300,000 Years of People: Where humans lived, from the first Homo sapiens to 8 billion 🌍

#history #population #humanevolution #map #geography #prehistory Each slab stands for people per km², each step three times denser than the one below. The steps follow the world total of the time, so early on a slab means far fewer people than today; the legend shows the values of the moment. Land without a slab was not uninhabited: fewer people lived there than the lowest step of the time, as on the coasts of Greenland (Paleo-Inuit from about 2500 BC, Norse from 985 to about 1450, Inuit from about 1200), in the Canadian Arctic or in the Sahara. Before 10,000 BC: our own rough model. Habitat from climate and vegetation, arrival from archaeology, world total from published estimates. From 10,000 to 5000 BC the model blends into HYDE, from 5000 BC on it is HYDE alone. Royalty Free Music from Tunetank.com Track: Sleep by Victor Wayne https://tunetank.com/track/3895-sleep/ 📊 Data Sources: • Population: HYDE 3.2.1, Klein Goldewijk et al. (2017), PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (CC0) • Vegetation and ice sheets before 10,000 BC: Krapp, M. et al. (2021), Terrestrial climate of the last 800,000 years (CC BY 4.0), doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/8N43X • Sea level: Spratt, R. M. & Lisiecki, L. E. (2016), Climate of the Past 12, NOAA NCEI Paleoclimatology • Relief: ETOPO 2022, NOAA (public domain) • Land and lakes: Natural Earth (public domain) • Arrival dates and population estimates from published research: Sjödin et al. 2012, Gautney & Holliday 2015, Tallavaara et al. 2015, Ragsdale et al. 2023, Sümer et al. 2025