There are currently 7.5 billion people on Earth. The speed with which the human population has grown during the past two millennia has been so drastic that we have gone from just about 170 million people on the planet to billions today. And soon we will be many more.

The American Museum of Natural History has graphically compiled the changes in human population on the planet since mankind exists until today, ahead of what scientists estimate will happen in the next century.

The first humans lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago, but it was not until 100,000 years later that humans began to migrate and expand their territory across the globe. During the following millennia the human population in the planet remained in an approximate of 1 million of people, but by the year 1 AD, thanks to the different techniques of cultivation that we had learned over time, there have been already 170 million people on Earth.

Humanity remained in this number for about 600 years, but then began a steady growth in population. For the year 1000 B.C. there were already 300 million people on Earth, by 1500 about 500 million people and by the year 1800 we reached one billion people on the planet.

But over the next 216 years we have multiplied so rapidly that from 1 billion we become 7,500 million humans on Earth. Scientists estimate that by the year of 2100 if we continue to multiply at this rate, 11 billion human beings will inhabit the planet, a number that poses major problems in terms of natural resources and food for the world.

But from the year 2050 the population will stop growing so fast because families will have fewer and fewer children. 11 billion is a very high number, but it is probably the most humans that have ever lived on Planet Earth in a very long time.