4 ms·
New analysis suggests human ancestors nearly died out
- bell-cot 3y ago> Tracing diversity back further leads the authors to estimate that 98.7 percent of the ancestral population was lost in a sudden collapse. The event was what's termed a bottleneck, as the entire population went through a sudden and narrow constriction. I'm seeing a new Far Side comic: An alien in his flying saucer is unhappily reading "Guaranteed 98.7% Effective" in the fine print on a giant can of pesticide. An obviously-teeming-with-humans Earth looms outside his saucer's bubble top. More seriously: How might similar events, on other planets, have affected some of the factors in the Drake Equation?