[itepearce]

Im just wondering. Since the beginning of human existence, how many people have lived so far, not including the people that are a life right now?

[unishisse]

Im just wondering. Since the beginning of human existence, how many people have lived so far, not including the people that are a life right now?

More than we could ever hope to count I'd imagine.

[TyncTyncSah]

[Lilji]

Probably around 15-25 billion people.

Basically what the population of the world is right now and will be in the next few years, times two.

[itepearce]

So no one has ever done any kind of study or calculation as to how many people have died so far?

[icyfreshy]

I could be wrong, but I recall reading that the number of people alive on the planet right now outnumbers the number of people that have died since the beginning of recorded history. 6,000 BCish.

[amagmasia]

Check out this Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

It's not until large-scale agriculture and exploration commenced that the world's population started to grow dramatically and it's not until the industrial revolution that it really started to explode. Plus there's a lot of guesswork involved in estimating ancient populations.

Mathematically speaking, it wouldn't be too hard to make a guesstimate based on the area under this graph (integrating):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_curve.svg

You've got a very long tail with a very small likely global population to account for up until the Roman empire, which I guess you could model as a simple square and then an exponential curve afterward.

If you're not too keen on math, the article has a section dedicated to your question. TL,DR; 100-odd billion.

[itepearce]

Thanks.

I'll take a look and see if i can come up with an estimate number.

[Wckcvhsg]

I could be wrong, but I recall reading that the number of people alive on the planet right now outnumbers the number of people that have died since the beginning of recorded history. 6,000 BCish.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/dead.asp

So it looks like the answer to the original question is 60 billion.

[i32I7qyH]

I could be wrong, but I recall reading that the number of people alive on the planet right now outnumbers the number of people that have died since the beginning of recorded history. 6,000 BCish.

I've read the same thing, and that was more than ten years ago, IIRC.

[edit] read the post above, which would suggest rather more.