Everyone Ever in the World
February 22nd, 2010Awesome new poster by data-viz king Peter Crnokrak titled Everyone Ever in the World. The poster is a visual representation of the number of people to have lived versus been killed in wars, massacres and genocide during the recorded history of humankind.
Screen printed by K2 Screen using gloss transparent ink on 650mm X 920mm GFSmith Plasma Polycoat 700 micron Jet Black plastic.
It was commissioned by, and available exclusively from Counter-Objects.
Arik Beremzon
From “Counter-Objects”:
“The sequence of dots to the top left of the graph shows the dramatic increase in the number of conflicts over the past 5 millennia (left to right : 3000 BCE to 2000 CE) with the most recent 1000 years being the most violent. The large dot below the graph represents the 1000 years to come : a predicted startling increase in human conflict.”
That’s a pretty strong claim.
There are plenty of scientists who argue the opposite, here is just one of them:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/steven_pinker_on_the_myth_of_violence.html
Secondly, it would seem to me that the registration of deaths and survivors even throughout ww2 was way worse than it is now, let alone the registration of MIA’s a couple of centuries if not millenia ago.
I’m not saying I DO know anything about this, but I’m skeptical.
Peter Crnokrak
I haven’t come across plenty of scientists who claim that that society is becoming more peaceful. There are a few people who have : Steven Pinker is not a historian though – he is a cognitive psychologist. Bruce Mau for a period was giving lectures in a similar vein – espousing the decline in violence. But again, he’s too is not a historian, and lectures are not peer-reviewed. Watch carefully and you’ll notice that Pinker omits WW2 in his main discussion and just focuses on post 1945 data.
You’re right that the historical record becomes less and less reliable as one goes back in time. It’s difficult to say though if there is any real qualitative difference between the 18th, 19th, and first half of the 20th centuries – before mass communication was common.
I think the most interesting aspect of the data is the proportion killed value of 1.25%. Before I finished all the calculations, I predicted it would be much higher – and so did virtually everyone I spoke to.
Kezia Cantwell-Wright
Beautiful, chilling, poignant. Great piece of work and post.