China and India have always been neck-and-neck when it comes to being the most populated country. But the two countries owe their numbers to their pasts – reaching back many millennia.

The American Museum of Natural History has released a video showing how humans came to populate the world over a 200,000-year s[pm. It all started with humans migrating from Africa towards the east.

The animation provides a timeline of events and empires in history that explains the changing population numbers. India and China had considerable populations right from the times of Han dynasty and Roman Empire.

But it is only towards the end that the yellow dots suddenly start to spurt across the globe – depicting a stunning spike of humans from one billion to over seven billion in just 200 years.

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