How many people have ever lived?

Factual Questions
1

Just seen a trailer on the Discovery Channel for some programme about ‘Great People’.

In passing, they said something like:
“£3000 bilion people have lived on this planet, but only a few have stood out”.

Does this figure seem reasonable to you? My old man and I argued this over (we usually argue) and he thought it was ridiculously high since you don’t have to go too far back in time to get a very low total population. I’m not too sure. I guess it depends how far back in time you can go and still talk about ‘people’.

Paddle.

2

Google search

Some hits:

109 gigapeople as of 1998
106 gigapeople as of 2002
96 gigapeople as of 1999

3

We’ve done this one before (kind of) in this thread. It’s a dodgy number to nail down but around 75-130 Billion was the numbers we arrived at for total population.

3000 Billion seems awfully high.

4

Define “people.”

5

I have.

6

All of 'em, so far.