Does this guy look familiar? Did you go to highschool with him, or maybe you saw him on the street with one of those yappy little dogs. No, wait, he works with your dad; you’ve totally seen him there.
Odds are that you’ve probably seen someone like this man. With the revelation that the Earth now houses 7 billion human beings, National Geographic set out to determine the most typical person on the planet. According to their research, the most typical person is (among other things) a 28-year-old, right-handed, Han Chinese man, with a cellphone, and no bank account.
Armed with the knowledge of world’s most average man, NatGeo wanted to give him a face. Researchers took 190,000 images and created a composite image that should, more or less, represent most of the human population. Think of it this way, if aliens picked a point on the Earth and landed there, odds are this is the first person they’d see.
Was that the sound of your paradigm shifting? Don’t be too surprised. We all live in our own little worlds, based off our past experiences, or families, our friends, upbringing, and geographical area. We’re a myopic species. Maybe this guy isn’t what you think of when you imagine a composite human, but it probably should be. However, that will be changing. NatGeo goes on to say that by 2030, the most typical human will be from India.
The good folks at NatGeo have compressed their research into a fun video with some catchy music, embedded below. Take a look. and change your view on humanity.
(National Geographic via Gizmodo)
Published: Mar 3, 2011 11:57 am