Civilization Dynamics
The Civilization Record
TR
The planetary substrate, 12,000 years

The Civilization Record

The long-run background quantities the four layers stand on: population, land, energy, climate, water, matter, each a series back to 10,000 BCE.
PopulationLand AreaEnergyClimate & AtmosphereWaterMatter & BiosphereMethodology

Population

Ten thousand years ago the planet held a few million people. Today it is more than eight billion. But it was not only the number that changed: people began to live longer, to gather in larger settlements, and to produce more per person. The scale of civilisation changed as these variables grew together.

The first humans lived in small hunter-gatherer bands. Mobile life, limited food and disease slowed growth; when a group grew it split, spread into new land, and life returned to the scale of small communities.

Farming changed that pattern. People settled the land, brought plants and animals under control, and produced a regular food surplus. Villages grew; for the first time population could concentrate permanently in one place. But settled life also brought disease, inequality and conflict.

A vintage ink engraving of a world tree rising around an hourglass, its red branches spreading over a map of a civilization that grows across the ages.

As cities and states appeared, population organised itself inside larger communities. Empires such as Rome tied roads, trade and farm output together and drew millions of people into one economic and political order. Even so, wars, famines and epidemics kept interrupting the rise.

The Industrial Revolution was a fresh break. Machines raised output, widened energy use, and moved people from the countryside into cities. Clean water, sewers, vaccines and medicine let more people survive and live longer.

So population did not merely multiply; the way life is organised also changed. From small mobile bands to villages, cities and an interconnected global society. The scale of civilisation grew as much through people's capacity to live and produce together as through their number.

World population
million people
10.000 BCE: 4,42025 CE: 8.100 (log)
Annual population growth rate
% / yr
10.000 BCE: 0,012025 CE: 0,85 (log)
Urban population share
%
10.000 BCE: 02025 CE: 57,0
Life expectancy at birth
years
10.000 BCE: 30,02025 CE: 73,0
World GDP per capita
2025 USD equivalent
10.000 BCE: 40,02025 CE: 14.590 (log)
Total world GDP
T$ (2025 USD equivalent)
10.000 BCE: 0,000182025 CE: 118 (log)

The workforce

The labour force is the sum, within the working-age population, of those who are working and those who are not working but are actively looking for a job. It is therefore not the same as the total population: children, the elderly, those unable to work, and those able to work but not looking for a job are not counted in it. The labour force has two parts: employment (people in a job) and unemployment (people not working but ready to work and actively looking). This distinction shows not just how many people a civilisation is made of, but how many take part in economic production and keep the economic system running every day.

World population, 8,1 bn
Outside working age (0-14, 65+)2,9 bn%35,8Working age, not working1,7 bn%20,7Employed3,5 bn%43,5
Labour force = employed + jobseekers. Of the 1,7 bn of working age not working, 191 M are looking for a job (so in the labour force); the rest are outside it.
The employed segment, by layer
L0Extraction955 ML1Economy2.486 ML2Wealth79 ML3Markets5 M
Unpaid household and care work
2,1 bn person-equivalent
Shown against total population for scale. It belongs to no box above: it overlaps with the employed and with those outside the labour force, and sits entirely outside GDP.
Sector share of the workforce over time
A separate lens from the layer split: the long run only has three coarse groups, and here industry and services are shown apart, where the layer split puts both in L1.
10.000 BCE4.000 BCE1000 CE1900 CE2025 CE
farming and extractionindustryservices

Worth knowing

About 117 billion humans have ever been born; about 109 billion of them have died. The 8.2 billion alive are about 7% of all humans ever, and the dead outnumber the living about 14 to 1.

Reaching the first billion took about 200,000 years; the last billion was added in about 12 years.

The median age of the living population is about 30.

Unpaid care and domestic work, valued at the minimum wage, equals 9% of global GDP; women carry 76.2% of the total hours.

The Record's methodology →
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