Population Numbers: Something is not right here.

reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

I believe at the time of the "great deluge" or "Noah's Flood" there was somewhere in the area of 6 billion people on the earth. There are a hand full of us believers that subscribe to a belief that the world around that time was highly advanced and way more populated than history or even ancient texts teach us. Always something to throw us off a bit


Edited to say:
That "possibly" That sometime before the time of the great deluge there could have been a large population even. Many believe in a "pre-adamite" world. I mention this because I'm ride'n the fence on the whole deal.

[edit on 8-6-2008 by firegoggles]

Maybe I'm not explaining this correctly. I understand that generation plus generation equals population explosion, what I'm asking is comparative. I also understand that lines will cross fairly quickly. Lets not use my parents in the example. Let's use my great grand parents as a start. 1 me to 8 grandparents, so 8:1 ratio, respective to just their generation. In other words, I am here now and I am One person, not counting my sister or anyone else. I am comparing just my generation (me) to their generation (8 of them, when they approx. met. ) thus the ratio 8:1, next being 16:1, next being 32:1, thus doubling with each successive generation. I see the lines blurring when family becomes mingled, but what is the average distance back for that? Hope that explains what I'm talking about.

reply to post by firegoggles


I've got a theory about this and I am working on it about noah? Good eye

Originally posted by Anti-Tyrant
Both approaches require honest labour to acheive results, although i'll admit simply going out and shooting the first 50 people you see would be a simpler method of going about dealing with the problem instead of simply trying to find a way to continue sustaining this rather epic population problem we have.

They want to round up all the undesirable people & get rid of them. Don't think you are un-touchable. Population control gone crazy.

i can't believe of all sites, so many people here are brainwashed into believing the world is over-populated!! it is not.

the places people are "starving" are actually places where they just need a little boost. it's more malnutrition than actual "starvation". the political situations in places like africa displace populations, destroying chances of being self-sustained. the congo can feed ALL of africa if it wasn't in constant civil war, and this is no exageration. africa could feed the whole world if it was organized and peaceful enough. we could have ten times more people on earth, and feed all of them.

also, #1 humanity has inbred a lot. #2 the estimates of prehistoric populations are so extreme that one could say the population of the world 12,000 years ago was anywhere between one million and two billion. i would say about one billion, and yes i am an expert. #3 archaeological evidence doesn't (usually) keep in consideration that at least 75% of prehistoric populations lived near the coasts (just as we do today), and which are all deep underwater now. this would always cause a lower pop. estimate, along with the prejudices against "primitive" prehistoric people, even if they were exactly like us in every way.

reply to post by letthereaderunderstand


Perhaps you should try the other perspective and use a forward approach. Things might be a bit clearer.

You and your mate = 2 IF you only have one child, population decrease. IF you have two children, population equal. If, however, you have MORE than 2 children, population increases.

Therefore, even in the past, if a couple have more than two children surviving until reproduction age, you will have population increase.

How many children did your parents have? Your grandparents? Did they only reproduce with each other? Population can be controlled by how many replacements we produce. Need more? Have more. Need less? Have less.

It really is that simple.

A giant can of worms!

Looks like few people understood the original question posed in this thread. This question makes me wonder why all the people working on their family trees don't notice they are drawing what would take on the shape of an upside down pyramid in the three dimensional world. I guess some family trees would end up diamond-shaped for lack of available information as you go back in time.

This is a great question! Wish I could say the same for the answer because I think it opens a giant can of worms. I don't see how a cataclysmic event alone could explain the trajectory reversal that had to occur. But the only other factors I can think of that would help cause such a reversal are incest (already raised here), intergenerational-sex and hermaphrordism (aka: intersexuality). I wish someone would do the math because I would like to know how much of this kind of reproduction we had to do to get to 6.7 billion people today from the last cataclysmic event.

Why? Because the answer might solve a much bigger mystery: Why do we use only a small portion of our brains now? Could it be because we used to interbreed too much or because we no longer interbreed enough?

Might be one of those questions we don't want the answer to, like sausage ingredients. But I want to know.

Statistician, please help!

[edit on 17-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

How could I forget to include in my last post the most disconcerting factor of all that could have affected population growth trajectory:

Sex between hominids and other species.

Your original assumptions contain several errors. First of all, by looking at "only you", and working back, you ignore the heavy degree of merging of family trees as you go back. Rather than more people, when you consider the merging of family trees, the numbers decrease. The population of the world at any one time is dependent upon the following factors:

-average life expectancy of males
-average life expectancy of females
-average number of children per woman
-percentage of population that are women
-average growth rate
-death rate expressed as number of deaths/given fixed number

Another faulty assumption that you are implicitly making(probably without realizing it) with your logic is a consistent set of the above figures, which of course, is far from true.

