The World Population Map, a new map published January 1, 2005, shows where the human beings of the world live, and how many are where. Each country is shown proportional to its population. The map presents people, not territory. Each square of the grid on the map represents a million people.

From the perspective of population, China is the biggest country in the world and India is not far behind. The United States is the third largest country in terms of population but only a small part of the whole, 4.5%, or less than 1/20th of the Earth's humans. Well over half the people in the world live in Asia.

The main map here is enhanced by a series of fascinating images at the bottom that includes population, by continent, throughout human history. This series of images shows where people were at 100,000 years ago, at the time of the birth of Christ, at 1650 AD, at 1900 AD, and a projection of the population for 2150 AD. There's also a small map of population density showing where there are more than 30 people per square mile.