io9
Finally, a reason to think we'll survive the next apocalypse. Last week, a study that traced the origins of humans through mitochondrial DNA concluded that 70,000 years ago humanity underwent its greatest disaster ever. Africa experienced a massive drought at the time and it devastated our population, leaving perhaps as few as 2,000 people alive on the entire planet. Yet somehow we recovered — a warm thought for all the cold nights we spend dreading nuclear war, the next pandemic, dwindling water and food supplies, and global warming.
Today there are about 6.6 billion people on the planet and climbing fast (remember when we got to 6 billion...nine years ago??). It's hard to read the news and not come up with a laundry list of ways to destroy our civilization, if not all humanity.
So it's nice to know that humanity's a little more rugged than we thought. Here's what researchers from National Geographic Genographic Project had to say on the findings, which was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics:
Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA — which is passed down through mothers — have traced modern humans to a single ''mitochondrial Eve,'' who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.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 which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.
Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently.
Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: ''Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.''
Source: Associated Press, via PhysOrg
Comments
Nice matte painting! Do you have a reference for where this is from?
Piffle and hooey!
Everyone knows that climate change cannot harm humans!
It was probably aliens... Or time travelers with some sort of crazy grudge against their ancestors.
No that would make a cool movie.
Okay, but the survivors of said prehistoric calamity were blessed with a pristine environment that had not been crapped-upon by 6.6 billion people, their toxic-waste, radiation, virus, etc, etc...
We need to learn to behave. Or develop speedy space-travel in a hurry so we can pillage the cosmos like a swarm of locusts...I'm good either way...
Lies! The world is only 5000 years old. Look it up, it's in the bible...
@Argyle:
Maybe there was a prequel. God is like George Lucas...
It is an interesting finding... A biological bottleneck..
Of course on the other hand that population isolation and stress is what produced us moder humans...
So really it is mother nature's fault that we exist to screw up the environment.
(whaaa my mother starved me as child species.. that is why I destroy the environment...)
Isn't there some evidence that there was more genetic diversity during that diaspora? That all the humans today, as different as they might appear now, are descended from a relatively small gene pool after the species was culled by aforementioned disaster(s).
Or did I make all that up?
actually, it was the 2000 survivors of a ragtag fleet from space.
@russdanger: Naw,more like a franchise reboot, like BSG.
@92BuickLeSabre: Agreed! As long as we keep Roland Emmerich away from it :-D
@Dunny0:
It would be an interesting plot-device, to have the fleet arrive on our Earth, only 70,000 years ago...
Oh, wait...Douglas Addams already wrote that in the Hitchiker's Guide...
We're all the descendants of um,...morons.
Well maybe if they had made electrical sockets for their televisions, our ancestors could have avoided disaster.
@russdanger: that's "We're all the descendants of um,...morMons."
@russdanger: The B Ark, yes.
We're all the descendants of TV producers, hair stylists, telephone sanitizers and marketing personnel.
Although I meant that the Earth being only 5,000 years old was a result of the "reboot" of human history, as the previous version wasn't doing well enough in the ratings.
That's the only explanation for conflicting evidence: All just holdovers from the old continuity, mostly kept there to keep the fanboys happy and tuned in.
@russdanger: Yeah, that seems like a major difference to me, too. Our capacity for destruction has literally increased exponentially since 70,000 years ago.
The human will to survive has brought us through many catastrophies, but it has never had to cope with 6.6 billion humans. As a species we are very good at surviving, but we are also very, very good at destroying. It will be interesting to see what equilibrium these two facets of our nature come to.
Wow, this conversation is starting to sound preachy like a Dr. Who episode.
@Priam: And speaking of works of the empire, I am going to make some Indonesian peanut chicken. I will chat with y'all later.
@Argyle:
"Lies! The world is only 5000 years old. Look it up, it's in the bible... "
Aww, I am so disappointed! If you're going to make fun of someone else's beliefs, at least get your snappy comments right. It's between 6,000 and 10,000 years old! (according to the literal creation story in the Bible).
Boy, wouldn't it just freak everyone out if this coincided with a huge cataclysmic flood 70,000 years ago? :)
@geekzilla:
Well, except for the fact that it was a drought, sure.
@geekzilla: Would it be freakier if was from man (humanoid ape) produced global warming?
@Plague: Yeah but all the water for the flood had to come from somewhere, see? Africa got the drought, Mesopotamia got the flood.
I'd like to think we'll come out of the next apocalypse with something similar to "Things to Come" but with fewer white people.
@Plague:
"Well, except for the fact that it was a drought, sure."
Oh yeah, that. Uhm.
No, but seriously. We can't tell it was a drought based on human mitochondrial DNA. They're saying that since: "Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago...", they are theorizing that it must have been some of that drought activity, but they could be wrong.
Last I looked there's a lot of time between 90,000 and 70,000 years ago (20,000 years, in fact), so it could have been anything else.
@DocGratis:
"Would it be freakier if was from man (humanoid ape) produced global warming?"
Wow, yes, I think it would be freakier. My mind is now blown. Thanks.
Jeez, you guys keep talking about the apocalypse, why don't you just review my anthology, Wastelands, already? (You know you want to.) Besides, that image you posted is on the cover, you're already half-way there!
@johnjosephadams: It's in my stack... I'll try and get to it soon! It definitely looks awesome...
Very cool. :D Always good to read that the species is a little hardier than the movies make us out to be. ;)
I don't think we should be worried about survival as much as we should worry about whether or not the right people will survive. If 2000 were to survive, I would hope they would be all in the same area, have access to books, and have a collection of scientists, engineers, and others.
@Ghede:
More likely be a bunch of Skin-Headed swastika-tattooed AK-47 toting survivalist morons from the highlands of Montana.People with real lives have no time to prepare for the apocalypse.
Oh God I'm so depressed....
Um, we've known about the 70K die-off for decades, at least...
The drought's a good root-cause guess, it's too bad we'll probably never find out for sure. I've wondered about it ever since I first heard of it.
As for the "right people" surviving, it doesn't much matter. A tiny population like 2000 people can't possibly maintain civilization, no matter how "right" they are. The best bet would be if the people were fertile and had good, diverse genes.
-Kle.
Forget that garbege movie 10,000 B.C. make a movie about this!
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