In addition, another faulty assumption that your logic makes(again, probably without you realizing it) is that this is one homogeneous group of people, all available to each other, for procreation. In reality, population groups are isolated from each other, and thus, the starting numbers for any group remain small for a much longer time interval. With many smaller subgroups(as opposed to one large group), plagues, inbreeding, wars, etc have a much greater influence on the rate of growth, than do those factors for one large group.(Take what happened to the Indians when the Europeans brought diseases to the Western Hemisphere, for which there was no resistance.)

As populations of available people increase, the numbers increase more drastically.

This seeming paradox which you posed, is only a paradox until you understand that the assumptions you made are quite incorrect.
In 1900, the world's population was about 2 billion people. Today, it is around 6 billion.

The interesting thing is that the rate of growth is starting to slow down, because although the life expe3ctancy is slightly increasing, the number of children per woman is decreasing, to the point, where in Western Europe, many of the countries are starting to see projections of population decreases.

Go back 2000 years, and the life expectancy in the Roman Empire was between 22 and 25 years.

Thus, you can see that assumptions of consistency in "working backwards" are very flawed.

Recent discoveries have suggested that somewhere between 50,000BC and 20,000BC, the population had decreased to merely 2,000 humans, due to the extremes of the Ice Age. That is how close humanity came to becoming extinct.

I hope that this will allow you to get some sleep now,
Good night.

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
...by looking at "only you", and working back, you ignore the heavy degree of merging of family trees as you go back.

Incest, if that's what you mean by “merging”, was raised before in this thread, but I'm not sure why it should make a difference. Isn't the opposite true? That is, wouldn't merging or incest make a difference only to counting back from 6 billion and not from one?

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
The population of the world at any one time is dependent upon the following factors:

-average life expectancy of males
-average life expectancy of females
-average number of children per woman
-percentage of population that are women
-average growth rate
-death rate expressed as number of deaths/given fixed number

All of these points seem (please note “seem”) like they fall into the same trap that everyone else who misunderstood the question did. In counting back from just one, are we not just counting the number of progenitors (not whole population) needed in the past for one person to be present today?

Why should any of the above factors impede the progress of counting the number of progenitors needed for one person to be alive today?

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
Another faulty assumption that you are implicitly making (probably without realizing it)...

Why do you say “probably” without realizing it? Why would anyone want to make a 'conscious' faulty assumption about a subject like this?

Originally posted by ProfEmeritus
...another faulty assumption that your logic makes(again, probably without you realizing it) is that this is one homogeneous group of people, all available to each other, for procreation. In reality, population groups are isolated from each other, and thus, the starting numbers for any group remain small for a much longer time interval. With many smaller subgroups(as opposed to one large group), plagues, inbreeding, wars, etc have a much greater influence on the rate of growth, than do those factors for one large group.

I think most of the above was granted before your post, and the question of how long did we have to interbreed was posed, although I guess the second question would be a lot harder to answer than the first, if possible at all.

War, natural disaster, life expectancy, birth rate, famine, plague, pestilence, etc, none of these things should impede counting progenitors needed for one, as far as I can tell. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but please allow that no one in this thread should have any reason to make a faulty assumption, consciously.


[edit on 17-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

[edit on 17-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

reply to post by Rumpelstiltskin

Incest, if that's what you mean by “merging”, was raised before in this thread, but I'm not sure why it should make a difference. Isn't the opposite true? That is, wouldn't merging or incest make a difference only to counting back from 6 billion and not from one?

I did not mean incest, I meant what I said, merging. Merging occurs when two family trees merge, NOT because of incest, but because of intermarriage of non-familial nodes of the tree. For instance, if A marries B, and C marries D, and B and D are siblings, the trees merge. That is, they have the same parents, grandparents, greatgrandparents, siblings, cousins , etc. The further back you go, the less unique trees there are, until, theoretically, you get back to the first man and woman.


As to your original question, I tried to avoid a mathematical explanation, but I see that it is needed.

The earth's population doubles at some point. Currently, it is doubling much more quickly, than in the past. That, in itself, however, does not change the explanation, only how quickly we arrive at a number.

Assume we start with two people in the world, then go to 4, then 8, then 16, 32, 64, etc. doubling every so often(again, how often doesn't matter.)
Let's stop at 64. To find out how many people there have been in the world, up to that point, we need to add all the number, up to, but not including 64 (to see how many people lived before those latest residents of earth.
Adding these numbers up are what we call a geometric series.
2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 32 = 62, which is LESS than the current new residents of 64. In fact, no matter how far you go, the sum of all previous generations WILL NEVER equal or exceed the last generation. In fact, for this geometric series, the number of people will always be 2 less than the current generation of people. In mathematical terms, the population of all people living before the current nth generation, will be 2**n - 2 , that is, 2 to the nth power minus 2.
No matter how long it takes to double the population, or how quickly it doubles, the bottom line is that, at the point of doubling, the number alive will always exceed the number of prior people by 2.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus


I'm glad you agree that we might learn some important things about ourselves by trying to count back from one, Prof. I, for one, think the OP of this thread deserves many applause points from the moderator for raising this question. Personally, I would give him more than a billion points because that is equal to the number of people, we learn here, who had to be alive only thirty generations ago so that just one person could be alive today... theoretically speaking, of course... but who would have figured?

