Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago
A recent study published in Science has revealed that human ancestors in Africa faced a dire threat to their existence approximately 900,000 years ago. This research indicates a significant reduction in the population of human ancestors, occurring well before the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens. Astonishingly, the breeding population dwindled to a mere 1,280 individuals and remained stagnant for a staggering 117,000 years. Haipeng Li, a population geneticist at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and one of the study’s co-leaders, grimly notes that this bottleneck resulted in the loss of approximately 98.7% of human ancestors. He points out that the fossil record for the period spanning 950,000 to 650,000 years ago in Africa and Eurasia is quite incomplete and suggests that the discovery of this population bottleneck may account for this chronological gap. Duration of survival for this small group Nick Ashton, an archaeologist at the British...