 Recent estimates of the "total number of people who have ever lived" are in the order of 100 billion.The answer naturally depends on the definition of "people", i.e.is only "Homo sapiens" to be counted, or all of genus "Homo", but due to the small population sizes in the Lower Paleolithic, the order of magnitude of the estimate is not affected by the choice of cut-off date substantially more than by the uncertainty of estimates throughout the Neolithic to Iron Age.