The world's population has grown since the emergence of the first humans in Africa over 2 million years ago.
Agence France-Presse looks at the main chapters of the growth of humanity as the global population teeters on 8 billion.
East Africa has the oldest fossils from the earliest humans.
The number of people that lived on the Earth was not reliable until the 19th century.
Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers who had few children compared to later settled populations in order to maintain their nomadic lifestyles.
According to Herve Le Bras, a researcher at the French Institute for Demographic Studies, hunter-gatherers needed a lot of land to feed themselves.
The globe's population did not increase very quickly.
The Neolithic era brought the first major population leap.
Birth rates went up due to theedentarization and the ability to store food.
Le Bras said that mothers were able to feed infants gruel, which sped up the process and reduced the amount of time between births.
The domestication of animals caused humans to contract new deadly diseases.
A third of all children die before their first birthday and another third before they turn 18.
Eric Crubezy, an anthropologist at the University of Toulouse in France, said there was a baby boom.
The global population grew from 6 million in 10,000 BCE to 100 million in 2000 BCE and then to 250 million in the first centuryCE.
The Black Death stopped the population in its tracks.
The Black Sea was the location of the first outbreak of the Pandemic in Europe in 1 347.
It wiped out up to 60 percent of the population of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa in eight years.
The human population dropped between 1300 and 1400 due to the Black Death.
The wars of the early Middle Ages in western Europe caused temporary dips in the number of humans on Earth.
Modern medicine and the industrialization of agriculture helped boost global food supplies from the 19th century onwards.
The world's population has increased eight-fold since 1800.
The development of vaccines was key to the success of the company.
Treatment for heart disease in the 1970s and 1980s helped reduce mortality among over-60s.
Agence France- Presse.
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