Size of antediluvian population..?

Does it truly matter how many people there were before the flood? The reality of the situation is that man refuses to accept the fact that during the age innocence man dropped the ball and lost the Garden of Eden. In the age of conscious man loses a golden aged civilization the likes of which man has not equaled. We see hints of this civilization all over the place. Each country and ethnic group has it's tales of a great civilization which fell to the murky waters of the deep. Not to mention the fact that land locked countries have evidence of fossilized sea live where there shouldn't be and at the same time the bibles speaks of huge life spans. Which could infer it isn't the quantity of people but the quality of the genius of the people. I would theorize that their ancient technology rivaled ours and that most of the races we have today have parts and pieces of this technology. China has medical technology that is thousands of years old. Greece had great engineering feats that could not easily be explained how these things were done(Colosus the giant statue). lets just accept the fact the flood happened. Before the flood man's genius gave him the tools to prove his undoing.