Have Humans Come Close To Extinction?

waytoomuchcoffee writes "According to a new study, our virtually identical DNA indicates humans were close to extinction about 70,000 years ago. Another take on the same study tells how being lactose intolerant in adulthood was normal, and being able to digest lactose became a survival advantage after dairy farming was invented."

Comments

Re:Noah's ark

[Tyreth]

No, probably not. After all, animals too were choked off at this point in history, with 2 of each kind and 7 of those that were considered clean (edible animals). So it doesn't explain it.

However, what could explain it is the habit for humans to commit genocide at times, and also to breed within the family. These have both occurred in large scales in the past. Families would stick together very strongly (tens, hundreds, thousands of people). They would sometimes wipe out entire family lines in a war. They would marry as exclusively as possible within families. Along with disease, etc, that cuts a population down. I'd see that as a better creationist explanation.

On a related note, mitochondrial DNA seems to indicate that our common mother (mitochondrial eve) existed ~6000 years ago, less than the 70,000 years proposed here. It was originally thought that mitochondrial eve existed ~200-250,000 years ago. However, new research in 1997 (off memory) indicated that mutations in mtDNA occurred far more rapidly than assumed (assumptions were based on evolutionary expectations for mitochondrial eve). This resulted in the new date. Take note: I've had many evolutionists come back and quote the original article saying "See! It says 200,000 years, not the 6,000 creationists quote. Just another example of creationist lies". However, they failed to look at the top of the article which was dated (Again, off memory) 1996, a year before the new research was discovered. I thought I'd mention that to save potential embarrasment.

A reference can be found here, though I used to refer to the article on creationscience.com - the author is slow to update (including the now outdated moon-dust argument) so I am putting less focus on that resource.

More articles can be found here.

Hope this helps.

Re: Noah's ark

[cybermace5]

Um, is your brain in backwards? I did not claim there was a bottleneck, I was asking people to prove their claim that there isn't! I'm not the one making an unsubstantiated claim here!