Population Collapse Almost Wiped Out Human Ancestors, Say Scientists (theguardian.com) 41
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Early human ancestors came close to eradication in a severe evolutionary bottleneck between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago, according to scientists. A genomics analysis of more than 3,000 living people suggested that our ancestors' total population plummeted to about 1,280 breeding individuals for about 117,000 years. Scientists believe that an extreme climate event could have led to the bottleneck that came close to wiping out our ancestral line. "The numbers that emerge from our study correspond to those of species that are currently at risk of extinction," said Prof Giorgio Manzi, an anthropologist at Sapienza University of Rome and a senior author of the research. However, Manzi and his colleagues believe that the existential pressures of the bottleneck could have triggered the emergence of a new species, Homo heidelbergensis, which some believe is the shared ancestor of modern humans and our cousins, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Homo sapiens are thought to have emerged about 300,000 years ago. "It was lucky [that we survived], but we know from evolutionary biology that the emergence of a new species can happen in small, isolated populations," said Manzi.
Prof Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the research, said: "It's an extraordinary length of time. It's remarkable that we did get through at all. For a population of that size, you just need one bad climate event, an epidemic, a volcanic eruption and you're gone." The decline appears to coincide with significant changes in global climate that turned glaciations into long-term events, a decrease in sea surface temperatures, and a possible long period of drought in Africa and Eurasia. The team behind the work said the time window also coincides with a relatively empty period on the fossil record. However, Stringer said there was not convincing evidence for a global "blank" in the fossil record of early humans, raising the possibility that whatever caused the bottleneck was a more local phenomenon. "Maybe this bottleneck population was stuck in some area of Africa surrounded by desert," he said. The findings have been published in the journal Science.
Prof Chris Stringer, the head of human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, who was not involved in the research, said: "It's an extraordinary length of time. It's remarkable that we did get through at all. For a population of that size, you just need one bad climate event, an epidemic, a volcanic eruption and you're gone." The decline appears to coincide with significant changes in global climate that turned glaciations into long-term events, a decrease in sea surface temperatures, and a possible long period of drought in Africa and Eurasia. The team behind the work said the time window also coincides with a relatively empty period on the fossil record. However, Stringer said there was not convincing evidence for a global "blank" in the fossil record of early humans, raising the possibility that whatever caused the bottleneck was a more local phenomenon. "Maybe this bottleneck population was stuck in some area of Africa surrounded by desert," he said. The findings have been published in the journal Science.
Dup (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dup (Score:4, Funny)
Dude, we're long, long past that bottleneck. If anything, there's way too many humans on this planet today.
Keep working that hand and if it was really good, be a dear and send yourself some flowers.
Pretty Certain (Score:2)
It was a hoax of duplicate death notices and obituaries.
Blah blah blah inbreeding, blah blah blah fuck more, blah blah blah we are certainly courting doom in many respects and the only good joke to come out of this was Lysistrata.
Re: (Score:3)
Give BeauHD a break... it's really, really tough to notice a dupe that was posted at 14 hours ago. There have been something like 20 articles posted since then... if you include this one and the original.
You don't think Slashdot editors actually read the site content, do you? They're better than us, and as such have better things to do, apparently.
Coincidence (Score:1)
Duplicate article? (Score:2)
Looks like a duplicate article of https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
Re:Duplicate article? (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like a duplicate article of https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
We need at least two versions of the article just to have a breeding population!!
Re: Duplicate article? (Score:2)
Hm (Score:2)
How do they know it wasn't wiped out entirely?
Again?? (Score:2)
Wow, they just discovered it happened TWICE?!
Re: (Score:2)
Yes and no, I first read about the near-extinction-event a few years ago. Not being an evolutionary biologist, I read the articles and then pretty much forgot about it. Afaik the previous reports were also based on dna analysis, but more along the lines of "the entire human race is descended from a very small population, this happened around n years ago". I don't think they were capable of analysing dna from ancient skeletons the previous time this was news.
