The human population will be exploding to eight billion people during this month of November. On the one hand, humanity is expanding rapidly, and on the other hand, the resources on Earthto sustain the exponential population boom are getting depleted.
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The origins of humankind
The first fossils of a human were found in Africa some 2.8 million years ago, Sciencealert reports.
From that period until the 19th Century little was known about the true size of the global population, except that generally it is believed that humanity expanded steadily yet slowly.
However, during this period there are certain intervals when the global population stalled and even declined.
Most notably, a number of grim events throughout history caused the human population to fall, such as the ‘Great Famine’, the so-called ‘Black Death’ or the 'Bubonic Plague', the 'Plague of Justinian', and the wars of the early Middle Ages in Western Europe.
Explosion after the 19th Century
The human population exploded worldwide during and after the 19th Century, with the advent of modern medicine and the industrialization of agriculture.
Between 1800 and today, humankind expanded by a factor of eight, from one billion to eight billion.
According to the latest United Nations statistics, India is expected to surpassChina in 2023 as the most populous country in the world.
Furthermore, the most recent projections suggestthat human expansion will continue rapidly. It is estimated that 8.5 billion people will be living on Earth by the end of this decade and 9.7 billion by 2050.
Liu Zhenmin, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs says that rapid population growth makes global development much more difficult.
Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult.
Sources used:
-Sciencealert: 'Earth's Population Explodes to 8 Billion Humans This Month'
-UN: ‘World population to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022’
