Humans Nearly Went Extinct

Guzzo

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/04/24/close.call.ap/index.html WASHINGTON (AP) -- Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.Geneticist Spencer Wells, here meeting an African village elder, says the study tells "truly an epic drama."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 that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000[/b] 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," said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence."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.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.Don't MissThe 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, who 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, New York, and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations before 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 researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups that developed independently.Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, asked, "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 DNA and Arizona Research Labs.

Guzzo

fuck it I guess you guys all hung up on celibate moderators and shit

I'm just going to sit here all asshurt and watch this on a loop

rootlesscosmo

this is actually a crazy story.

glad we bounced back I guess.

I wonder if I "know" 2000 people, counting family and casual acquaintances.

it would be crazy to think you know the entire population of the world. like "that's it" if you don't like any of these people you're fucked.

mr.brett

I wonder if I "know" 2000 people, counting family and casual acquaintances.

it would be crazy to think you know the entire population of the world. like "that's it" if you don't like any of these people you're fucked.

If you couldn't like at least 1/2000 people, you might have problems.

Okem

I talked about this in the "post a interesting fact" thread.

I find the topic fascinating. Facts like this near extinction, and the fact that they say all Europeans, are the descendants of, something like, 7 women, boggle the mind. How are we all not a bunch a inbred crazies. Or maybe we are, and original man was a superior being.

rootlesscosmo

so we are all related to those 2000 people. spooky.

Okem

so we are all related to those 2000 people. spooky.

I'm not sure if this works in places like US (were most of the population are immigrants) but, Richard Dawkins says, if you search back 500 years you'll probably find that you, and your neighbour who you've never spoken to, will have an ancestor in common.

phongone

so we are all related to those 2000 people. spooky.

You can rep your "blackness" now with impunity.

catalist

Coming JULY 2010 to a theater near you:

2000

Okem

so we are all related to those 2000 people. spooky.

You can rep your "blackness" now with impunity.

Apart from there wouldn't be any 'black' people for another 30,000 years.

Or rather, there was no divide African/Caucasian/Oriental yet.

mannybolone

"Apart from there wouldn't be any 'black' people for another 30,000 years.

Or rather, there was no divide African/Caucasian/Oriental yet.
"



"Black is a state of mind!"

b/w

"Damn that Yakub!"