For all I know, this may have been news on Slas
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
https://www.businessinsider.com/genetic-bottleneck-almost-killed-humans-2016-3
https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
Re: (Score:2)
It does approximately align with the Toba eruption. Either the Toba-1a, -1b, or -2 events, which were order of a thousand years apart.
Dating is improving. We're finding that what we though was the case with the crude dating of 20 or 30 years ago, was probably more complex with today's dating.
Re: (Score:2)
Victoria Falls - dramatic ; divid
If They Keep Telling Us About It (Score:2)
Maybe we will believe it.
Re:How? (Score:5, Insightful)
By being sparse enough that an epidemic cannot propagate.
Re: How? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That social isolation worked far better back then, simply because between groups of humans there was by default a distance of a few kilometers.
Survivor's bias (Score:2)
"Behavioral Sinks" vs. Religion (Score:2, Insightful)
I've noticed that it's fairly basic social dynamics that drive mating and reproduction in humans and these social dynamics are being overridden by abundance and all the distractions of our time. This is turn leads to a "behavioral sink" the could likely have us "forget" how to mate and reproduce and trigger a critical population decline.
It's for this exact reason I - being an adamant anti-theist of the Christopher Hitchens camp - actually do in recent years see more and more advantages to abrahamic revelati
Re: (Score:2)
But then their offspring is subjected to reality and they abandon the bullshit, leading to a healthy equilibrium between people with brains who take care of our progress and the religious who take care of creating more people.
Re: (Score:1)
Historically, people needed children who could care for them in their old age. Most western countries have something akin to social security that requires people to be somewhat more self-suffici
Re:"Behavioral Sinks" vs. Religion (Score:4, Interesting)
The world is seriously over-populated and everyone knows it. The sooner we structure economics for a de-growth trend the better.
Re: (Score:2)
People have been saying the same thing since Malthus.
Re:"Behavioral Sinks" vs. Religion (Score:4, Insightful)
It's for this exact reason I - being an adamant anti-theist of the Christopher Hitchens camp - actually do in recent years see more and more advantages to abrahamic revelation cults such as Christianity or Islam. There seems to be a solid evolutionary advantage to people having faith-centric views of the world. After all, they do produce offspring at replacement-rate at least. Couldn't say that of the current modern western world though.
Not to be snarky or anything, but you do realize that what you are encouraging is that women are not given the right or opportunity to be educated or do anything other than stay at home and be baby makers? I think it's a fairly accurate observation that the biggest driver for women not to have children or to have children later in life is that they now have opportunities and don't have to be dependent on men to survive. And not being dependent means they can decide what they want to do with their life and when/if to have children. Not the man in the relationship. So many decide to not to have children or to have less of them.
So to accomplish what your proposing, your encouraging Western society to become more like the Taliban which is taking away any ability for women to do anything other than cook/clean/make babies. No thank you. I think the world will be a much better place without the religious crazies running it. If that means a smaller population for the world, so be it.
I'm not encouraging anything. (Score:2)
I'm not encouraging anything, I'm just observing a phenomenon and expressing a hypothesis on what's actually going on. Meaning there could be a notable evolutionary advantage to societies that adapt the "mind virus" of abrahamic revelation cults simply due to the fact that they produce more children.
If contemporary feminism wouldn't be all caught up in misandry and actually work on building an matriarchal alternative to old-school societies that can compete, I'd be the last to complain.
Re: (Score:2)
Who would have known (Score:2)
It is always the population collapse smh.
bogus (Score:2)
my buddy says study was muddy.
More than a dupe (Score:2)
It's not only a dupe, but, it's not a remotely new finding, I recall seeing a paper on this topic maybe 15 or more years ago, and it has appeared in numerous TV documentaries. It was various attributed to various volcanic eruptions, specifically Toba.
Supervolcano (Score:1)
Must have been a supervolcano as thats the only thing thought capable of affecting climate without mankind doing it.
Yellowstone?
human wins (Score:1)