niels Ø (noe) 08:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of population

What's the history of the world before the year 0? I mean there were cavemen hundreds of thousands of years ago, sure, but how many do the brain men think there were? And please ignore the barbaric Christian beliefs that human history is short and that we didn't evolve from neanderthals, because it should be about fact. But from that population "history" you could be forgiven for believing that humans just suddenly appeared, at numbers of 300 million at the year 0 JayKeaton 09:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we didn't evolve from Neanderthals. They're extinct relatives. DirkvdM 07:38, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That wasn't the point, a comparison of whatever we were when Neanderthals were around. It's like the world didn't exist before the year 0 otherwise JayKeaton 11:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Still I find it pretty ironic that you were talking about facts whilst having one of your major arguements comprehensively wrong. Probably worth noting as well that documented human hisotry is fairly short. If you can find accurate figures going back milleniums then feel free to use them. I doubt you will have much success. Also just wondering; how is someone thinking that humans appeared 6000 years ago "barbaric"? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ronan.evans (talk • contribs) 12:01, 13 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Exact date for 6.5 billion mark?

The intro says Earth's population reached 6.5 billion on Saturday, 25 February 2006. Isn't that ridiculously precise? The population number will probably be an addition of partly out of date data that are often mere estimates. And even a decent census will have inaccuracies. And I can't believe averaging out will be sufficient to pinpoint the exact day. It's a citation, so might deserve a place in the article, but it's probably an oversimplification to sell newspapers. The intro should just state that as of 2006 the world population is 6.5 billion. DirkvdM 07:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Section: World Population History

Are the graphs and table listings for North America and Latin America/Carribean nations mixed up here? Is Mexico considered part of Latin America? This chart shows North America with approximately 330M people as of 2005. This only accounts for Canada and the USA. Text in the section immediately preceeding World Population History states North America has 514M as of 2005.
This should be changed if it is in error (North America/Latin America reversed), or a note of geographic boudaries (eg. ...Mexico is part of Latin America...) used to determine the population breakdown in this chart should be added.
142.167.128.110 14:51, 4 October 2006 (UTC)Terry H.

Whoops! Just re-skimmed this talk article- I missed the earlier discussion of North America. I agree that "Northern America" is a more appropriate label. I've added a footnote to clarify that it indicates USA and Canada.
142.167.128.110 15:13, 4 October 2006 (UTC)Terry H.

[edit] Material lost in this article, perhaps belonging to Population growth

The distinction between what belongs in this article, and what belongs in the Population growth article is not clear to me. Can anyone enlighten me - or should they in fact be merged?

There used to be some material on this page, which perhaps belonged on the other, but which now is at neither. Most of it was lost in the revert after this vandalistic edit. It is the following material:

[edit] Rate of population increase

Main article: Population growth

The 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world's population in human history. The following table shows estimates of when each billion milestone was met:

• 1 billion was reached in 1802.
• 2 billion was reached 125 years later in 1927.
• 3 billion was reached 34 years later in 1961.
• 4 billion was reached 13 years later in 1974.
• 5 billion was reached 13 years later in 1987.
• 6 billion was reached 12 years later in 1999.

These numbers show that the world's population has tripled in 72 years, and doubled in 38 years up to the year 1999.

Some estimates say that the human population around AD 950 was 250 million and in 2027 will be 8 billion, and the world population doubled (or will double) in the following years (doubling times in parentheses):

• AD 950 (650) 1600 (202) 1802 (125) 1927 (47) 1974 (50) 2027.

Yet other estimates (beginning with 375 million around year 1420) say:

• 1420 (300) 1720 (155) 1875 (86) 1961 (38) 1999.

Note how, during the 2nd millennium, each doubling has taken roughly half as long as the previous doubling.

The UN estimated in 2000 that the world's population was then growing at the rate of 1.14% (or about 75 million people) per year [1]. This growth rate has been generally decreasing from its peak at 2.19% in 1963.

[edit] Contradiction

The sections World population#Population Distribution and World population#History appear to contradict each other. In particular, one section says that ‘Oceania’ (whatever that means) has 60 million people, whereas the other says it has

No date is provided in the Population Distribution section, so I assume it’s roughly current—sometime since 2000. The exact timing doesn’t really matter because there’s a contradiction however we look. The other discrepancies seem reasonable, but the ‘Oceania’ section is different by a factor of two.

