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A story on the map · 6 stops

Where do the world’s people live?

Eight billion people, and the small part of the land most of them share.

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The stops

  1. About 8.2 billion people live on Earth. Here, each small square of land holds a dot as big as the place is crowded. On this map every square is the same true size, so the dots compare fairly.
  2. Draw a circle 3,440 km out from where Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, and more than half of everyone on Earth lives inside it.
  3. Half of all people live in crowded places that, put together, would cover a little less ground than India.
  4. 86 in every 100 people live north of the Equator, where about two-thirds of the land is.
  5. Bangladesh has about 1,300 people on each km²; Mongolia, about 2. Here they are side by side at their true size.
  6. Turn People on in Layers any time, and tap any country for how many live there.
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Next

The Earth's imaginary lines The lines on every globe: what each one means, and why it is where it is.

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