Humanity came close to extinction 800,000 years ago. Only 1,280 of our ancestors survived.
A recent study published in Science suggests that a catastrophic “ancestral bottleneck” reduced the global population to just 1,280 breeding individuals, wiping out 98.7% of the early human lineage.
This population crash, lasting about 117,000 years, likely resulted from extreme climate shifts, prolonged droughts, and dwindling food sources.
Using a groundbreaking genetic analysis method called FitCoal, researchers analyzed modern human genomes to trace this dramatic decline, potentially explaining a gap in the African and Eurasian fossil record.
Despite the near-extinction, this bottleneck may have played a crucial role in shaping modern humans. Scientists believe it contributed to a key evolutionary event—chromosome fusion—which may have set Homo sapiens apart from earlier hominin species, including Neanderthals and Denisovans. The study raises intriguing questions about how this small population survived, possibly through early fire use and adaptive intelligence. Understanding this ancient crisis helps scientists piece together the story of human evolution and the resilience that allowed our species to thrive against all odds.
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How a new method of inferring ancient population size revealed a severe bottleneck in the human population which almost wiped out the chance for humanity as we know it today.
An unexplained gap in the African/Eurasian fossil record may now be explained thanks to a team of researchers from China, Italy and the United States. Using a novel method called FitCoal (fast infinitesimal time coalescent process), the researchers were able to accurately determine demographic inferences by using modern-day human genomic sequences from 3,154 individuals. These findings indicate that early human ancestors went through a prolonged, severe bottleneck in which approximately 1,280 breeding individuals were able to sustain a population for about 117,000 years. While this research has illuminated some aspects of early to middle Pleistocene ancestors, there are many more questions to be answered since uncovering this information.
A large amount of genomic sequences were analyzed in this study. However, “the fact that FitCoal can detect the ancient severe bottleneck with even a few sequences represents a breakthrough,” says senior author Yun-Xin Fu, a theoretical population geneticist at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.