Approximately what would the world's population be today if Europeans
had not wiped out the native's of North and South America?

Greetings.

Unfortunately, there is no single correct answer to this question.  We
do not know the precise population of the hemisphere in 1492, nor do
we for certain the precise mortality rate caused by the arrival of the
Europeans and their diseases.  Even if we did, the question would not
be possible to answer, because we do not know the precise way that
history would have played out.  What I mean is that even if the
Europeans had not arrived in the Americas beginning in 1492, it is
likely that they (or perhaps Chinese navigators sailing for the Ming
Empire would have arrived eventually.  History is tricky, and it's
tough to make a history that one wants happen plausibly, even for a
novel or for historical speculation like this.  If you are interested
in alternate histories, I refer you to the lively discussions that go
on at the USENET group soc.history.what-if.  While neither I nor the
contributors there could come up with an exact figure for you, there
you could find quite an interesting discussion.

That being said, this is some of what we know about the population of
the Western Hemisphere during the period of initial European contact:

Estimates of the Western Hemisphere's population in 1492 have varied
widely.  Douglas Ubelaker estimated in "North American Indian
Population Size, A.D. 1500 to 1985" that the population of North
America in 1500 was approximately 1.8 million, while a more recent
estimate, cited by David Stannard in his "American Holocaust," puts
the population of the area north of Mexico at 18,000,000, ten times
this figure.  The same estimate puts the total Western Hemisphere
population at the time of European contact at 145,000,000.  Without
knowing the precise population of the hemisphere at the time, and
without knowing the exact mortality rate, it is impossible to know
precisely how many people were killed.  Perhaps a good estimate to go
by is that of Alison Clement, who writes that "by 1650, smallpox had
killed three-fourths of the Indians who once lived in North and South
America."  All of these figures and more are cited on the "Population"
site cited below.

Population (hosted on Rootsweb's N. California Families Site)
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~cafamilies/population.html

Alternate History USENET newsgroup
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=soc.history.what-if&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

Thanks for your interesting question.  I hope this helps.

Surajambar-ga
Google Researcher

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Clarification of Answer by surajambar-ga on 23 Mar 2003 20:23 PST

In summary, we cannot even know for sure whethere the world population
today would be higher or lower than it is now.  If we assume a world
in AD 2003 which somehow still has had no contact between the
hemispheres, the population of the Western Hemisphere would include
the descendants of those who were killed in our timeline.  However, it
is possible that the Europeans, Africans, and Asians who came to this
hemisphere in OTL had overall a higher birthrate to "make up for" the
loss (in population terms).  However, without contact between the
continents, the population of the Eastern Hemisphere could very well
be lower.  It was because of contact that Europe and Africa
experienced such large rates of natural increase in the sixteenth
century.  Crops which were only found in the Americas, like maize,
cassava, and especially potatoes, fueled this increase according to
many scholars.

So, no way to know.

Surajambar-ga

good answers, but my question wasn't clearly formulated. More
mathematical than sociogical in nature; could have as easily pertained
to The Black Death or Spanish flu. Point is: there could be a lot more
of us here today.

My guess is that so called ethnic cleasing World wide has not reduced
the present world population more than a few percent, as birth rates
typically increase in time of stress and the invaders typically have a
high birth rate in the new land for at least one generation.  As sur
said we can play what if, but the different results are mostly guess
work. If this is a correct questimate, and the ethnic cleasing of The
Western Hemisphere was typical, then the world population would only
be about 1% greater, and could be a bit less if no immigrants had come
to The Western Hemisphere the past 511 years.  Neil