A History of the World in Numbers

By the same author:

I Used to Know That: History

Bad History: How We Got the Past Wrong

The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks

I Should Know That: Great Britain

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by

Michael O’Mara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright © Michael O’Mara Books Limited 2014

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-217-3 in hardback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-272-2 in e-book format

Jacket illustration and design by Patrick Knowles

www.mombooks.com

To those who have lived and died before us – approximately 107.6 billion people

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks go to Louise Dixon, Gabriella Nemeth, Steve Cox and Rod Green for their invaluable help and hard work. I would also like to thank my husband Robin for his sterling support on the home front.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

32 EDIBLE GRASSES

700 PICTOGRAPHIC SYMBOLS

60 MINUTES AND 60 SECONDS

82 BLUESTONES AT STONEHENGE

2.5 MILLION STONE BLOCKS OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

30 EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES

25TH DYNASTY

70 DAYS OF MUMMIFICATION

20 TIMES THE SIZE OF ANCIENT EGYPT

24 ANGULAS EQUALS A HASTA

282 LAWS

THE 7 WONDERS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

10,000 CLAY TABLETS

1ST TO PRODUCE IRON

A MAZE OF 1,300 ROOMS

12,000 SHELLFISH

100,000 ORACLE BONES

12 SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC

THE 10 LOST TRIBES OF ISRAEL

LAND OF THE 7 RIVERS

1.8 MILLION WORDS

40-TON COLOSSAL HEADS

THE 7 HILLS OF ROME

⅕ OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION

2,400-KM ROYAL ROAD

3 LANGUAGES

1 GOD

WOMEN OWN 40 PER CENT OF THE LAND

4 PERIODS OF ANCIENT GREECE

OLYMPIC GAMES EVERY 4 YEARS

ATHENIAN ARMY, 9,000–10,000; PERSIAN ARMY, 20,000–100,000

MALE CITIZENS OVER THE AGE OF 20

500,000–700,000 PAPYRUS ROLLS

3 ORDERS OF GREEK ARCHITECTURE

THE AGE OF 80 (OR THEREABOUTS)

THE 5 CONFUCIAN CLASSICS

8,000 LIFE-SIZE TERRACOTTA FIGURES

HANNIBAL’S 37 ELEPHANTS

1 IN 3 GAULS SLAIN

6,437-KM SILK ROAD

1,000 PACES

THE 4 GOSPELS

A CENTURY EQUALS 100 MEN?

⅛ OF THE ROMAN ARMY

COLLAPSE OF ROME IN JUST 6 DECADES

300,000 DEAD

THE CONCEPT OF 0

CONSTANTINOPLE’S 2 BARRIER WALLS

6 MILLION EUROS

AD 0

5 PILLARS OF ISLAM

X + Y = ?

