An interesting question I thought of today

[blackson]

Are there more people alive today, then there are total dead people? I have not looked up any population numbers, so I do not know the answer. I thought of it when I saw that we have double the amount of people in the 20th century vs the 19th.

Homosapiens only. (or however you spell that)

[smartalco]

Wiki says that there are currently 6.7 billion people on our planet.
Taking that the average lifespan throughout time is 75 years (which is a gross over exaggeration, most countries still don't exceed 70), we can estimate how many people have died by taking how many people were alive at 75 year increments.
Numbers from wiki:
1925: 2 billion (got this by taking the 1900 figure of 1.65 billion and the 1950 figure of 2.52 billion, and doing a low average)
1850: 1.26 billion
1775: .86 billion (same method as before with 1750 and 1800)

using those numbers and roughing some sort of exponential curve to the data (and accounting that through all of time, average lifespan was probably more along the lines of 40 years, nothing like 75), I'd say that more people have died then are alive just barely (but I'm pulling some of these numbers and estimations out of my head, so I could be way off)

BLOW MY THEORY AWAY EDIT:
Wiki says I'm full of BS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_popu ... ever_lived

[TribulatioN]

I always figured that the death rate of humans over the existence of earth overcomes the 6+billion people and birthrate current on earth.

[blackson]

Yeah, smartalco and I played with some numbers. It wasn't even close.

[Rikaninja]

Fairly interesting, never really though of that :?. I really can't bothered calculating it myself but I can also guess that already passed people will be a higher number.

[epigone]

The tricky point is deciding when in history we official became human enough to start counting.


...and do aborted babies count...

[otters~1]

It's quite obvious that many, many more people have died than are alive right now.

[Kablizzy]

The tricky point is deciding when in history we official became human enough to start counting.


...and do aborted babies count...

Wahahahahahahahahaha!!!! Ahahahah. Ahah. Man.