0.5 History and global distribution  (Page 7/4)

History and global distribution

Introduction

A population is a group of individuals living together in a given area at a given time. Changes in populations are termed population dynamics . The current human population is made up of all of the people who currently share the earth. The first humans walked the planet millions of years ago. Since that time, the number of humans living on the planet and where they live has constantly changed over time. Every birth and death is a part of human population dynamics. Each time a person moves from one location to another, the spatial arrangement of the population is changed, and this, too, is an element of population dynamics. While humans are unique in many ways as a species, they are subject to many of the same limiting forces and unexpected events of all populations of organisms.

In 1999, the human population crossed the six billion mark. At current growth rates, the population will double within 50 years. Long ago, when the human population was small, the doubling of the population had little impact on the human population or its environment. However, with the size of today's population, the effect of doubling the population is quite significant. Already, most of the people of the world do not have adequate clean water, food, housing and medical care, and these deficiencies are at least partially the result of over population. As the population continues to grow, competition for resources will increase. Natural disasters and political conflicts will exacerbate the problems, especially in the more stressed regions of developing nations. The survivors of this competition will likely be determined by factors such as place of birth and educational opportunities.

Population growth

Human populations are not stagnant. They naturally change in size, density and predominance of age groups in response to environmental factors such as resources availability and disease, as well as social and cultural factors. The increases and decreases in human population size make up what is known as human population dynamics . If resources are not limited, then populations experience exponential growth. A plot of exponential growth over time resembles a "J" curve. Absolute numbers are relatively small at first along the base of the J curve , but the population rapidly skyrockets when the critical time near the stem of the J curve is reached.

For most of the history of modern humans (Homo sapiens), people were hunter-gatherers. Food, especially meat from large mammals, was usually plentiful. However, populations were small because the nomadic life did not favor large family sizes. During those times, the human population was probably not more than a few million worldwide. It was still in the base of the J growth curve.

With the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 10,000 years ago, the climates worldwide changed and many large mammals that had been the mainstay of human diet became extinct. This forced a change in diet and lifestyle, from one of the nomadic hunter-gatherer to that of a more stationary agricultural society.