How do young-earth believers explain the size of human population?

[bdgr]

@Lobsang

edit: as an aside. Improve my mathematical reasoning… Assuming humans began 4000 years ago and that the average age to begin reproducin is 20 then how many offspring would each person have to have to reach six billion after 4000 years?

I’m pretty sure that nobody was waiting to hit 20 before having children. Probably more like 15 or 16.

[Paul_in_Qatar]

As I understand it, and I am eager to be corrected, one porblem with young-earth theory is the population at the time of building of the Tower of Babel and the Pyramids. Of course all you smart people seem to have the numbers at hand.

[Malacandra]

@Lobsang

Just curious. If there are people that beleive the earth is only 6000 years old and that humans have been around for 4000 years how do they explain the size of human population?

If humans ‘began’ four thousand years ago or 200 generations ago (assuming 20 years is one generation) then wouldn’t each human being have to have had thirty million offspring in their lifetime?
I would be the first to admit this is a very naive question, but I must be a very naive person because I’ve never seen the answer to this question.
edit: as an aside. Improve my mathematical reasoning… Assuming humans began 4000 years ago and that the average age to begin reproducin is 20 then how many offspring would each person have to have to reach six billion after 4000 years?

*points and laughs at the guy who needs to bone up on “exponential growth”.

[XT]

Well, didn’t those early humans live to be hundreds of years?? That’s a lot of extra doinking years, no? So…if folks lived to be, for instance, 600 years, and if they have bunches of wives…well, that’s a lot of potential kiddies, right? IIRC the oldest pyramids were built in something like 2500 BC (i.e. 4500 years ago, give or take a few centuries). If the earth is 6000 years old that gives all those long lived types 1500 years of scrumpin to fill out the population sufficiently to build all that stuff.

So…what’s the problem?

-XT

[Cervaise]

@xtisme

Well, didn’t those early humans live to be hundreds of years?? That’s a lot of extra doinking years, no?

Or centuries of menopause.

[DanBlather]

@Bayard

Good point. Starting with 8 people in 2000 BC, I get a growth rate of about 10%/year to get to 6 billion in AD 2000 (with 20-year generations, as assumed above, so 8 * 1.1^200 ~ 6B). But that growth rate leaves only about 110,000 people in the whole Roman Empire at the time of Jesus’ birth (8 * 1.1^100 ~ 110K). Anybody have an estimate for the number of people in the Roman Empire in AD 1?

The flood was only nine generations after Adam, so that is around 3700BC or so. The problem I see is that there wouldn’t be enough people around in Adam’s time for God to have to create a flood to kill them all.

[begbert2]

@DanBlather

The flood was only nine generations after Adam, so that is around 3700BC or so. The problem I see is that there wouldn’t be enough people around in Adam’s time for God to have to create a flood to kill them all.

I didn’t think it was news that God tends to swat mosquitos with sledgehammers, so why not flood the planet to kill a thousand or so people?

[gonzomax]

Research Population Bottleneck | Macmillan Science Library: Genetics Human genome tracing indicates we came from a lineage which started about 130,000 years ago. We have experienced about 3 bottlenecks. This is when the population for breeding is very small subsequent populations show less diversity. One was about 70,000 years ago ,coincident to thr Tuba Volcano explosion. At this time breeding population was estimated to be approx. 5000 breedable females.Chromosome analysis results in these times. Not 6000 years.

[Malacandra]

@DanBlather

The flood was only nine generations after Adam, so that is around 3700BC or so. The problem I see is that there wouldn’t be enough people around in Adam’s time for God to have to create a flood to kill them all.

Nine very long generations - very easily enough to breed, say, sixteen kids per couple without more than one or two being a helpless dependent at a time. That gives you 8[sup]9[/sup] people, or 130+ million. Obviously you meant “in Noah’s time”. You can argue the whole story’s horseshit on whatever grounds you like, but mere numbers isn’t enough, 'cos sixteen kids in the lifespan of a Genesis patriarch is serious underachievement.