From one person to 7.5 billion: the timeline of human expansion
In short: Humanity's population trajectory is not a linear progression but a series of explosive leaps. This video explores how we out-competed other species and transitioned from nomadic life to global dominance.
Homo sapiens first evolved in East Africa roughly 200,000 years ago. For much of our history, multiple human species coexisted; however, by 13,000 years ago, only Homo sapiens remained. A major turning point occurred about 70,000 years ago when our population began to boom, a success attributed largely to superior language and information sharing. The most dramatic shift arrived with the dawn of agriculture 12,000 years ago. While it took 2 million years for humanity to reach 5 million people, that number jumped to 1 billion in just 10,000 years as permanent settlements provided reliable energy. In the last 200 years alone, the population surged from 1 billion to 7.5 billion.
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- Summary by Intellect · source: Global population growth | Environment | Biology | FuseSchool
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