Has There Ever Been a Day When No Human Died?

Opublikowano: 2026-08-15

Has there ever been a day when no human died? Today I trace that question from modern mortality rates all the way back into human prehistory, when Homo sapiens numbered only a tiny fraction of today's population. Along the way: the Toba supervolcano, a controversial human population bottleneck, hunter-gatherer mortality, and the bizarre reason Britain once had 11 dates that never existed. Could there really have been a day when every human on Earth survived? The math gets surprisingly interesting. Sources:• Ambrose, S. H. (1998). Journal of Human Evolution, 34(6), 623–651.• Gurven, M., & Kaplan, H. (2007). Popula...