Dry spell almost killed off race – National – smh.com.au
An international genetics project has found that modern humans almost became extinct 70,000 years ago.
The Genographic Project, led by American and Israeli researchers, made the discovery after undertaking the most extensive mitochondrial DNA survey ever undertaken in Africa.
In 1987 a study of mitochondrial DNA, passed down the generations via the maternal line, revealed that every person alive today is descended from one woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago.
he latest study shows that after the birth of humanity in eastern Africa, people quickly split into separate communities.
About 150,000 years ago humans, possibly pursuing animal herds, moved to settle throughout Africa. The number of people soared, peaking somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000.
But before the first person could venture out of Africa, the population suddenly crashed to just 2000.
“It could have been even fewer,” said Spencer Wells, the Genographic Project director. “We were, in effect, hanging on by our fingertips.
“That’s fewer people than there are Sumatra orang-utans today, and they are classified as extremely endangered and will probably go extinct in 20 years.”
The crisis was probably caused by climate change. About 130,000 years ago the world started cooling and drying as it neared another ice age.
“There were massive droughts in Africa … mega-droughts,” Dr Wells said. With much of the continent barren and hostile, the tiny human settlements became isolated from each other.
As humanity hovered on the edge of extinction “a shift in culture began. People began making the better hunting tools they needed to survive the drought. Art makes its appearance. There is abstract thought,” he said.
Then the drought broke. Isolated communities migrated and merged. With better skills and a friendlier climate, the population boomed again and people finally left Africa, spreading along the Asian coast, towards Australia.
Backed by National Geographic and IBM, the researchers, who have published their findings in The American Journal Of Human Genetics, identified humans’ near demise after studying DNA mutation rates.
“By sampling people alive today, estimating how much genetic variation they have … and knowing the rate at which variation accumulates we can say how long it took to accumulate the observed level of variation, and the size of the starting population,” Dr Wells said.
The project aimed to discover what humans were doing before leaving Africa. “Three quarters of our history is virtually unknown,” Dr Wells said. The research showed “there was lots going on”.
He believes humanity’s close shave should send a message to the 6.6 billion people alive today. “We should start to see ourselves as the lucky survivors.”
You mean there was climate change WITHOUT humans creating greenhouse gases? Somebody call Al Gore!!!
http://www.chicagoconservatives.com
Haha. They have their dates all wrong. The whole so called geo time scale is a big lie. The Geo column is just a figment of man’s imagination. All the dating methods are based on assumptions. Rock layers are dated on index fossils and index fossils are dated according to rock layers that are found in. Yes, it’s true. Circular reasoning. Go and research it. The human population was reduced to Noah and his family. Mankind was never so close to extinction as during the global catastrophe that messed up the whole earth called the great flood. Mountains formed, water gathered in what we now know as the ocean. Then they had to repopulate the world. If you go and plot it out, the population should be around 6.6 Billion by now. Whah! We are roughly 6.6 Billion here on earth aren’t we?! Look at all the dead animals and plant that made all the coal and oil deposits all over the world. Clams in the closed position on top of Mount Everest. How did they get there?! Just read the Bible. The Bible promotes true science.. Jargon like evolution through mutation is seen for what it is, jargon . Actually, you don’t need the Bible, just use common sense and stop believing what so called educated people say because you are not willing to actually accept that God actually does exist and He actually created everything in 6 days. If they accept that, they have to give account of their actions, and they don’t want to.
The “birth of humanity in eastern Africa” refers to a the “discovery” of a few loose pieces of bone and a preconceived ape man mindset fueled by a government grant and years of evolutionary teachings. The only real “ancestors” that existed were the Neanderthals who were just humans that lived much longer. There are lots and lots of Neanderthal skeletons that are 100% complete. Imagine what you could achieve if you lived 900 years? What would your bone structure and eyebrows look like by the way?
Oh. On the other hand, we could just go ahead and believe we all came from a infinitesimal dot that exploded. (Where did the dirt come form in the first place to be squished into the dot?) The dot formed galaxies and planets (BTW. If there was no resistance and the explosion was from one dot, how could the galaxies then form and why are some planets spinning in opposite directions?! Conservation of angualar momentum) and by pure luck and coincidence this planet we find ourselves on formed with perfect conditions for life and then it rained on the earth for millions of years and then there was a complex chemical broth and then the chemicals intermixed and somehow life came out of that and one cell found something to eat and reproduce with in that very hostile environment… It’s a fairy tale! DNA code shows there is incredible design by the same Creator every little cell has the same code made up out of a combination of the same four elements. The fact that man was nearly extinct was because of sin of man. So actually, the moral of this post is that we better find out what God wants from us and do it, because He said he will be coming back and it would be better to be on his side than against him. Just like Noah was made fun off, people will make fun of Creationists, but I wonder who laughed when the fountains of the great deep broke open and all the animals stampeded into watery muddy graves and all the people on earth drowned? Are you ready to meet your Creator?! I really hope so. Peace.