12 KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE

2-HULLED CANOE

240 PENNIES

3-LEAVED CLOVER

29.5302 DAYS

JUST 4 BOOKS

600 PYRAMIDS

1 MILLION URBAN DWELLERS IN CHANG’AN

2,490-KM GRAND CANAL

10,000 LEAVES

100 VIKING WARRIORS

10,000 NORMAN SOLDIERS

120 ACRES

26 MILLION STRINGS OF CASH COINS

9 CRUSADES

150,000-MARK RANSOM

30 MILLION KILLED BY MONGOLS

1 IN 200 MEN

9 SACKS OF SEVERED EARS

MARCO MILLIONS

13 BRONZE HEADS

100 YEARS WAR

25 MILLION DEATHS IN EUROPE

2–7 DAYS

12,000 SLAVES IN SILK

1 MILLION PIECES OF POTTERY A YEAR

1.4 MILLION SQUARE KM

63 SHIPS AND 28,000 SAILORS

12 MILLION UNDER THE INCAS

48 CORDS

20 MILES A DAY

20,000 SACRIFICIAL DEATHS

10 GURUS AND 5 KS

3 YEARS TO MAKE THE GUTENBERG BIBLE

HEAD ⅛ OF A MAN’S HEIGHT

95 THESES

6 WIVES OF HENRY VIII

150,000 TUGHRA

2,500 PER CENT PROFIT IN CLOVES

MISCALCULATION OF 15,500 KM

180 MEN CONQUER AN EMPIRE OF 5–10 MILLION

SILVER 15–20 PER CENT OF SPANISH CROWN’S ANNUAL INCOME

PIECES OF 8

50 MILLION TO 5 MILLION

431,286 CHARACTERS

60 PER CENT OF THE WORLD’S CROPS FROM THE AMERICAS

130 SHIPS OF THE SPANISH ARMADA

OTTOMAN ARMY OF 150,000

5TH SAFAVID SHAH

102 PASSENGERS AND 2 DOGS

14TH CHILD

15,000 IN NEW FRANCE

2ND DEFENESTRATION OF PRAGUE

TOBACCO SOLD AT 500–1,000 PER CENT PROFIT

100 ACRES OF LAND

3,000 GUILDERS FOR 1 TULIP BULB

59 REGICIDES OF CHARLES I

11.5 PER CENT OF POPULATION KILLED

60–70 PER CENT OF EDO DESTROYED

2 CENTURIES OF ISOLATION

13,200 HOUSES AND 140 CHURCHES DESTROYED

45.52-CARAT BLUE DIAMOND

9 BASIC RIGHTS FOR ALL ENGLISHMEN

400,000 A YEAR DIED OF SMALLPOX

12.4 MILLION SLAVES

AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY JUST 23

ASHANTI EMPIRE OF 3–5 MILLION

90 PER CENT OF RUSSIA’S GAS AND COAL RESERVES

PRUSSIAN ARMY OF 83,000

THE EMPEROR’S 4 TREASURIES

250 TO 1

TWICE THE COST OF THE TAJ MAHAL

45 KG OF SAUERKRAUT

342 CHESTS OF TEA

55 DELEGATES

13 STRIPES

THE 3 ESTATES

YEAR 1 – 1792

4 KG OF WOOL

SPINNING 1,000 THREADS OF COTTON

AVERAGE LIFE EXPECTANCY 18.5 YEARS

778 CONVICTS

250 NATIONS OF ABORIGINAL PEOPLE

ARMIES OF 250,000

NAPOLEON’S 100 DAYS

5 GREAT POWERS OF EUROPE

4 CENTS AN ACRE

7,000 BRITISH VOLUNTEERS IN LATIN AMERICA

250,000 TONS OF PIG IRON

MARX’S 6 STAGES OF HISTORY

8 NEW NATION STATES IN EUROPE

2.5 PER CENT OF ITALIANS SPEAK ITALIAN

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS MIGRATE

⅓ OF IRISH POPULATION DEPENDENT ON LUMPER POTATO

‘54–40 OR FIGHT!’

90,000 NATIVE AMERICANS

21 MILES OF ELECTRIC CABLE

20,000 CHESTS OF OPIUM

20 MILLION LEFT DEAD

1 IN 15 US SERVICEMEN DIE

3,841,000 COTTON BALES

INCOME TAX RAISES 21 PER CENT OF WAR REVENUE

13TH AMENDMENT

133 SLAVES THROWN OVERBOARD

502 PAGES OF DARWIN’S ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

40,000 AMERICAN MILLIONAIRES

HEINZ 57

66 SKYSCRAPERS

280 DAIMYO LANDHOLDINGS ABOLISHED

PATENT NO. 174,465

1 PER CENT INSPIRATION AND 99 PER CENT PERSPIRATION

7 EUROPEAN NATIONS CARVE UP AFRICA

26,000 BOER WOMEN AND CHILDREN KILLED

WHITES GIVEN 90 PER CENT OF SOUTH AFRICA

450 MILLION TAELS OF FINE SILVER

END OF 2,000 YEARS OF IMPERIAL RULE

½ THE POPULATION DENIED THE VOTE

‘WE WANT 8, AND WE WON’T WAIT!’

10 TRAGIC DAYS

8.5 MILLION MILITARY DEATHS

400 MILES OF TRENCHES

¾ OF DEATHS CAUSED BY HEAD WOUNDS

92,000 RUSSIAN SOLDIERS CAPTURED

4 MILLION COLONIAL TROOPS

3,870 FRENCH TANKS

$1 MILLION A MINUTE

200,000 PETROGRAD WORKERS STRIKE

INFLUENZA TYPE A (H1N1)

5-YEAR PLANS

1 IN 5 OWN AN AUTOMOBILE

90 MINUTES TO MAKE A CAR

INTERNATIONAL TRADE SLUMPS BY 60 PER CENT

GANDHI’S 24-DAY SALT MARCH

80,000 ON MAO’S LONG MARCH

2 MILLION NAZI PARTY MEMBERS

1 PER CENT OF THE POPULATION JEWISH

40,000 JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE

UP TO 300,000 CIVILIANS MASSACRED

6 PANZER DIVISIONS

ROLLS-ROYCE PV-12 ENGINE WITH 1,030 HORSEPOWER

1 IN 5 BRITISH FIGHTER PILOTS KILLED

1,000 ALLIED BOMBERS IN 1 RAID

INVASION FORCE OF 3.6 MILLION

8 US BATTLESHIPS DESTROYED

20 CIGARETTES A DAY

159 MILLION MILLION MILLION SETTINGS

33,761 SHOT AT BABI YAR RAVINE

1 MILLION JEWS KILLED AT AUSCHWITZ

5 NORMANDY BEACHES

B-29 DROPS ATOMIC BOMB

OVER 50 MILLION LIVES LOST

51 FOUNDING MEMBERS OF THE UNITED NATIONS

FUTURE NUMBERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WEBSITES

PICTURE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INDEX

INTRODUCTION

Numbers can reveal much about the history of the world. Their scale or precision can illuminate the sometimes murky and complex history of man, and encapsulate in an instant the enormity or inconsequentiality of an event in the past.

