There are many kinds of celebrities, and as Clive James puts it, Jesus Christ was the first celebrity to gain a global reputation for "not conquering the world through violence." And WH Auden says the best reward a poet receives is a bit like valley cheese — "produced locally, but praised elsewhere."
If all celebrities, like politicians, belong to some extent to the local level, and how widely their reputations have spread throughout the world and even throughout history, this question is really difficult to quantify, or even impossible.
According to the New York Times, Pantheon, a new project developed by macro connections at the MIT Media Lab, appears to have solved the problem in one fell swoop. It collects and analyzes data from cultural products from 4000 BC to 2010 AD. The project's website has just been launched, and with just a few clicks on it, you can swim in time and space to find out which celebrities have been produced in Brazil and Belarus (Brazil is mainly footballers, Belarus is rich in politicians). It also offers a ranking of popularity for a variety of professions, from chemists to judges to stars (first is Jenna Jameson, second is Sylvia St. in the Czech Republic).
Currently, the MIT team believes that any wikipedia article in more than 25 languages can be identified as a celebrity. According to the information and classification of the "Pantheon", we can have a simple understanding of the celebrities, so as to roam the rabbit hole of the "fame". There are many ghosts lurking in the project, all of which are popular with the project's director, César Hidalgo (the ranking system also includes the longevity of the reputation, which explains why many of the most famous people in the system have been dead for at least 1500 years).
"Poetically, we can say that the ghost of Isaac Newton is used as a message, reincarnated, living on a hard disk, living in a server group," he said. It makes sense for these ghosts to come together. "They left behind tangible achievements," he said, "perhaps songs, books, works of art or scientific discoveries, which are tickets to immortality, far better than the accumulation of material wealth."
The most famous person in the world for the past 6,000 years
1. Aristotle
2. Plato
3. Jesus Christ
4. Socrates
5. Alexander the Great
6. Leonardo Da Vinci
7. Confucius
8. Julius Caesar
9. Homer
10. Pythagoras
The most famous footballer of the 20th century
1. Cristiano Ronaldo
2. Pelé
3. Lionel Messi
4. Ronaldo
5. Ronaldinho
6. Diego Maradona
7. Zinedine Zidane
8. David Beckham
Total number of footballers on the list: 1064
Number of American football players on the list: one (O.J. Simpson)
The most famous "Johns"
1. John the Baptist
2. John Locke
3. John Calvin
4. Johnny Depp
5. John F. Kennedy Kennedy)
6. John Maynard Keynes
7. John Lennon
8. Pope John Paul II
The most famous "Steves"
1. Steven Spielberg
2. Steven Seagal
3. Steve Jobs
4. Stevie Wonder