I am currently reading "Genghis Khan and the making of the Modern World" by Jack Weatherford. One question I have is- has there been any research done on what our current population might be if Genghis Khan had never lived or gained power?
From some Google and Reddit searching I found a plethora of information and research on how many people he may have killed (I saw estimated 40 million somewhere) as well as how many decedents he has (1 in 200 men) but what about how he impacted our modern population?
There are currently ~7 billion people on Earth, has anyone done the math to see what the difference would be if those 40 million(?) people were never killed as a result of Genghis Khan's actions?
This can be expanded to the Mongol empire as a whole, not Genghis Khan specifically.
If the Mongols hadn't expanded so far, killed millions of people they conquered and millions more by spreading the Black Plague what might our population numbers look like now?
I imagine adding ~40 million people able to reproduce(I realize not all those killed would end up reproducing), into the population 800 years ago would lead to a far greater population today.
I thought about submitting this to /r/historywhatif but before I get speculation from redditors I wanted to see if any real research had been done on the topic.
It is extremely unlikely that without Genhis Khan, the population of the Earth would be many times higher today.
While 40 million is not an insignificant number of people, it is small compared to the number of humans who died from disease and starvation throughout history.
The unprecedented populations boom from the mid-19th century onward is attributed to more efficient farming techniques and vaccinations.
For the majority of human history, the world could not support more than 1-2 billion people simply because there was not enough food to do so.