Oddbean new post about login | logout A new study has found a terrible bottleneck in human ancestors about 900k years ago. There were as few as 1000 individuals left ... if this is verified further there was a time when we almost didn't make it. https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adj9484?casa_token=VS5dMv1ze_YAAAAA:v_FMiEjYJUA2-lPfVrsCOG4Lmaz039L-TwYp2grgDR3NQegiogx55LWUx2hkI9yF_laj_HLllS7S https://cdn.masto.host/sauropodswin/media_attachments/files/111/020/256/447/368/899/original/c26b2f335a286eb6.png
@134318c2 Person of the Bottleneck Era, comforting a friend who’s going through a bad breakup: “You’re better off without them, really. And don’t worry, there are a lot of fish in the sea.” Friend, sniffing back tears: “No, there there aren’t. There aren’t aren’t very many at all.”
@134318c2 Sounds like they're working with "effective population size". It's more like a value in their simplified models than reality. Something like the minimum number of people needed to contain the observed genetic variation, assuming homogeneous mixing in the whole population. The effective population size of today's Tuscans in Italy for instance, is about 4000, with the real population being around 4 million. The effective population size of Tokyo is just 3500. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/genetics-research/article/effective-population-size-of-current-human-population/E767DDCB8E895844FA35C9C44FA8B62F
@134318c2 I don't think the genetic bottleneck theory is new but the experimental methodology seems to be? Also: super volcanoes. Dangerous things. https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
