How many people have lived on earth since the dawn of time?
Dear Cecil: How many people have lived on the earth since the beginning of time? The reason I’m asking is I want to know if there’s going to be enough room in heaven for all those souls. — Listener, Roy Leonard show, WGN radio, Chicago Cecil replies: Boy, for a minute there I thought you were going to say something silly. Estimates of the total roster of humankind rely heavily on guesswork, a state of affairs not entirely unknown to us here at the Straight Dope, and accordingly the numbers vary widely. Demographers have come up with estimates ranging between 69 billion and 110 billion humans. That gives us a spread of 41 billion, a pretty formidable margin of error. Still, these numbers should put to rest the line of baloney put out years ago by the zero-population-growth alarmists, namely that the majority of humans who have ever lived is alive today. That’s flat wrong no matter what your assumptions. For example, creationists, who believe it all started with Adam and Eve around 6,000
