Mankind's Close Call With Extinction

DNA Evidence Reveals How Humanity's Stone-Age Almost Went Way Of The Dodo

Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive new genetic study suggests.

The number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age, according to an analysis released Thursday.

"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history. Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement.

"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.

The research was funded by the National Geographic Society, IBM, the Waitt Family Foundation, the Seaver Family Foundation, Family Tree DNA and Arizona Research Labs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/24/tech/main4040604.shtml

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{ Something like 95% of all species of animals that ever existed on earth are extinct. The fact that we were once close to extinction ourselves comes as no surprise. Humans have always been very vulnerable to pandemics and global climate change. In fact we may owe our "humanity' itself to climate change as scientists believe our distance ape-like ancestors probably left the trees to wander bipedally to look for food when climate change brought into existence huge savannahs in Africa. Thus speeding up the process of turning "human". As recent as 1919 the last pandemic struck and claimed some 20 million lives world wide after the great war. Returning soldiers had .....unknown to them .....carried the "Spanish flu" home to their loved ones. I have read accounts of whole villages in America being wiped out when a single soldier returned home to the cheering crowds. Very sad.

We are animals like all the others and even our great brains may not save us next time. It is likely that the mighty human race may be wiped out like the Martian invaders in H.G. Wells "War of the Worlds" by some lowly bacterium or virus. The revenge of the unseen and unnoticed.

Sharks and crocodiles have been around virtually unchanged for over 160 million years. We on the other hand in our present form have been around for only a couple of hundred thousand years though our ancestry can be traced back some eight million years. Our civilization less then 6000 years old. We ...for all our achievements and the horrors we have brought the earth .....are newcomers and our ultimate fate is far from known.

I suspect the day will return when we are gone and the earth continues along happily without us. A few monuments of our presence will still be around but no one will be left to wonder about their origin. No one will be there to stare up at the stars in wonder. Natures experiment with "humanity" will have ended. Just another species that didn't quite make it.

Don't you think?}

Rose