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Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has a story on researchers from the University of Utah who have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors Homo erectus, H. ergaster, and archaic H. sapiens were spreading through Africa, Europe, and Asia, there were probably only about 18,500 individuals capable of breeding in all these species together (PNAS paper here). Pre-humans were an endangered species with a smaller population than today's gorillas and chimpanzees. Researchers scanned two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, then compared the nucleotides in these old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in effective population size, and thus genetic diversity between modern and early humans. Human geneticist Lynn Jorde says that the diminished genetic diversity one million years ago suggests human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time as devastating as the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that triggered a nuclear winter and is thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago."
That's nothing. I mean, the whole race started from just two people, right?
Luckily, magic underwear was discovered and humans survived the event.
... is either a thoughtless use of words or pathetic effort to sensationalize. Neither is flattering.
this means that we're really all brothers and sisters, right?
Obviously this is when Adama and the fleet landed on Earth. BSG was right all along!
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
There should be some sort of correlation in the results.
Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
But, but...
I though it was the white-bearded magical man who did it !
With a big rain and a big flood !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The 18500 people quoted is not the number of people capable of breeding, but the "effective population", an abstract measure of genetic diversity in a species. According to TFA, the effective population of modern humanity is about 10000, and the argument in the article is that this much lower diversity indicates that a lot of genetic material must have been lost in a near-extinction event.
(not trying to rain on your parade or anything)
Back on topic. Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crysis... In terms of survival requirements, we should have already sent a few groups to the moon and mars.
People enjoy watching disaster movies like 2012 (I saw it as a comedy myself), but they should realise that focusing all your resources (as a species) on "I want a TV in every room" is a losing strategy.
If I had the money, I would be long gone. "Yes, 21st century society is very advanced and we have everything we need, but if they have a power outage or similar in a hidden bunker in Russia, we all die".
new sig
I think this means we are a stubborn infestation, successfully resisting the Universe's attempts to exterminate us thus far. The Universe realized that we are harder to kill than cockroaches, and concluded that the only way to wipe us out is to place the means of our destruction in our own hands. Now, it's just a waiting game.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
Genetics today is obsessed with conserved DNA sequences as "proof" of evolutionary kinship. It is based on a faith that DNA mutates at a uniform rate over time. But why should we assume a uniform rate over time, when evolutionary theory says that genetic differentiation happens in leaps and bounds? DNA homology amounts to a linear extrapolation, when it is known that evolution takes curvy, twisted paths. I venture to guess that DNA homology will turn out to be about as reliable as phrenology. I'm getting my PhD in statistics, and I've taken several courses in genetics -- enough to know that all theories in genetics are wrong. Indeed, much of science is based on a giant leap of faith in linear regression; physicists, chemists, doctors, engineers, all use linear regression without questioning its assumptions. The assumptions implicit in linear regression are not justified by real world data when examined closely, but very few science papers go into this level of inquiry. I used to be an atheist, but I've come to the conclusion that science is just as irrational as Wahabbism. They say mathematics is the one infallible science, but numbers are just an idealization of reality; they fail to capture all the complexity. Science wants simple explanations, yet the world isn't simple; it is inherently an exercise in circular logic.
What happened to those? Sounds like an excellent power source...
I'm just saying, there's some suspicious congruencies there.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
More evidence supporting the B Ark theory of human origins...
This makes me related to monkeys how ?
Pigs could have developed the ability to fly 900.000 years ago had a catastrophicly hungry species not eaten to extinction the pig subspecies that had the avian gene found in modern day crows!
Sounds like where we'll be at after another three seasons of American Idol.
Ahh, another christer pretending to have been reclaimed from atheism.
The logical response to believing that a particular bit of science is wrong is not to become religious. Its hardly a motivation at all. Google maps gave me the wrong directions - its time to become buddhist.
Isn't it a premise of your faith to be honest?
The Ancients died of a plague and most of them ascended.
The humans had a huge mineshaft gap over the neanderthals, and were smart enough to keep 10 women for every one man in their mines!
