930,000 Years Ago Humans Almost Went Extinct

Modern humans began spreading around the world around 130,000 years ago.

According to a team of geneticists from China, using genomic data from 3,154 diverse modern humans, the human population was reduced from about 100,000 to just 1,280 breeding individuals around 930, 000 years ago, during the early Pleistocene.

The study found that, around 98.7% of human ancestors were lost, 

This plunge in human population, which correlates with the sparse fossil record, also reshaped present-day human genetic diversity, driving the evolution of brain size.

Our ancestors survived with small numbers for an estimated 120,000 years, until climatic and other conditions improved for human habitation.

Scientists believe that extreme climatic cooling could have led to the population crash, by reducing available food and the ability to simply survive the cold.

Reference

Wangjie Hu et al. ,Genomic inference of a severe human bottleneck during the Early to Middle Pleistocene transition.Science, 381,979-984(2023).DOI:10.1126/science.abq7487