The Numbers and Distribution of Mankind’ 
By C. B. FAwcETT 
The problems presented by the dis- 
tribution of the human population 
over the surface of the land, and its 
relations to the natural resources of 
the earth, form the principal subject- 
matter of human geography.” Our 
knowledge of these matters is still very 
inadequate. There are wide margins 
of error in the available statistical 
material,® and still wider gaps in our 
knowledge of the earth’s resources. 
Yet it seems worth while to attempt to 
set out some of the facts bearing on 
these problems as fully as possible. 
In this address I shall attempt to 
consider briefly only three of the 
groups of factors in these problems: 
(1) That of the actual magnitude 
of the present human population, and 
the main features of its distribution 
over the land surface. 
(2) The relation between the dis- 
tribution of the population and that 
of the fertile lands from which the food 
of mankind is obtained. 
1 British American Association Lecture 
delivered at the Annual Meeting of the 
American Association for the Advancement 
of Science, in Boston, December 1946. 
Reprinted by permission from The Advance- 
ment of Science, vol. 4, No. 14, June 1947 
(London). 
2E. g., Part I of F. Ratzel’s Anthropogéog- 
raphie is given to this topic; so also is Part I 
of P. Vidal de la Blache’s Principes de 
Géographie humaine. 
3 Because of these difficulties all the figures 
used in these calculations are round numbers; 
none of the resulting estimates should be 
regarded as more than first approximations. 
Cf. the general note on p. 13 of the Statistical 
Yearbook of the League of Nations, 1940. 
(3) On the basis of the first two 
factors I have ventured to estimate 
the population capacity of the world 
on some existing standards of produc- 
tion and consumption. 
Numbers 
The first question is “How many 
people are there in the world today?” 
It is not possible to answer this ques- 
tion exactly. In most of the lands of 
Western civilization, and in many 
other lands under their control, fairly 
reliable censuses* have been taken. 
So we can state the numbers of the 
inhabitants of Europe and North 
America, of the countries of the South 
Temperate Zone, and of Japan and 
India, with some approach to ac- 
curacy. But for the large population 
of China, and for the intertropical 
lands of the Americas and Africa we 
have only estimates of very varied 
value. Some of these estimates are 
based on partial censuses, some are 
hardly more than guesswork. 
Thus there is necessarily a wide 
margin of error in all estimates of the 
world’s population, which should be 
remembered in studying the following 
figures. 
4 Where most of the people can read and 
write a census can be fuller and more 
accurate than among an illiterate people. 
Also great mobility among a people, as in 
the United States, makes for less accuracy 
in the census. No census is quite accurate; 
but I have no data for a numerical estimate 
of census errors, 
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