Ok so they find that humans are genetically homogeneous compared to other species. But how do other species develop diversity? One way is to have isolated populations. If we imagine that humans were different from chimps and other primates in that humans travelled far and wide, there would be no isolated groups of humans, the whole of central africa would be effectively one gene pool. That alone could make humans less genetically diverse than other primates, without invoking any theory of a near-extinction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera
ah yes, i've heard of mexicans and canadians, there's only a few in the world, but they're real. as for these so-called "americans", i believe this is a mythical nationality, i don't think they ever really existed. they're just bogeymen made up to scare small children
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I read that the team has a Variable And Goals Indexed Needs Analysis.
If this is a troll, it must be a kick-ass troll ...
I think parent poster should be getting insightful instead; talking about not trusting blindly; even if it is science ...
It's only with an open mind, more options can be found. Remember; there used to be science about the earth being flat ages ago.
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The advent of Karaoke!
Invenio via vel creo
...thought at first that the headline was "Humans Went Extinct Nearly 1.2M Years Ago" and thought, "Boy, we're doing pretty well for an extinct species..."
I mean, don't we already know that our species went through several bottlenecks? If I remember correctly, at one point we went through a bottleneck so small that the total number of breeding females was in the double digits. What I am more concerned about is when the next bottleneck is going to happen, and what will be the cause of it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I'm looking forward to your articles on this subject in scientific journals.
Bert
The Ancients died of a plague and most of them ascended.
To the outer clown plane.
Leave it to Deseret University (a.k.a., University of Utah), founded by Brigham Young, to come out with these scientific findings...
But the ancient wisdom of the Bible already spoke of this timeline... Daniel 5:25, 7:25, 12:7; Revelation 12:14: "time, times, and half a time", or [y = x + 2x + x/2].
In Revelation, "time, times, and half a time" is spoken of as a three and a half year period (to simplify the equation above, y = 3.5x [Rev. 11:2,3, 12:6, 13:5]). It is given as a time that man would flee from the beast (as nature is red in tooth and claw).
To interpret the length of this time period, we can employ the idea that "one day for God is as 1,000 years for us" (2 Peter 3:8, Psalm 90:4).
If x is equal to one year of days according to God's reckoning, then x = 365*1000... To substitute this value of x into our equation above, we get [y = 3.5(365*1000)].
Or...
y = 1.2775 million years that man has been fighting the fight of evolution with nature
These equations also relate to star polygonal arithmetic and points equidistant on the perimeter of perfect circles, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader (hint: y = 7 * x/2).
-=/\- Jizzbug -/\=-
Is this a headline from 1.2 million years in the future?
Back then, I'm assuming survival from a cataclysm had a lot to do with being at the right place at the right time, and you only had to fight for scarce resources with the people nearby. If a cataclysm happened today, it would be easier for people to escape to the remaining habitable areas, and we have a lot more tools to use to fight over those scarce resources. If we ever have a nuclear apocalypse, I bet it will be due to a sudden world war triggered by a natural disaster.
My webcomic
Well, assuming half is male, you can "only" bang 5k women.
Personally, I wonder if this might be the psychological root-event of the persistent and widespread human eschatological theme of 'world destruction by fire' etc. One might even see a parallel event in the Christian Bible's expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden - prevented from returning by "...a flaming sword which turned every way..." (KJV).
It seems that since Troy, we're finding that all the great myths and legends that have come down to us through the ages seem to have some kernel of truth at the core, overlaid by 00's if not 000's of generations of encrustations of ignorance, superstition, and the (apparent) human compulsion to make a sensible story out of the chaotic universe.
-Styopa
That last season of SG1 was really hard to watch. And Daniel ascending was really stupid also.
...a report by the NRA that the first human weapons resembling guns were developed at precisely the time we *almost* went extinct. Coincidence? I think not. More at 11...
The TWO (only two) genomes analyzed were from the subpopulation which left Africa. If you fully sequence a native south African more genomic variety, this hypothesis may not hold up.
