Watch: This Video Beautifully Shows the Spread of Humanity Over Time

Photo + Video + Film News
by Matt Hershberger Nov 15, 2016


HUMANITY HAS EXISTED FOR MILLENNIA. But for most of that time, we were few in number, clustered around a few large population centers. We didn’t even hit a billion until around 1800. But then, our numbers exploded. We were suddenly everywhere. We had adapted to every corner of the earth.

The American Museum of Natural History created this awesome video that shows the growth of humanity over time. And it’s pretty incredible — there are times where you can even see humanity shrink, thanks to things like the black plague.

This population explosion will eventually level off — we’re having fewer babies than we used to. So the population is expected to plateau around 2100 with around 11 billion people. Of course, this is still a problem. We’re putting a huge amount of pressure on our resources, which will eventually catch up to us.

Check out the video. It’s crazy how far we’ve come in such a short time.

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