THE COMPULSIVE COMMUNICATORS

The spread of Homo sapiens

Homo sapiens have suddenly become the most numerous of all large animals. Ten thousand years ago, there were about ten million individuals in the world. They were ingenious, communicative and resourceful, but they seemed, as a species, to be subject to the same laws and restrictions which govern the numbers of other animals. Then, about eight thousand years ago, their number began to increase rapidly. Two thousand years ago it had risen to three hundred million; and a thousand years ago, the species began to overrun the earth. Today, there are over four thousand million. By the turn of the century, on present trends, there will be over six thousand million. These extraordinary creatures have spread to all corners of the earth in an unprecedented way. They live on the ice of the Poles and in the tropical jungles of the equator. They have climbed the highest mountains where oxygen is cripplingly scarce and dived down with special breathing devices to walk on the bed of the sea. Some have even left the planet altogether and visited the moon.

Human