New type of ancient human discovered in Israel

Re:New type of ancient human discovered in Israel by SonicScrub on Friday June 25, 2021 @11:17AM (#27631857)

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....

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Re:New type of ancient human discovered in Israel by koheripbal on Sunday June 27, 2021 @01:16PM (#27653311)

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.

[ Parent | on HN ]