Year	World	Africa	Asia	Europe	Latin America	US & Canada	South America	North America	Americas (total)	Oceania
pop distn secn	6 295 000	840 000	3 800 000	710 000	n/a	n/a	514 000	371 000	885 000	60 000
(history secn) 2000	6 070 581	795 671	3 679 737	727 986	520 229	315 915	n/a	n/a	836 144	31 043
(history secn) 2005	6 453 628	887 964	3 917 508	724 722	558 281	332 156	n/a	n/a	890 437	32 998

I note that according to List of countries by population, Papua New Guinea + Australia + New Zealand = ~30 million. PNG, Australia and NZ are sometimes considered part of Oceania but aren’t really. But um. The population of the rest of Oceania is negligible, certainly not 30 million.

I assume it’s the ‘Distribution’ section that’s wrong (PNG+Oz+NZ might’ve been double counted?). Anyone got any further knowledge that tells me that other parts of Wikipedia I’ve used are wrong?

—Felix the Cassowary 12:14, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The primary use of the term Oceania is to describe a macrogeographical region that lies between Asia and the Americas, with the Australian continent as the major landmass and consisting of some 25,000 islands in the Pacific. The name Oceania is used because, unlike the other regional groupings, it is the ocean and adjacent seas rather than a continent that link the lands together (see Oceania Overview). Oceania's population is actually ~40 million (with the combined population of Australia, New Zealand and PNG = 30 million), though the population figures are out of date on the Oceania page.--Just James 21:40, 17 October 2006 (GMT+10:00)

My point wasn’t really how you classify who’s a part of Oceania; just that the article contradicts itself by saying the population of the area is 60 million in one section, and 30 million in the next. But as I say, the primary use of ‘Oceania’ in Australia (at least as I’m familiar with it) is to refer to the various Pacific Islands out to our east; it usually doesn’t apply to Australia or New Zealand or Papua New Guinea. (I’m familiar with the inclusion of Australia in Oceania only from Wikipedia and European-based multinationals. I note tho that you’re also an Australian, so obviously there’s some variety in this.) —Felix the Cassowary 10:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

My understanding was that Australia and New Zealand were a part of Oceania as well. --WikiSlasher 12:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Total population

At the top of the article it says 6.7 billion but the ref for it mentions 6.5 billion. Also I've seen 6.5b more on the Internet. --WikiSlasher 12:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it to 6.5 billion. --WikiSlasher 05:36, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Aborigines

I've heard there were about 300,000 people in Australia before Europeans arrived - were there really 1.7 million in Polynesia? EamonnPKeane 21:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Population Chart Inconsistencies

The chart is completely laughable. my history books show china as having a population of roughly 550 million in 1720 CE, Rome was the first city to top 1 million inhabitants (in 30 BCE), and there were CERTAINLY more than just 50,000 people in 1000 BCE.

The chart at World population estimates exactly fits my information, and is much more believable.

If this chart is at all believable, then it would show that the vast majority of the population is nothing more than inbred hicks derived from incest (which may explain decreased fertility since 1960, but...that's besides the point). The Legendary RaccoonFox • Talk • Stalk 21:39, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

The numbers on the chart must be multiplied by 1000 as noted in the article. It shows a population of 50,000,000 in 1000BCE not 50,000. Alan Liefting 09:20, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Americas

In the days ahead, I plan on working on the chart with regard to the Americas for the following reasons.

The numbers and organization of the American population as given in the chart are innaccurate, ill-informed and disorganized. First of all, by convention the entire North American continent is known to contain the present areas of Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Central America. (The equator actually passes in South America.) Second, the current political (i.e. colonial) separation of Mexico and central America from population counts of "North America" is an artificial and meaningless distinction, particularly for pre-Columbia times. This brings me to my third point, which is that the table neglects to include about 12000 years or 96% of the time of human presence in the region. In fact, the graph fails to include pre-Columbian estimates of population size right before the arrival of Europeans. Thus, the chart neglects the documented decline of the Amerindian populations in the years 1500 to 1700. NoraBG 14:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Reference 11 duplication

I accidentally duplicated reference 11 and can't seem to get rid of it. Can you fix, please? (Mollwollfumble 06:19, 30 January 2007 (UTC)).

[edit] Needs a clean up

looks like the page has been vandalised.... check the first paragraph

[edit] NPOV

It would be prudent to have a statement of the form "many religions maintain ...." and give a few dates for the start of the earth. This is an alternative point of view and as a reader I would be interested to see how the scientific and religious point of view compare. Mike 10:46, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. I say keep religion out of the article. It's an unnecessary controversy, and the article is not about the age of the earth, or even how long humans have been on it, but rather the number of humans we believe there were at various points in history. TastyCakes 20:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)