Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago

Josh Fink brings us a CNN story discussing evidence found by researchers which indicates that humans came close to extinction roughly 70,000 years ago. A similar study by Stanford scientists suggests that droughts reduced the population to as few as 2,000 humans, who were scattered in small, isolated groups. Quoting: "'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.'"

Comments

The way things are going

[clonan]

we will actually reach that population level again.

Environmental damage here we come!

Re:The way things are going

[shbazjinkens]

we will actually reach that population level again. Environmental damage here we come!

Hear that Kelly Kapowski? Not if I was the last man on Earth, eh?

Re:The way things are going

[clonan]

The problem with global warming is three fold....

#1 it is unequally balanced..the temp changes more at the poles where the ecosystem is more sensitive to temperature. Therefore a small global change will mean dramatic changes in isolated areas.

#2 if you look through history, the average GLOBAL temperature over a one year period has typically hovered around 0 deg C for most of history. I hear that is an important temperature for something..... Anytime the temperature strays from freezing dramatic changes happen to the global environment.

#3 Consistency. So much of our modern society is based an the extremly mild conditions the earth has experienced over the last 20,000 years. Most of Europe is inhabitable ONLY because of the gulf stream and atlantic currents. Agriculture is ONLY possible because the temperature has been consistant year to year. We are in a sweet spot environmentally that is very unusual in earths history. screwing with the temperature is not going to help.

Re:The way things are going

[Reality Master 101]

Good old fashion starvation and disease. For reference, see the current food prices and how these are liked in the developing world. Biofuel mania has something to do with it, but increased consumption by people and animals people eat is the major problem.

Yes, it's entirely possible to get crop failures leading to starvation. But how many deaths? 1M? 10M? Not even a small dent in human population.

The flaw in your thinking is very common -- it assumes a static world that does not adjust. If people are dying by the millions, then things will adjust. Hunger is by far a distribution problem, not a food production problem.

Re:The way things are going

[maxume]

Just don't let him back out.

Re:The way things are going

[WindBourne]

In the 60's, greenies like myself fought against pollution from companies. If we had allowed the companies to continue, we would look FAR worse than parts of china or old USSR does today (and have significantly far worse health issues, akin to china's).
The global cooling issue was a 1 time tabloid issue. It was never in the science world other than 1 article. Only idiots point to that.
In the 80's, it was reagan trying to roll back the environmental changes (interestingly, the majority of the environmental laws esp EPA was from the pubs). It was the beginning of the ozone issue.
In the 90's, it was solving the Ozone issue. And just all the other ones was a problem. Fortunately, it is being saved because the freon was stopped. But we still have a hole in the south pole, that is slowly receding.

And since the 90's, global warming has been an issue. Back in the mid 90's, the neo-cons said that the earth is not warming. Now they say that man can not be behind the warming.

Do not buy it. Just quit polluting and forcing your shit on me and mine.

Re:The way things are going

[Chris Burke]

The DDT ban was one of the most successful examples of environmental policy in our history.

I presume that you love America? And perhaps by extension that you love our national symbol, the bald eagle? Well the only reason you can see them in the wild today is because of the DDT ban. They are one of the few species to ever come back after being placed on the endangered species list, and it's directly due to environmental action. So I'd hope you'd show a little gratitude.

I've heard convincing arguments that an outright ban on DDT went too far, and allowing small-scale controlled usage would have been beneficial. However the large scale cause-and-effect of spewing tremendous amounts of DDT everywhere -> bald eagle populations dropping, and banning DDT -> bald eagle populations recovering is indisputable. We know it was the DDT; we could measure it in the corpses of their prematurely dead young.

Other than that... Global Cooling was not actually a mainstream theory. Pollution/Smog was a serious problem, ask anyone who lived in L.A. in the 80s and now compared to now thanks to their emissions regulations. The ban of CFCs has had a demonstrably positive effect on the condition of the ozone layer.

So you're basing your decision to not believe in Global Warming based on a series of things which mostly turned out to be completely true?

Good job!

Re:The way things are going

[icebike]

If starvation kills off 50% there is twice as much food left for the remaining 50%. Starvation is a self limiting mechanism. You have a lot more homework to do to get down to 2000 remaining individuals.