Even before the modern era, man had spread throughout the planet save Antarctica. Mountains, prairies, woodlands, sea coast, jungle, desert, arctic, we were there. I can't think of a another land species (apart from microorganisms) that was so wide spread.
This suggests that mankind is spectacularly adaptive in comparison to other species.
From TFA:
Um. What?
So, according to the research, 1 million years ago the human population was about 55,000 with a genetic diversity 2-3 times greater than that of modern humans. Can someone help me understand how they get to a near extinction conclusion? Is it just that the population is lower than expected? TFA is not very clear on the point...
In the land of the blind, the one eyed man still has no depth perception.
Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago
So, Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, and software patents existed back then also?
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
there were over a million slashdot subscribers at the time, but their inability to get laid removed them from the gene pool.
Volcanoes huh? That explains the whole Xenu thing...
In that event, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts.
Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Bah, you call that news? Try:
"Humans Nearly Went Extinct 27 Years Ago"
the commander's Wikipedia entry says he:
You can follow any of the links in the above search, or here's a particularly lively read.
Terminology fail, amirite?
I'm sure there's a Daniel Jackson joke in there somewhere...
So if the population really went down to 1000-10000 individuals back 70,000 years ago, how can they extrapolate back 50,000 years further and site 18,000 individuals? Doesn't the 70,000 year old event effectively pinch off the genetic diversity at that point? How can you look back further? Did the new study show any signs of the 70,000 year event, or is that now thrown more into doubt by the new data? Maybe they are actually the same event? I can't imagine that they know enough about all the variables of genetic drift over time to have too much certainty of either the numbers or dates. Seems like geneticist voodo to me
non-human animals have humor. they play jokes on each other in nature and sometimes laugh. this is not intended to be a funny comment.
After reading this one, I've read about super-volcanoes on wikipiedia, and it says those eruption lower earth's temperature and can trigger a small ice age.
Maybe an eruption like that could save us from global warming?
It's a little bit scary anyway...
heh... he said PNAS
1.2 million years old
Guys, we have to prevent Sephiroth from summoning Meteor or we'll all be wiped out again.
I don't doubt the research at all. It is saying that there was a relative lack of diversity of generic material at a certain point. I just have some questions about their conclusions.
We already have lots of models of societal structures where a relative few individuals are providing all the population, from bees and meerkats to elk. The best we can say is that a relative few individuals were mating and procreating.
Best regards.
Yellowstone, the largest supervolcano, erupted 1.3 million years ago. Is that within the margin of error for calculating a near extinction from so long ago?
"H. ergaster"? They surely mean H. melanogaster, our little winged, fruit-loving lab overlords.
Let's say the population of inter-breedable humans went continuously up so population rose every year. In this case you could still have genetics that indicated "near extinctions." That's because some families died out even as other families were thriving. So even though the population never went down, it'd still look like we were down to just a few couples (my gosh, we were nearly extinct!) since only their descendants made it all the way through.
This implies that had those families not survived, some others would have and it would still seem like we were on the brink (a different brink perhaps) of extinction. That is to say, WE WERE NEVER IN DANGER OF EXTINCTION.
that long ago, we would have never had an Apple Tablet on January 27th. What a scary thought!
Which time?
"..., there were probably only about 18,500 individuals capable of breeding in all these species together ..."
So the ancient overlords put them all on Welfare and they suddenly started breeding prolifically.
