The population in 1 A.D. was 170 million; today, it’s 7.9 billion, according to the museum, which worked with Population Connection, the U.N.’s World Population Prospects, Worldometers and NASA on the project. As it follows the population explosion, the American Museum of Natural History points out specific events that encouraged population growth, such as the advent of farming, travel and trade on the Silk Road, and the development of modern medicine.
At the dawn of agriculture, about 8000 B.C., the population of the world was approximately 5 million. Over the 8,000-year period up to 1 A.D. it grew to 200 million, with a growth rate of under 0.05% per year. A tremendous change occurred with the industrial revolution: whereas it had taken all of human history until around 1800 for…