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Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago: a new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals. (www.nature.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I mean, the biblical version is just two.... and their three sons.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

Until they wandered around and miraculously found more people that were never explained how they survived.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Close enough!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I feel like we knew this years ago. Is this another way of confirming it?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

This is a third bottleneck, earlier than the 2 we already knew about.

Specifically, this affects the entire human population.

The other 2 bottlenecks were specifically the humans which moved out of Africa - with one being as humans crossed into the Middle East and a second as humans crossed the Bering Strait.

This third one was earlier, and covers all humans, even the ones which never left Africa. These are separate from the more localized "founder events" that we see all over the world.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Ooh thanks, I did not know this!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No this is different, actually. The other event is the hypothesized genetic bottleneck triggered by the Toba supervolcano eruption only 74,000 years ago as opposed to 900,000 years ago for this newly proposed event.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Fascinating!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

We're all a combination of 1280 individuals !?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Plus mutations

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Hey cousin.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I feel so lucky that I find the topic of our evolution and our cousins and so on as exciting as I do. The reason I feel lucky is because it's a topic that is constantly turning out new discoveries and that makes life thrilling. Also, it feels like the rate of discovery has really exploded over the past decade or two. Remember the article about the "hobbits"? I just checked and that was 2004. Last December, Lee Berger revealed Homonaledi. Holy crap is this topic overflowing with cool news.