Geneticists have discovered a new “bottleneck” through which the ancestors of modern humans went through only when their population exceeded a thousand individuals over several generations. New information published in a study in the journal Science.
The “bottleneck” effect refers to the reduction of the genetic diversity of a population as a result of a critical decrease in their numbers for various reasons in a given period.
Researchers led by Yun Xinfu of the Texas Health Science Center used a new association model to estimate past human populations based on more than 3,000 modern genomes.
“The results showed that human ancestors experienced a population bottleneck around 930 to 813 thousand years ago when there were about 1280 individuals. This “bottleneck” lasted about 117,000 years, the study says, pushing human ancestors to the brink of extinction.
It is stated that the “bottleneck” discovered by humanity coincides with a visible chronological gap between African and Eurasian fossils.
This critical population decline coincided with major climate changes during the Pleistocene, known as the “Ice Age,” as well as subsequent speciation.
Previously, publications have already appeared in the scientific literature, indicating that about 1.2 million years ago, the human population decreased to 18.5-26 thousand people. It is also hypothesized that the number of people decreased to 2,000 after the eruption of the Toba super volcano about 75,000 years ago.
Previously, physicists had calculated where it was best to hide from a nuclear explosion.