Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition

We will never get that the cranial volume is not the same as inteligence/brain function, or whatever you might call it. Reminder that Einstein brain was smaller than average, and female brain are smaller than male. Phrenology will haunt us forever, in one form or another. Most likely, some Neanderthals were asimilated into modern humans, most were exterminated in tribal clashes. Reminder also that our almighty specie was almost wiped out from history around 800,000 years ago (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487), being the most intelligent organism ever existed.

> human ancestors went through a severe population bottleneck with about 1280 breeding individuals between around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago. The bottleneck lasted for about 117,000 years and brought human ancestors close to extinction https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

Again, it’s probably both. We humans nearly bought it during the same period; we bottlenecked at ~1,000 individuals for millennia. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487 The other hominins didn’t make it.

Each lineage is just bragging rights and ego. The species as a whole doesn't care a lot about lineages. A very long time ago, there was a population bottleneck that reduced Homo Sapiens to a few families. [https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487] Those few lineages are thriving. The species could go on reducing the population for a long time. Who's to say we wouldn't be vastly better off with 500Mm overall humans? The population could shrink down, then expand again. Shrinking now is not a bad thing, it's just a change from what we had been doing.

What could we do to increase our chances of lasting 1M years? I think it’s a useful thought experiment for thinking about what we could change to increase our chances. I do disagree with you though and think humans are like cockroaches now and there is a 0% chance of exterminating every last one of us and that’s a good thing. Nature had its chance at several bottlenecks in the past and failed. >One of the greatest human bottlenecks occurred between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago, when the human population was reduced to about 1,280 breeding individuals for 117,000 years. This bottleneck may have brought human ancestors close to extinction. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

> Rather the descendants of those 1,280 individuals out-breed and out-warred all other hominid / human groups. Or maybe they out-prosocialed, cooperated for much higher productivity, reproduction (not to mention loyalty), and thrived while the other hominid groups killed and stole from each other. Edit: Also, there's always the possibility the authors already addressed your question - the more obvious the possibility, the more likely (I don't know in this case). The paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

The paper places the bottleneck "between around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago" and has it lasting "for about 117,000 years" [1]. This overlaps with the bottleneck found back in 2017 (also by genetic analysis) in early Neanderthal and Denisovan populations [2][3]: Approximately 750,000 years ago, according to Rogers, the forerunners of Neanderthals and Denisovans left the ancestors of modern humans behind in Africa to make their way across Eurasia’s expansive territory. Once on their own, something nearly wiped them out entirely; the genetic data shows the population passed through a severe bottleneck, never observed in previous studies. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487 [2] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1706426114 [3] https://www.quantamagazine.org/genetics-spills-secrets-from-... Edit: typos, the bane of my existence.

>Is it a coincidence that 1280 = 2⁷ * 10? 1280 is the nearest threshold we can estimate to, for the reason you've describe. In the OP's title it suggests "exactly 1280", while the original published piece in Science[1] uses the phrase "around 1280". [1]https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

The actual linked article isn't the paper, and doesn't even name the paper as far I can tell, it's just given as "Hu, W. et al. Science 381, 979–984 (2023)." in a footnote. This is the actual paper, which (presumably, I cannot access) is specifically about how they made the estimate: Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487