science

17768 readers

458 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

159

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 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 2 years ago

Ooh thanks, I did not know this!