As for diseases, there is no earthly disease that kills 100% of its victims, (because such a disease would then itself become extinct).

I think you've been watching too much Science Fiction.

You are not legend.

Re:The way things are going

[MightyYar]

Considering ice ages last between 40,000-100,000 years, that doesn't seem too significant to predict the climate. They have ice core data that goes back over 100,000 years. I suppose it could be a coincidence that:

• The most dramatic CO2/Temperature increase in history just HAPPENS to coincide with mankind figuring out that they could burn shit from underground.
• Scientists have developed models that match this historic data quite well, and even when set to be as conservative as possible, STILL predict a warming trend based on CO2 input.

So yeah, maybe there is some input that we haven't yet discovered that explains the warming trend. Lord, that would be nice. But until some evidence of that is uncovered, I'm going to trust the nice, testable, repeatable climate models over people's thought experiments, untestable claims, and "what-ifs".

P.S. - why don't ordered and unordered lists work anymore?

Re:The way things are going

[LithiumX]

I agree but I would also add that there is absolutely no proof that we are contributing significantly to the warming trend. I'm sure we have some effect, *all* lifeforms affect their environment. I'm also sure it's a good thing to cut down on pollution, but it's NOT a good thing to play chicken little when we haven't a clue about the climate long term and have very little history to compare it to.

Be careful saying that. You're likely to get yourself harassed, blacklisted, and shunned for such politically incorrect remarks.

I fully believe that the greenhouse effect is a simple matter of physics. I also believe that the effects, as we know them, do not occur rapidly. I also know that, historically, the climate is NOT stable - whoever said that it's been stable for most of history simply does not know history (Nineteen-hundred-and-froze-to-death being one example, the total environmental collapse of mesoamerica and the middle east, the sudden shift that made Europe more habitable and helped lead to the Rennaisance, etc etc etc).

In other words, yes our pollutants will have a very real effect on our climate. There is no free lunch. But, those effects belong to our children and grandchildren - what you see today is the normal cycle of change - but in a highly connected world prone to panic and fantasy, and overly willing to lay blame anywhere it can.

It may not be all bad though... it might scare us into actually controlling ourselves - before the bill actually shows up.

Re:The way things are going

[morcego]

So yeah, maybe there is some input that we haven't yet discovered that explains the warming trend. Lord, that would be nice.

Do you really think that ? I don't.

Considering human acts the main cause of global warming (or whatever other catastrophe you want) is very comforting. Why ? Because we can do something about it.

On the other hand, if humans are not the cause, we have a really big problem. Imagine it is some kind of change on the sun. How do we handle that ?

These days, I take a great deal of comfort on the idea we are destroying out planet, our "natural" disaster are due to humans doing this or that.

Re:The way things are going

[Shakrai]

History constitutes less than 2000 years. Thats the farthest back for which there are any usable records.

Uhh, dude, even if I don't mention ice cores and other geological evidence, you do realize that we have "usable records" older then 2,000 years, right?

Records survive from the Roman Kingdom -- which is over 2,500 years old. Ditto for records from the Roman Republic (2,000 - 2,500 years old). Some surviving artifacts and records from Babylon are at least as old (moreso in many cases). The Iliad is around 2,800 years old. The Torah is over 3,000 years old. The Egyptian pyramids and associated artifacts/records are even older than that. All of which have survived to the present day.

Re:The way things are going

[Hal_Porter]

It is possible. Freeman Dyson wrote a paper on spraying particulates into the atmosphere. So did Edward Teller. Recently people have proposed a plan to stabilise the population in the Arctic

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/12343892/can_dr_evil_save_the_world/print

A real-life experiment in the Arctic was, of course, out of the question. But after some discussion, Caldeira and Wood decided to run some computer modeling to see if shooting particles into the stratosphere over the North Pole could help stabilize the region. How much sunlight, they wondered, would you have to reflect to stop the ice from melting? What effect would it have on the rest of the Earth's climate?

