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u-bend (1095729)
Near Extinction for Human Race 70k Years Ago
Thursday April 24, @01:45PM
In recent news from a subject that has always casually interested me, it seems that some now believe that the human race nearly became extinct about 70,000 years ago. We've heard human population fluctuation stories before, but this is the first I can recall that involves such a dramatic reduction, which, according to the article, had the population down to as low as 2000 individuals before the species' comeback. Interesting tidbits from the article:
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.
And:
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, who appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
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