WASHINGTON  �?nbsp; Human beings may have had a brush with extinction about 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.

The human population at that time had been gradually reduced to small isolated groups across eastern and southern Africa, apparently because of massive droughts lasting tens of thousands of years, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to rapidly expand again in the period known as the Late Stone Age.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement.

"Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world," he added. "Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA."

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?"

Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352461,00.html?sPage=fnc/scitech/evolution

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{ Wow! 2000 humans is cutting it pretty thin. It could have just as easily gone the other way and we would never really have got started as a species. Just imagine....no Celine Dion or Charles Dickens, no Dr Phil McGraw or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, No Donald Trump or Mark Twain, no Rush Limbaugh or Abraham Lincoln, no Matt Damon or Charles Darwin, no Oprah Winfrey of George Washington, no Simon Cowell or Confucius, no David Beckham or Ludwig Van Beethoven, no Brittany Spears or Baruch Spinoza, no Justin Timberlake or Arturo Toscanini, no Jennifer Aniston or Aristotle, no Madonna or Michelangelo, no Leonardo DiCaprio or Leonardo Da Vinci.

All the famous and infamous humans that ever lived.....wouldn't have.

I guess all of us are related to those couple thousand survivors which makes us all related to each other. All 6.6 billion of us are brothers and sisters under the skin. We are so much more similar then different and it's hard to imagine why we can't all get along. If we can't find a way to live together perhaps we will all die together and it would have been the same as if we had never lived.

The last 2000 managed to struggle against the odds and re-populate the world. We are their legacy. We carry them with us and have the responsibility of keeping them and ourselves going. It's still a struggle. If the 2000 or so people on the message boards in cyberspace can't get along .....what hope is there for the billions in real life? We may yet all have to retreat into cyber worlds to keep the species going.

Last one to leave the real world.....turn off the sun.}