Scientists routinely use such computer models to test the effects of various climate-related scenarios, from rising CO2 levels to the impact of deforestation on global warming. After several weeks of running a climate simulation on Stanford's superfast computer network, Caldeira concluded that shading the sunlight directly over the polar ice cap by less than twenty-five percent would maintain the "natural" level of ice in the Arctic, even with a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels. Push the shading up to fifty percent, and the ice grows. Even better, the restoration happens fast: Within five years, the temperature would drop by almost two degrees. 2 degrees Centigrade is a lot in global warming terms. Wikipedia says "The average global air temperature near the Earth's surface increased 0.74 ± 0.18 degrees C (1.33 ± 0.32 degrees F) during the hundred years ending in 2005".

The modeling results interested Wood. He calculated that it would take roughly 300,000 metric tons of particles each year to shade the sunlight in the Arctic by twenty-five percent -- a tiny amount, on a planetary scale. As for how to get those particles up there, Wood thinks that a half-dozen 747s could do the job. Even better, you could build a Kevlar tube fifteen miles long, with a diameter slightly larger than a garden hose. The bottom of the hose would be connected to a combustor that created the aerosols, while the top would be held in place by high-tech kites or a high-altitude airship that the Defense Department is developing. "It's nothing more than a fancy blimp," Wood says.

In Wood's view, this was a no-brainer. You could stabilize the ice, save the polar bears and demonstrate the virtues of planetary engineering for less money than it takes to feed and clothe the soldiers in Iraq for a year. Because the aerosols are launched only over the Arctic, there is little danger of directly impacting humans. And best of all, you can try it for a few years and see if it works. If something goes wrong, you can quit, and within a year or so, all the particles will have dissipated, returning the region to its "natural" state. I like this quote too.

"Human beings are like cockroaches," Wood says with typical black humor. "It's fairly easy to kill the first ten percent of the population. And if you try really hard, you might even get the next ten percent. But no matter what you do, you'll never get that last ten percent. We will find a way to survive." That's the spirit.

Re:The way things are going

[Gadget_Guy]

The Romans threw out their last king around 500 BC

Which might explain why the GP said that records from the Roman Kingdom were over 2500 years old and that after that they had the Roman Republic. You should have kept reading after you saw the phrase Roman Kingdom.

Re:The way things are going

[Swampash]

History constitutes less than 2000 years.

Hey, look everyone! We've got a postcard from IGNORANT WORLD.

Damn those Cylons

[Dzimas]

I guess only 2,000 survivors made down to the planet's surface from the Battlestar Galactica. They should have listened to Starbuck earlier.

The concept of races

[PIPBoy3000]

This event probably ended up establishing the concept of "races", meaning small groups of geographically isolated humans ended up having a lot of genetically distinct features. As their populations grew, they seemed very foreign to each other and only in modern times those barriers to gene flow seem to be falling.

I look forward to the day when people stop saying "I'm X race" and instead say "I carry the genetic markers for A, B, and C." Well, perhaps it's unlikely, but an ex-biologist can dream, can't he?

Re:The concept of races

[lottameez]

I would agree with you were it not for my Scottish stubbornness.

one arkload

[0WaitState]

Isn't 2000 people about the capacity of Golgafrinchan Ark Ship B?

Just saying...

Re:So...the Neanderthals could have wiped us out

[diablovision]

Actually the study can't support the statement that there were only 2,000 of us at that time. What it does say is that only 2,000 of us alive at that time managed to pass down their genes until today. There might have been a larger population whose genes we have lost in the intervening time (e.g. during the Bubonic plague).

The problem with these studies is that there isn't any DNA record of the humans that didn't make it. The only evidence we could hope to find of the humans that have died out is fossilized remains, which are few and far between.

If by 70,000 years ago

[monoqlith]

you mean 6000 years ago, and if by a drought you mean a flood, and if by 2000 human beings, you mean one bad-ass yachtsman named Noah and his hot wife Jessica Alba, then I would be inclined to agree. Otherwise I'm afraid this is just another godless article passed off as 'science' by Lucifer-worshipping scientists and their ilk over at CNN.

Conversation with government clerk....

[Anonymous Coward]

Conversation with government clerk filling out official forms...

