Posted on 04/24/2008 2:05:33 PM PDT by blam
Study says near extinction threatened people
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Writer
April 24,2008
(AP) -- Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.
"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."
Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA - which is passed down through mothers - have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal.
The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.
Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.
Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction."
Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, IBM, the Waitt Family Foundation, the Seaver Family Foundation, Family Tree
“Wow, those woolly mammoth farts must have played havoc with the carbon footprints. “
Well, CaveGore solved that problem by killing off all the woolly mammoths.
Of course, that destroyed the last of their major food source, and clothing source, so CaveGore and his kind all died off from starvation and freezing.
I think the selective pressure was more likely geographic than intellectual. It probably reduced our genetic diversity as a species such that many of the genes that could have gone into a ‘super genius’ were lost, but overall the average intelligence of the population was most likely unchanged, just less diverse.
Evolution doesn’t denote advancement just change in response to selective pressure, and the change might be something that is as much a mixed blessing as sickle cell anemia.
This guy is a CERTIFIED idiot. Anyone with half a brain in science knows that a supervolcano erupted right around that time (Tomu) which completely screwed weather patterns for years after it's eruption. It wasn't climate, it was weather caused by a natural event that nearly wiped us out.
“There may have been others, on other land masses, whose entire civilization disappeared. Died out from drought, from cold, from disease, from whatever.”
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>......................
who can believe this crap? claims made about things that
are so long ago there is no history - claims of DNA
analysis to prove it. Lets just say that suckers are born every minute and lap up this “science”...DNA analysis is the hammer these guys use and so every thing looks like a nail.
Well when the Gorebots with their carbon phobia make the coming Ice Age worse than it otherwise would have been and the resulting troubles end with flying ICBMs. We might get to have another go at it.
No. San people are the pastoral relatives of Bushmen. In-San(e) people became Arabs.
Human population increased when we moved from food procurement to a food production lifestyle.
Human population would have risen exponentially from those 2,000 people and then leveled off when they had filled all available livable land and started to compete with other people for resources.
Human population was pretty stable at something less than one billion people for most of human history; until industrial agriculture and modern medicine combined with the subsistence mentality of most the world to produce our worlds six billion people.
Yup. That could happen tomorrow, millions and millions would die from starvation and the associated violence.
It may have been weather, the article linked above indicates that the "Volcanic Winter" lasted 6 years, but the Ice Age it kicked off lasted 1,000 years. That's Climate Change with a vengence. Just not man made.
Unless it was those Sumatran religious nuts throwing the virgins into the volcano. :)
I don't know but the world doesn't appreciate the advantages of Western civilization.
Actually it was the Mt. Toba (Indonesia) super volcano that erupted about 75,000 years ago. Yellowstone was more like 2.2 million years ago.
I'm trying to reconcile the Toba event (70-75,000 years ago) and the Hobbits on the nearby island of Flores...the Hobbit skeletons range in age from 80,000 to 12-13,000 years ago. I wonder how their DNA plays into all these DNA analysis's?
2,000 people given the entire earth with no people on it and a robust enough food gathering or producing culture would be 4,000 people in 20 years; 8,000 people in 40 years, 16,000 in 60, 32,000 in 120.
They most certainly wouldn't be only 2,442 people after one thousand years. A single village of 2,000 people, limited to the environs of that single village, might be only 2,442 people after one thousand years; but only if their food production techniques didn't improve much over that thousand years.
Hard as it is to swallow, there are many people who think we, and the world, would be better off without energy. They are stupid of course and not thinking but there you go. Most of the troubles of the world were caused by a majority of the people being stupid and blindly following along.
Extinction is just around the corner for the human race if we don't do something drastic soon.
The youngest Neanderthal skeleton ever found is 27,500 years old, found in either Spain or Potrugal I believe.
This guy is a CERTIFIED idiot. Anyone with half a brain in science knows...
Meave Leakey is the wife of Richard Leakey.
Right you are, but my point was that if man reached near extinction at 70,000 years ago then why the heck were the Neanderthal and modern man doing running around together 50,000 years ago ,and before that, in quite large numbers.
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