<P> Estimates for yet deeper prehistory, into the Paleolithic, are of a different nature . At this time human populations consisted entirely of non-sedentary hunter - gatherer populations, with anatomically modern humans existing alongside archaic human varieties, some of which are still ancestral to the modern human population due to interbreeding with modern humans during the Upper Paleolithic . Estimates of the size of these populations are a topic of paleoanthropology . A late human population bottleneck is postulated by some scholars at approximately 70,000 years ago, during the Toba catastrophe, when Homo sapiens population may have dropped to as low as between 1,000 and 10,000 individuals . For the time of speciation of Homo sapiens, some 200,000 years ago, an effective population size of the order of 10,000 to 30,000 individuals has been estimated, with an actual "census population" of early Homo sapiens of roughly 100,000 to 300,000 individuals . </P> <P> The question of "how many people have ever lived?" or "what percentage of people who have ever lived are alive today" can be traced to the 1970s . The more dramatic phrasing of "the living outnumber the dead" also dates to the 1970s, a time of population explosion and growing fears of human overpopulation in the wake of decolonization and before the adoption of China's One - child policy . The claim that "the living outnumber the dead" was never accurate (although it may be roughly accurate if only ancestral population is considered). Arthur C. Clarke in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) has the claim that "Behind every man now alive stand 30 ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living", which was roughly accurate at the time of writing . </P> <P> Estimates of the "total number of people who have ever lived" is 107.6 billion as of 2011 . The answer naturally depends on the definition of "people", i.e. is only Homo sapiens to be counted, or all of genus Homo, but due to the small population sizes in the Lower Paleolithic, the order of magnitude of the estimate is not affected by the choice of cut - off date substantially more than by the uncertainty of estimates throughout the Neolithic to Iron Age . The estimate is more crucially affected by the estimate of infant mortalitys vs. stillborn infants, due to the very high infant mortality throughout the pre-modern period . An estimate on the "total number of people who have ever lived" as of 1995 was calculated by Haub (1995) at "about 105 billion births since the dawn of the human race" with a cut - off date at 50,000 BC (beginning of the Upper Paleolithic), and an inclusion of a high infant mortality rate throughout pre-modern history . </P> <P> The following table uses astronomical year numbering for dates, negative numbers corresponding roughly to the corresponding year BC (i.e. - 10000 = 10,001 BC, etc .). The table starts counting around the Late Glacial Maximum period, in which ice retreated and humans started to spread into the northern hemisphere . </P>

What is the total population of the world since creation