There is also something solid and indisputable about numbers, making them a useful tool for anyone hoping to convey the history of the world in one short book. That’s not to say that numbers can’t be exaggerated, massaged, or even blatantly wrong – as so often they are – and just like words, they too can distort our view of history.

With this in mind, however, numbers do help to provide a sort of filing system for the past. We love to compartmentalize history, reordering it into tidy folders, labelling them with numbers of note. By this means numbers seem to leap out of the annals of history right into our collective consciousness, to remain lodged in our minds long after other facts have fallen away. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses, Henry VIII’s six wives, Marx’s six stages of history, all provide testament to the staying power of numbers.

Different types of numbers can alter our perspective on history. Vast numbers inform us how many people are living on the planet or how many millions are massacred in war. (Too often numbers convey the grim realities of life in the past – how millions have perished from disease, on the battlefield, or merely through the whims of a single deluded monarch or leader.) Large numbers can illustrate the broad sweep of history, from mass movements of populations to the expansion of empires (and often their sudden demise), the profound effects of industrialization and the growth of a global economy.

Smaller numbers, however, are no less significant: they measure the living details of history, the tiny shifts that may have vast consequences. The perfect proportions of Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the components of a ‘piece of eight’ silver coin, the US constitution’s thirteenth amendment, all were to have a lasting impact on the history of the world.

The nature of our past – peculiar, extraordinary, often fortuitous – can also be wonderfully illustrated by numbers, from the 12,000 molluscs that it took the Phoenicians to make just 1.5 grams of Tyrian purple, to the $15 million paid by the US government for a vast tract of land known as Louisiana. Mythical (or at least partly mythical) stories of the past, such as the Twelve Knights of the Round Table or the Seven Hills of Rome, can also be given validity or symbolic importance by their association with a number (the numbers seven and twelve are recurring favourites).

Armed with numbers, we can also zoom back and forth through time to compare events and achievements, taking in along the way the massive fifteenth-century fleets of the Chinese Admiral Zheng He (whose size wasn’t rivalled in the West until the First World War) to statistics showing that by the 1930s one in five Americans owned a car (a number that the UK didn’t reach until the 1960s). We can focus for an instant upon those who actually dealt with numbers – the astronomers, philosophers, engineers, physicists, many of whom exerted and still exert a far-reaching influence on our history, from the Indian scholar Aryabhata, who came up with the invaluable concept of zero, to the British mathematicians of the Second World War who cracked the Enigma system, thereby changing the outcome of a global war.

The History of the World in Numbers acts as a kind of compendium to some of the most fascinating figures in our history, from the beginnings of early civilization to the upheavals of the Second World War. The book’s short entries are meant to be succinct and accessible, to provide a wide-ranging view of our past across the globe. They also represent just a toe’s dip into the huge pool of numbers and history, a subject immeasurably vast and chasm-like. Our hope, nonetheless, is to package the past slightly differently, to provide a book that bears witness to man’s many achievements and misdemeanours, all told through the powerful medium of numbers.

Emma Marriott

32 EDIBLE GRASSES

Some 10,000 years ago, most of the world’s edible grasses (32 out of 56) – cereals like rice, wheat, barley and corn – grew wild in an area known as the Fertile Crescent. In the Americas and Africa, only four varieties grew, and in Western Europe just one (oats). Small wonder, then, that the world’s first farming communities began to develop in this great arc of territory, located in and around the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, running through present-day western Syria, southern Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon and the western fringes of Iran.

The Fertile Crescent, 10,000–4,500 BCE

The region’s rich resources of edible plants, which included the wild strains of barley, wheat, lentils, onions and peas, were planted and cultivated by hunter-gatherers living on the plains and hills of the Fertile Crescent. Also plentiful were wild animals suited for domestication – goats, sheep, pigs and cattle (four of the five most important domesticated species; the fifth is the horse). This, combined with a climate that initially had sufficient rainfall to support farming without artificial irrigation, provided the vital prerequisites for crop cultivation, the surplus of which eventually enabled people to settle in one place, develop technical skills, and evolve into the world’s earliest civilizations.

700 PICTOGRAPHIC SYMBOLS

The first known system of writing was developed in Sumer, the world’s earliest civilization of southern Mesopotamia, situated in the Fertile Crescent. Early forms of farming had led to permanent settlement in Sumer somewhere between 5500 and 4000 BCE. These farming settlements had grown into small towns, and by 3000 BCE a number of city-states had developed, the largest Uruk, with a population of 40,000.

Each Sumerian city had its own temple precinct that was a place of worship as well as an administrative and governmental centre. These temples stored and distributed community food rations, organized labour for public works, and controlled the trade in raw materials like tin from Afghanistan and copper from Cyprus.

To manage and record this complex system, the Sumerians developed writing, the earliest examples found on clay tablets from Uruk dated 3300 BCE. This early form of writing is made up of pictographic symbols, over 700 of them, and was probably in use well before 3300 BCE, practised by a small circle of Sumerian bureaucrats, largely for