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Around 300,000 years ago, when Homo sapiens likely first appeared, our total population was small, between 100 and 10,000 people. There were so few people at the start, that it took approximately 35,000 years for the human population to double in size, according to Joel E. Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at the Rockefeller University and Columbia University in New York City.
Engineers initially used the term"carrying capacity" to describe how much cargo a ship could hold. In the 19th century, wildlife managers then used the term in herd management, before scientists later applied the concept to ecology to describe the maximum population of a species that a given habitat could support. Within a habitat, a population will remain stable if birth and death rates are equal, Cohen said.
Many low-income countries around the world have high birth rates and large family sizes, but also a high rate of infant mortality and shorter lifespans. But, Gerland said,"More and more countries, once they reach a certain stage of socioeconomic cultural development, tend to converge towards about two children [per couple] or fewer." This means that while access to health care increases lifespans, suggesting population growth, this tends to occur in countries with a falling birth rate.
As Gerland explained,"Right now the scientific consensus is that the population of the world will reach a peak some time later this century. The world population is projected to reach 10.4 billion people sometime in the 2080s and remain there until 2100, according to the United Nations Population Division. But Gerland stressed the further that demographers look into the future, the more speculative and uncertain their predictions become.
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