Besides the enigma this question raises, this thread is also fascinating (if you read it all) for the way it highlights a peculiar human behavior that I don't think I was aware of before, and was probably just as complicit in committing myself (before this OP came along) as those I am about to decry:

Why do we humans tend look back only to reminisce? Even you, Prof, as recently as your very last reply, still want to start from a hypothetical scenario in the past that MAKES what we know about the present FIT with what we are TOLD about the past. What is so wrong with starting from what we know now and trying to make the past fit with what we are told? Either we have been well trained to look forward only, or this peculiar behavior evolved as some sort of survival mechanism, I suppose.

I appreciate your participation in this thread, Prof, but I hope you would agree with me that the best teachers should keep us awake at night, thinking. They should not send us to bed and try to shut the lights out when class is dismissed.



[edit on 18-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

[edit on 18-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

[edit on 18-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

Originally posted by letthereaderunderstand
of course there are people that are related, aren't we all?

You are right, all i am using is myself, again compared to previous generations and not adding them. The ratio of people gets bigger backwards, per generation in comparison to me here now, until those family lines intersect with others, so maybe one of the extinction events took out all of the people. By the way guys I wasn't talking about shooting people or controlling the population, just how big the population was going back generation to generation.

I think you're coming to this conclusion because you are only just using yourself and not adding in the siblings, that's the flaw in your calculations. If you include all offspring it isn't bigger backwards, but multiplying forward. It's how your looking at it, and by only using one child per two parents, it will appear this way. Families, at least most of them grow!

What about some cultures where a man has a hundred wives? That eliminates 99 male parents.

Painful to admit, but every generation seems to be getting dumber.

I wonder why?

reply to post by Rumpelstiltskin

I appreciate your participation in this thread, Prof, but I hope you would agree with me that the best teachers should keep us awake at night, thinking. They should not send us to bed and try to shut the lights out when class is dismissed.

Actually, my classes ended years ago. In the OP, the poster indicated that this was driving him "crazy". It would have been unkind to keep him up all night worrying about this. However, I never got a response from him, so I assume he had gone to sleep. Anyway, if you knew me as my students knew me, you would know that I was the kind of prof who always had his office filled with students after classes, and well into the night. I usually was the person that shut the lights off in the building I taught in. I spent considerable time explaining this, and although you may not realize it, I do have a life, and it would also be unconscionable for me to neglect my wife and grandchildren. Not everyone can spend their entire life on ATS.

reply to post by ProfEmeritus

Wouldn't YOU have to be on ATS all the time to know if anyone else is? I'm not sure how worthwhile it would be for anyone to read your previous posts if this is an example of the kind of logic you follow.



[edit on 18-1-2009 by Rumpelstiltskin]

Man if you cant figure this one out for yourself then you really need to go back to school, seriously, I'm not joking, go back to school.

reply to post by Europe

I offer that instead of using himself, personally, or anyone else in particular as the person to count back from, perhaps OP's original question should have been how many people had to be alive in the past for ANY one person to be alive today.

Good reasons for asking this question have already been raised. But those reasons do not necessarily include trying to prove there were more people alive in the past than now, and I think anyone who doesn't see this either hasn't read through the whole thread or must be missing something. At the same time, I remain certain that it could very well be me who is missing something.

Hopefully, the next poster will read the whole thread first and say something to advance the discussion.

reply to post by Annoyed


Thank you for your answer annoyed. I had no idea this thread was still alive. Didn't mean to disappear on it.

Thanks again.

reply to post by Rumpelstiltskin


Thank you for your time in trying to understand the question. I believe it is simple, but for some reason people are not seeing it.

I was assuming using one person in our current time frame counting back generation to generation such as below. The one in the ratio is current day, but as we go back, the ratio increases. I didn't want to complicate it with other lines as one is hard enough to fathom. Anyway this is what I was thinking.

The 1 part of the ratio is current time opposed to X generations back.

1st Gen =1/1 ratio
2nd Gen =2/1 ratio
3rd Gen = 4/1 ratio
4th Gen =8/1 ratio
5th Gen = 16/1 ratio
6th Gen = 32/1 ratio
7th gen = 64/1 ratio
8th gen = 128/1 ratio
9th gen = 256/1 ratio
10th gen = 512/1 ratio

So just going back 10 generations, there HAD to be 512 people to get to my 1 which means 10 generations ago 6.7 billion people, doing just strait math with no other factors involved means the earth had to have 34,304,000,000,000 People to get to the number we are at...Everyone has to have two parents who come down the line, so there is no way to fudge these numbers, based on one person.

You used the perfect picture for people. The family tree. It starts Huge and slims down not the other way around.

Why are people not seeing this? Anyway, I appreciate your input. The craziest part of the above calculation is that it only takes into account 10 generations only. The earth couldn't support itself. This is super strange to me.


Peace

[edit on 23-1-2009 by letthereaderunderstand]