Number of People to Have Lived versus Been Killed

Everyone Ever in the World [theluxuryofprotest.com] is a poster depicting the number of people to have lived versus been killed in wars, massacres and genocide during the recorded history of humankind. The resulting visualization, printed in transparent ink, uses existing paper area and paper loss (die cut circle) to represent the concepts of life and death respectively. The sequence of dots to the top left of the graph shows the dramatic increase in the number of conflicts over the past 5 millennia (left to right : 3000 BCE to 2000 CE) with the most recent 1000 years being the most violent. The large dot below the graph represents the 1000 years to come : a predicted startling increase in human conflict. The total number of people to have lived was estimated through exponential regression calculations based on historical census data and known biological birth rates. This results in approximately 77.6 billion human beings to have ever lived during the recorded history of humankind. The total people killed in conflicts was collated from a number of historical source books and was summed for all conflicts - approximately 969 million people killed, or ~1.25% of all the people to have ever lived. The timescale encompasses 3200 BCE to 2009 CE - a period of over 5 millennia, and 1100+ conflicts of recorded human history.
The poster is for sale at Counter Objects.