The idea of 'junk' DNA is being modified. This DNA has been found to contribute to epigenetic processes, which is a profound discovery. Whether the 'junk' provides chemical structure, aides in protein folding, or does anything to affect the translation of genetic material into functioning systems (organs), I do not know. But we do now know that the discovery of iteration of nucleic acids is the foundation of passing on information through generations. That we have discovered the basis of a process does not mean that we understand how it works. As an employee at a home improvement store, I can tell you where just about anything you want to complete a project is. But I can not tell you your local codes, the best way to finish your project, or what materials you should buy. I offer suggestions; the result is a amalgam of what the individual chooses to buy and how they use those materials. Tradesmen know some of these things. They know what material to choose and how to install it. Some are better than others, they will choose a material that fits the project and is most effective, whether effectiveness is speed, durability, asthetic, et al. Genetic material is beyond that, as it has accumulated knowledge for what I assume to be in the billion year range. One mistake that is often made is to call a genetic phenomena a "trait" or a "gene for something". There is a lot more that goes into creating an organ than one sequence of DNA. The location of that DNA, the chemistry around it, and the physical structure around it are precisely why it becomes what it becomes. While I am long talking, the final point. Most significant pieces of DNA migrate with 'junk' DNA. It is not just the code for the particular protein that migrates, but the structure that allows that protein to form in any translation environment that is important. In the course of a shit-load of time (3,000 years since Noah built his ark), expression of DNA has changed quite a bit. All mammals build bone from calcium. So do reptiles. Mammals have mammary glands. Reptiles do not. They produce calcium in shells to protect their DNA as it matures into... young reptiles. 'Junk DNA' has been overlooked in the concept of introns and extrons for a long time. However, the biochemical material that surrounds codons has to have a large influence on how that genetic material is manufactured into mature biological molecules. To argue otherwise is naive and short-sited.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
"Researchers scanned two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, then compared the nucleotides in these old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in effective population size, "
Is there anybody here in the know about ALUs?
I can live with 18.500 individuals, it makes some large strides in the evolution of the brain more likely.
But I can also imagine that we do not know about extinct ALUs. Sat there were more people genetically more prone to jump of cliffs, and this was linked to some different ALU which was missed in this survey due to rareness or extinction, then there could have been a larger worldwide population than this calculation suggests,
...
Low genetic diversity world wide, among three different species of great ape, when there had previously been great genetic diversity is indicative of catastrophe.
After all, I am strangely colored.
Besides, there was the other near extinction 70K years ago. Wht I find interesting is the near extinctions were probably what led to modern humans' intelligence and other traits (like humor) that makes us so different from other species.
This is not a bad hypothesis. Large populations tend to undergo strong purifying selection (selection for the "normal" of a trait and against the extremes). Because of this, any new traits that appear in a large population by random mutation have a good chance of "getting lost in the noise" so to speak. They have a smaller chance of becoming fixed in the population.
However, if you weaken the purifying selection (the two easiest ways of doing this are reducing the population through a bottleneck or by the founder effect of a small population immigrating into a new ecosystem) new traits have a better chance of getting fixed and propagating in the resulting population(s). Human populations have gone through bottlenecks and come out with new abilities on the other side, so the possibility that such a situation is what gave rise to human level intelligence is a good one.
Weakened purifying selection is the main cause of increased genome complexity and the arise of new adaptations, more powerful and "sudden" than gradual change by natural selection. Sometimes a population has to do very badly in order to have a chance to gain the adaptations necessary for survival.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
Yes, two people. They both were white. The male had a big white beard, wore a red outfit & flew a chariot pulled by reindeer through the sky.
only if too many people learn they look like a fool with their pants on the ground. Hard to procreate if everyone has their pants pulled up.
While the few thousand left faced extinction, they all simultaneously realized it and said 'lets build a spear and a roof.' Ah, the birth of technology.
We're actually descended from Minerva's lunar colony, you know.
I have a book that shows the most holy being; who although he is everywhere, must be searched for by each reader.
All hail Waldo!
It was, and Jesus was a Jew, too.
The Christians think that by binding two separate book together, makes them all one 'book.'
Of course in Deuteronomy - the last book of the Torah (12:32) - it says that you: shouldn't add anything to this work or remove anything from it.
Of course slash-dotters know perfectly well what the bible was: it was humanity's first hard drive! Think about it... a fairly random collection of things we decided to save for latter like: family records (begat, begat begat), recipes (there's one for honey cakes I found once), prOn (Song of Solomon), cool battle stories, song lyrics, practical survival advice...
....would coal power be considered:
:)
fossil fuel?
solar power?
...or nuclear power?
then that song started playing, and the caveman threw the bone up into the air, next thing, we're in space.
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