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Population Year 1

Map No. 7

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The population two thousand years ago is estimated to have been 231 million. At this time North and South America were sparsely populated, as was Asia Pacific. The estimated population of New Zealand was zero. Southern Asia, Northern Africa, China and Southern Europe (parts of the same land mass) had relatively high populations. Colder Northern latitudes tended to have lower populations.

The territories that now encompass the Ganges, Tigris, Yangtze, Nile and Po rivers were the most populous.

"1 AD Gregorian calendar, 3761 Hebrew calendar, 7.17.18.13.3 Mayan calendar, 544 Buddhist calendar" Anna Barford, 2006

This map shows the distribution of the world population in 1AD.

• Open PDF poster, designed for printing. You need Acrobat Reader.
• View labelled territory map or population map for comparison
• Data files: Excel (large with map), Excel (small no map), Opendoc format (see notes)
• Technical notes for this data.
• High Resolution image (see copyright conditions)
• All of the data we use is estimated; see data page