What was the world population in 1900? How did it grow and why? For hundreds of thousands of years, man was lost in the vast expanses of the earth, which were dominated by huge herds of animals. Anthropologists suggest that about 20 thousand years ago the territory of France was inhabited by several tribes, the number of each of which did not exceed several hundred people.
The population grew extremely slowly, despite the high birth rate. The death rate was sometimes higher than the birth rate, so the population growth, if any, was extremely insignificant.
Approximately 10 thousand years ago, population growth reached almost 10 million people. This was the first population explosion in human history.
Population of the Earth in 1900 and after
After this first explosion, there has been a steady increase. However, nothing could compare to the explosion of population growth that began after the industrial revolution. In 1800The number of people has exceeded one billion. As grandiose as this threshold may seem, such a jump is nothing compared to how the population of the Earth began to grow in 1900. The number of people on our planet in just a hundred years of the twentieth century has more than tripled.
Due to the fact that technologies such as electricity, medicine, transportation have become widespread, life expectancy has increased, infant mortality has decreased and food has become more affordable. That is, with the improvement of living conditions, the number of people began to grow much faster than ever before in the history of mankind. It was no longer possible for thousands of years to keep as many people as there were.
The population of the Earth in 1900, with an average life expectancy of less than forty years, already amounted to more than one and a half billion people. Not surprisingly, with almost doubling life expectancy, at least the number of people should have also increased.
Historical Factors Influencing Population Growth
It seems that human evolution, as well as population growth, was largely associated with the development of agriculture and hunting. Hundreds of thousands of years have been necessary for man to improve technology and tools.
Before the nature that surrounded him, primitive man was weak and helpless. All sorts of troubles awaited him behind almost every tree. The earth was inhabited by giant predators.
The only salvation for primitive people was life in communities. with communitysystem came more intensive development and use of new tools. Over time, more advanced weapons and methods of defense appeared, which contributed to the growth of the population.
Population explosions
During its development, humanity has experienced three population explosions.
The first one happened 40-35 thousand years ago. During this period, the population increased 10 times. At this stage, the number of people on earth has grown tenfold: from 500 thousand people to 5 million.
One explanation for this jump is that climate change has had a positive impact on food supply. During this period, people began to engage in agriculture, began to lead a semi-sedentary lifestyle, and learned to store food. All this paved the way for the development of agriculture.
Man began to tame and breed livestock, cultivate large tracts of land. The first permanent settlements appeared.
About 5-7 thousand years ago there was a second population explosion, this time the population grew not ten, but two hundred times.
The third population explosion began in the mid-eighteenth century and continues to this day.
Industrial revolution and population growth
The evolution of the world's population has experienced leaps that correspond to technological progress. The first major stage of technological progress was the discovery of fire, followed by food storage and agriculture, andthe third important stage in the demographic growth was the industrial revolution, which began in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Since 1750, population growth has not stopped even during the catastrophic periods of the two world wars.
From 1750 to 1800, the growth rate was 0.55% per year, in 1850 - 0.71% per year, from 1850 to 1900 - 0.69% per year, and in the period between 1900–1950, 0.58% per annum. Population growth peaked in the 20th century between 1960 and 1965. The population grew by 0.91%.
Unprecedented population growth
In the 1800s, the population crossed the billion mark for the first time. The population of the Earth in 1900 is already 1.762 billion people, in 1910 - 1.750 billion people, and in 1920 - 1.860 billion people.
Ten years later, in 1930, the mark passed the second billion - 2.07 billion people lived on planet earth during this period.
Before 1940, the number of people increased to 2.3 billion, and due to the loss of life during the second world war and the famine that followed it, in the next 10 years, until 1950, the population grew to only 2, 5 billion people.
Given the current rate of world population growth in two categories of regions: developed and developing countries, over the past four decades, the developing regions have experienced a more accelerated population growth rate and a relatively modest increase in the developed regions, which hovered around one percent.
Humanity took hundreds of thousands of years toreach the first billion, the second billion was exchanged about 80 years after the first, the third after about 30 years, and the fourth after only 15 years. It is not surprising that such trends are a little scary, because today more than 7.7 billion people live on Earth.