Clerk: Full name please?
Me: Allen Dale Douglas
Clerk: Date of Birth?
Me: June 12th, 1981
Clerk: Place of birth?
Me: In a hospital.
Clerk: Which city and state, Einstein?
Me: Oh, Dallas TX, Presbyterian Hospital
Clerk: Sex?
Me: Sometimes.
Clerk: (rolls eyes ) Sex?
Me: Male.
Clerk: Race?
Me: Human.
Clerk: No, I mean what ethnicity are you?
Me: Texan.
Clerk: (rolls eyes again, tosses pencil up into the air and walks away)

it all sounds like a lame plot from a porno

[EmbeddedJanitor]

2000 person orgy to save the species.

Re:it all sounds like a lame plot from a porno

[Jason Levine]

Forget the soundtrack, I'll deliver the pizzas! ;-)

Re:it all sounds like a lame plot from a porno

[Foobar of Borg]

2000 person orgy to save the species

I find your ideas intriguing, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:it all sounds like a lame plot from a porno

[ncc74656]

2000 person orgy to save the species.

General "Buck" Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn't that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?

Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious... service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.

Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.

70,000 is co-incidental with another event...

[puppetman]

the explosion of the Toba volcano, in Indonesia, that was believed to take humans to the brink of extinction:

Across the world the last eruption of a super volcano was the Toba volcano in Indonesia. This erupted around 75,000 years ago spewing out tremendous quantities of rock and ash and is thought to have reduced global temperatures by up to 21 degrees centigrade.

Re:It bothers me

[NeutronCowboy]

Urm? This is a new one. See pretty pictures here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/. You also missed the time frame on the extreme predictions - about 50 to 100 years out. So far, what little predictions have been made have turned out to be too conservative.

Re:It bothers me

[MetalPhalanx]

I'm giving up modding to point this out, but perhaps you might want to consider that many systems in nature tend to be a kind of check-and-balance. There are effects in the system which dampen the issue, things which remove carbon from the air and bind it. If we continue to increase the CO2 levels, we will overwhelm those checks and then all hell will break loose.*

The other thing I'd like to mention is that there really are more things to consider than just CO2 levels in terms of global warming. I don't think that human carbon dioxide emissions will be the end of us, but it could trigger the chain of events that leaves our planet much less hospitable to us. Have you heard of the methane hydrates in the cold sea bed?** It's possible that a small shift caused by our increasing carbon dioxide emissions - even if they have to increase by another 30% or maybe more - will push the temperature over a critical threshold and trigger a cascade which will again cause all hell to break loose.

So in a way, you are right. Except in climates which are around a sensitive temperature (e.g. Those areas where the temperature hovers near 0 degrees C) there is very little change right now. That could be that CO2 emissions are having a very minimal effect on the temperature, or more likely IMO, that's just that we haven't quite overwhelmed the checks that are in place. /rant

* (IANA Environmental Scientist, so there may be a margin of error in the direness of my predictions)
** http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/02/26/methane-global-warming.html

Have you ever actually talked to a geologist?

[snowwrestler]

I have. I talked to a lot of them when I was getting my geology degree in college. You're right that the climate is constantly changing. You're wrong if you think that implies that humans cannot change the climate.

You're also wrong if you think that recorded human history is the only record of past climate that we can reference. There are numerous natural records of past climate that go back much further into the past. And by the way, the best estimate for an average global surface temp is actually about 14 degrees C, not 0. I have no idea where the grandparent got that number. Maybe they mistook temp anamoly for absolute temp.

Finally, it may surprise you to learn that many researchers of past and current climate do in fact hold geology degrees.

Re:It bothers me

[verayh]

What I'm saying is: if we're already half way there, where are the effects we should be seeing today? Where are the droughts and famines and floods that everyone is talking about? Is there some reason to believe that there's a threshold value, and once we cross it the problems will begin. It seems to me that if the CO2 if trapping heat, we should see the temperature rise with CO2. That would mean that we can expect another 1/2 degree rise at the most in the next 50 years. Droughts: You ask any Australian, and particularly, Melbournians, if they've had any drought!

Famine: Well, there's a lot of Africans who still don't get enough to eat.

Floods: Might as well include storms, so think about the number of hurricanes in the last couple of years, and many people in Europe have been experiencing SOME flooding.

Rising water: that's a really slow effect. Mind you, eroding shore lines are a sure sign of this phenomena.

Just because you don't see it happen instanteously doesn't mean its not happening.

AND you should be GLAD its not happening instanteously!