The human population has grown so much and altered the earth’s ecosystem so drastically that a new geological epoch has been informally introduced: the Anthropecene.
The National Geographic took notice of this Anthropocene epoch -- or the “Age of Man,” as the magazine calls it – and has embarked on a year-long series about the global human population, which is inching towards 7 billion.
In the process, it has found the characteristics of the most typical person in the world (there are over 9 million of this kind of person).
The slideshow contains the characteristics of this person (and a picture of him/her) as well as other fun facts National Geographic discovered. Click “Start” to view them.
Click here to see National Geographic’s slide show on the earth’s population.
Below is its video on the most typical person:
He is male (which slightly outnumber the females of the world) and 28-years-old, which is the median age of the world’s population.Ethnically, he is Han Chinese. He (along with 13 percent of the world’s population) speaks Mandarin as his first language.Nineteen percent of the world’s population is Chinese, 17 percent Indian, and 4 percent American.
ReutersHe is right-handed, makes less than $12,000 per year, has a cell phone, but does not have a bank account. In fact, less than 25 percent of the human population has a bank account.ReutersNational Geographic took a photo of 190,000 of these world’s-most-typical people in China. It averaged these photos to create a composite image, seen left. National GeographicMore than half of respondents to a recent Pew survey said religious groups should keep out of political issues. ReutersThe average height for males in Holland is 5’11”, versus 5’4 ½” in Peru.ReutersIn Japan, women typically live 86 years; in Afghanistan, they live 45 years. ReutersThe typical American uses 100 gallons of water at home per day. In parts of Ethiopia, it’s 2.5 gallons per day (and it can take as long as 8 hours to collect that 2.5 gallons of water).Reuters
