# Was There a Year Where No People Were Born? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 19, 2004, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893 "2004-05-19T02:42:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Tusculan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecd19e/32.png) [@Tusculan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tusculan)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/21 "2004-05-19T20:52:47Z")
Hey, go a little easy on the girl. When I was her age I asked questions that sounded way stupider than this. It actually is a good question which clears up things in population and birth rates and stuff, I think. ---
**Author:** ![flamingbananas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@flamingbananas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flamingbananas)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/22 "2004-05-19T21:00:09Z")
Jeez. If I had known there would be so much sass going on I wouldn’t have asked. Isn’t this site for fighting ignorance? Wasn’t I ignorant on that subject? Am I not now? ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/23 "2004-05-19T21:18:22Z")
**flamingbananas** , you’re hardly receiving sass in this thread. But you re-asked a question directly after a post that answered that \*exact \* question. 5 hours after it was answered. If I had taken the time to do the research that \*\*acsenray \*\* put into his answer, I’d be slightly insulted. ---
**Author:** ![flamingbananas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f4b2a3/32.png) [@flamingbananas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flamingbananas)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/24 "2004-05-19T21:31:46Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > **flamingbananas** , you’re hardly receiving sass in this thread. But you re-asked a question directly after a post that answered that \*exact \* question. 5 hours after it was answered. If I had taken the time to do the research that \*\*acsenray \*\* put into his answer, I’d be slightly insulted. Sorry it took so long, but I was at school all day so it’s not like I can surf the boards all day and make speedy replies. I am sorry for repeating it, I just wanted to make sure I got it. Sheesh. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/25 "2004-05-19T22:12:29Z")
> [@flamingbananas](#): > > Wow. Well that cleared up my confusion, without any back-sass. So pretty much, even when the human race first started out there were still no days without new births? Please note that these data are estimates regarding conditions at _the dawn of agriculture_. There are a preceding 40,000 to 50,000 more years of human existence not taken into account. But even educated guesses regarding pre-agricultural human history (if you can even call it “history”) are going to be mighty hard to come by. Also, as noted earlier in the thread, there is the problem that it really is hard to define _exactly_ when homo sapiens came into existence and how many there would have been at the time. So it seems the best we can do is talk about human history starting from the beginning of agriculture, a time at which you might conventiently define the beginning of “history” or “civilisation.” It’s not necessarily a perfect assumption, because pre-agricultural human cultures (whether herding or hunting-gathering) were (and are) just as complex and sophisticated as post-agricultural cultures. ---
**Author:** ![SpartanDC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@SpartanDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpartanDC)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/26 "2004-05-19T22:25:42Z")
> [@flamingbananas](#): > > Sorry it took so long, but I was at school all day so it’s not like I can surf the boards all day and make speedy replies. I am sorry for repeating it, I just wanted to make sure I got it. Sheesh. Yeah, people, go easy on her. Sounds like she was just repeating the question for rhetorical purposes. The problem, **flamingbananas** , is that questions are taken _very_ seriously 'round these parts, so even asking them rhetorically can often lead people to believe you’re really asking the question in every sense. Also, while doing something like that (asking a question even after it’s been answered) wouldn’t sound funny in spoken conversation, it doesn’t come across so well online, and people can be really persnickity around here about posts that don’t really further a discussion (at least in GQ, “death ray” thread nonwithstanding). ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/27 "2004-05-19T23:09:34Z")
> [@flamingbananas](#): > > Jeez. If I had known there would be so much sass going on I wouldn’t have asked. Isn’t this site for fighting ignorance? Yes indeed, but it is also very sassy. The sass comes with the territory. Read some of Cecil’s articles. If you can’t put up with sass, you’re not going to enjoy this site very much. With wisdom comes wise-assedness (very often, anyway). 🙂 > [@](#): > > Wasn’t I ignorant on that subject? Am I not now? Dunno. As others have pointed out, several times in this thread you have given the appearance of asking a question again that had just been answered. There is low tolerance for that here. ---
**Author:** ![yoyodyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/a9a28c/32.png) [@yoyodyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yoyodyne)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2004, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/28 "2004-05-19T23:35:18Z")
> [@acsenray](#): > > So, assuming that 10,000 years ago there was a population of 5 million with a growth rate of 0.0512 percent a year gives you 256,000 births a year, which is abut 700 births a day or one birth every two minutes or so. Nit: 2,560 births per year. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/29 "2004-05-20T11:45:12Z")
yoyodyne, (way cool name BTW), 5 million \* .0512 is indeed 256,000. However both you and ascenray missed another equally significant factor. In addition to the population growing at that rate, the entire 5 million then alive must also be replaced as they die off. So the actual birth rate per year is (5 million / average lifespan in years) + 5 million \* .0512 for growth. If we assume an average lifespan of 20, that means 250,000 births / year for replacement and another 256,000 for growth = 506,000 / year. An average lifespan of 40 gives us 125,000 + 256,000 = 381,000 / year. Without doing any research, I’d bet the average lifespan in those days was around 20. Infant & toddler mortality was huge, but if you made it to age 10 you probably lasted to your 40s. The average would be more like 20. Assuming average lifespan = 20, we get a birth rate of 506,000 / year = 1386 / day = 57 / hour. Seasons were a LOT more important to folks lives then, and I’d imagine there might be areas where folks tried to avoid having babies in winter, say, so you might have large inhabited areas that went a day or two without births in the worst season. But planetwide, the last day with zero human births was waay before then. To say nothing of the last year. In fact, I’d suggest that once you had more than about 10 creatures defined as _Homo Sapiens_ planetwide, they’d need \> one birth per year to maintian their tribe. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/30 "2004-05-20T12:41:09Z")
Any creationist who believes in the literal interpretation of the Bible would argue that between the time Adam was created and Cain and born, there were no births. Whether Cain was born a year or later after Adam was created is still up to debate. ---
**Author:** ![Ximenean](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/aca169/32.png) [@Ximenean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ximenean)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/31 "2004-05-20T12:50:21Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > yoyodyne, (way cool name BTW), > > 5 million \* .0512 is indeed 256,000. Yeah, but .0512 does not equal .0512 percent. ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/32 "2004-05-20T13:29:16Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > But planetwide, the last day with zero human births was waay before then. To say nothing of the last year. In fact, I’d suggest that once you had more than about 10 creatures defined as _Homo Sapiens_ planetwide, they’d need \> one birth per year to maintian their tribe. Yeah but… due to interbreeding among different populations, it seems to me that there would _never_ be a time when so few as only 8-10 H. sapiens existed, no matter what definition you used to describe the species. So what’s a reasonable estimate for the lowest number of humans that have ever existed? ---
**Author:** ![curly\_chick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7ba0ec/32.png) [@curly\_chick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/curly_chick)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/33 "2004-05-20T13:37:57Z")
Planet wide, I’d say it never could have happened. But if you want to look at a smaller section, in a specific instance of time, after some sort of violent action in a given place, I’d say that it’s very likely there were a fair number of short periods of time where no babies were born in a given city/area. Were any babies born in Hiroshima the day after the atom bomb was dropped? I shouldn’t have thought so. I mean, obviously that’s only my opinion, but I reckon man is a pretty resilient critter and so for there to be a complete lack of any births in a place on a given day, some sort of violent action must be to blame - meteorological, geographical or man made, it would take a hell of a big thing. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2004, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893/34 "2004-05-20T14:22:57Z")
> [@Usram](#): > > Yeah, but .0512 does not equal .0512 percent. D’oh! :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-there-a-year-where-no-people-were-born/245893.md?page=1)