The numbers I've seen are something like as low as a few thousand for European population, but more like 5k for African populations

Of course, these are model populations based on idealized breeding right- I believe the way these estimates work is that they represent the idealized minimum bound for a real population that was likely magnitudes greater but had lots of deaths.

And as others have pointed out I believe there were several bottle neck events in the 'recent' past

Then there is "Mitochondrial Eve", a single individual from whom entire sections of humanity descend!

From Wikipedia:

"Cann, Stoneking and Wilson did not use the term "Mitochondrial Eve" or even the name "Eve" in their original paper; it appears to originate with a 1987 article in Science by Roger Lewin, headlined "The Unmasking of Mitochondrial Eve."[19] The biblical connotation was very clear from the start. The accompanying research news in Nature had the title "Out of the garden of Eden."[20] Wilson himself preferred the term "Lucky Mother"[21] and thought the use of the name Eve "regrettable"

It is unfortunate, that biblical myths still try to influence research. But it is popular.

Myths are useful cultural references, in being universally understood. I didn't interpret the use of the term Eve here to connote any religious intimations.

Hm, but here even the researchers clearly said, that the use of "Eve" implicates a interpretation ( that there was only one Birthmother, like Eve, so a "proof" hat the bible is partly right) that is not true, but this is what understood by many, because also the news releases are skewed this way.

Bryan Sykesan, An Oxford geneticist claimed all Europeans came from 7 females he called the 7 daughters of Eve, although he wasn't always right in his assumption's

More interestingly, there were several bottlenecks over the course of our evolution and we could have gone extinct at multiple points.

This isn't accurate.

Wiki article on the Toba Catastrophe theory.

Sparks Notes:

  - It is thought that the Toba Super-Volcano eruption is linked to a severe drop in human populations due to it's influence on global climate

  - Some genetic evidence supports today's humans are descended from a very small population of between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs that existed about 70,000 years ago

  - This hypothesis isn't yet solid, and there is some evidence to the contrary. Nevertheless it's discussion is an important topic in the history of mankind.

Now I understand your comment might be referring to that third point. If so, it would be excellent if your comment made some sort of reference to your reasoning. Simply saying "this isn't accurate" aren't the kinds of comments that make Hacker News the site it is. Instead let's make comments that further discussion and increase learning of the topics at hand.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#:~:tex....

A bottleneck implies that there was a single population, which would indeed have narrowed diversity. ...but what is actually seen in that theory is that all populations around the world shrank - only some were entirely exterminated.

This means that diversity was not tremendously impacted.

Taking one person from every village around the world preserves the majority of all diversity, whereas taking 10000 people from a single population, destroys diversity.

He didn’t give a source, you didn’t either, come on I’m curious to know!