Carrying capacity (CC) research has been one of the most appealing, sophisticated topics as well as a theoretical frontier in modern ecology. Based on literature review on CC research history, the Evolutionary Tree Map of CC research was mapped, which divided the CC research history into three phases: discipline emergence, exploring application and deepening theory, then generated main characters, concerned disciplines and diverse views in different phases of CC research, respectively. CC rooted from human demography, population biology and applied ecology. In its emergence phase, CC research, focused on the growth law of non-human being biological population, archived its scientific definition, mathematic functions and discipline mechanism, all of which consist of the basis of a new scientific theory. The second phase of CC research ranged from 1953 to middle and late 1980s. Under the background of global crisis of resource and environment, CC focused upon its application to resolve the constraint of environment and natural resources that human society were suffering from, accompanying with amount of discipline debates simultaneously. Since late 1980s, CC research stepped into the deepening theory phase when CC research was not always confined by the theories and methods of biological population CC any more. Otherwise, people realized that human CC was impacted not only by natural factors such as natural resources and environment, but also heavily by cultural and social factors of human itself. Thus, these anthropogenic factors were admitted to CC research, which help the classical CC research to bring about human CC research while separating from the theories and methods of the non-human biological population CC research. The second phase, application and argument phase, was characterized by the application of CC to human social-economy activity and numerous arguments on human growth limit. In 1986, one year before "Our Common Future" released by WCED, Hardin put forward a concept of cultural carrying capacity which means human carrying capacity is influenced by not only natural factors but also cultural factors, such as technological innovation, trade, consumption preference and life style etc. Then, the evolution of CC developed into the third phase. Inspire by the concept cultural carrying capacity, ecologists recognized that human carrying capacity is totally different with animal′s, cultural or social factors should be integrated into assessment method of human carrying capacity.