imagine a neighborhood where a few hundred people live they raise children help each other with daily tasks and socialize it seems unremarkable millions of people live like this around the world but there's a catch this is the last place on Earth where any humans live there are no other people left on the planet this isn't the setup of a dystopian film it's what's called based on real events there was actually a time in Humanity's history when only a Piti full handful of people remained on Earth just barely over a thousand people what could have wiped out 99% of people on the planet when and why did this happen how did this small group of people survive and could it happen again this time to us when Humanity almost went extinct don't forget to like And subscribe to our channel for more interesting content [Music] where did the idea even come from that Humanity was once literally hanging by a thread in 1998 an article titled late PL toine human population bottlenecks volcanic winter and differentiation of modern humans was published in the Journal of human evolution the author Anthropologist Stanley H Ambrose from the University of Illinois noi suggested that about 75,000 years ago the human population drastically declined and humanity went through what's known as a bottleneck anthropologists use this peculiar term to denote a mysterious period or possibly more than one period when the population of Ancient humans or their closest ancestors sharply decreased Ambrose noted a sharp decline in the number of archaeological finds dated to around 74,000 years ago the obvious conclusion was that we found so few remains not because we searched poorly but because something had occurred that drastically reduced the human population at that time there simply weren't enough people to leave behind numerous campsites and tools Ambrose also observed changes in the bone morphology of ancient humans indicating that living conditions and diet quality had severely deteriorated during that time according to Ambrose these changes could have been triggered by global climatic perturbations which he linked to the onset of one of the minor ice ages and finally the first link in this chain was the massive eruption of the Toba super volcano in Sumatra to put it into perspective the eruption was the most powerful in the last 2 million years so much sulfur and Ash were released into the atmosphere that it triggered a volcanic winter thus a sharp drop in the human population seems quite expected however this neat Theory had many critics they pointed out that the data was too scattered and imperfect climatic models of that time couldn't accurately predict the extent of changes and archaeological finds gave only fragments of the jigsaw puzzle but two decades later in 2023 the scientific Community used a new tool to study the past genetic analysis of ancient DNA when researchers compar this data with modern human DNA they were a bit puzzled a large scale study published in the journal science revealed something strange despite all the external differences among people living in various parts of the world today we are almost genetically identical and no it's not just because we are all Homo sapiens it's much more interesting and peculiar the genetic variation found in human populations from different parts of the world is far small smaller than the one found among chimpanzees living in different parts of the same Forest this suggests that all of us all 8 billion plus people are descendants of a very small group of ancient humans literally just a few hundred individuals it turns out that we are all relatives so was Ambrose right after all partially it turns out that Humanity was indeed on the brink of Extinction but much earlier around 930,000 years ago scientists estimate that between 930,000 and 83,000 years ago the population experienced a staggering 98. 7% decline for unknown reasons leaving only 1,280 individuals on Earth that's the number of people that could comfortably fit into a couple of residential high-rise buildings think about it all of humanity across the whole wide world in just a couple of highrises in fact Humanity was then not just a step away but a millimeter away from Extinction one small catastrophe a change in conditions and the remaining pitiful bunch of people could have died and put an end to everything and you and I would not have existed to be fair these may not represent all the ancestors of humans living at that time but rather those who managed to pass their genes onto future Generations still this doesn't diminish the remarkable nature of this fact we are all descendants of a handful of ancient hominids who barely made it through the evolutionary bottleneck surviving Against All Odds and by the way this balancing on the brink of Extinction according to research lasted quite a long time at least 100,000 years and now scientists are facing a critical question why what happened to humanity then and what killed 98. 7% of people while there is no certainty researchers have provisionally named the cause the 0.
9 ma event and have started building hypotheses perhaps it was a combination of unfavorable events or maybe a single powerful occurrence something that caused a terrifyingly sharp decline in the population and almost Extinction many scientists agree that the cause was a significant cooling of the pl planet's climate likely linked to increased volcanic activity and as a result a volcanic winter global temperatures plummeted and regions inhabited by ancient humans turned into cold and not very fertile lands entire ecosystems collapsed resources that ancient humans depended on became Out Of Reach much like if a river supplying an entire village with water suddenly dried up people tried to find a way out of this disaster they sought shelter built primitive dwellings and tried to survive on what had previously been considered inedible under such conditions the population of Ancient humans could have indeed dwindled to a critical minimum and if our ancestors had been even a little less resilient then Extinction would be inevitable however there are other theories as well some scientists speculate that the 0. 9 ma event could have been linked to changes in ocean current Cur and global warming which altered the planet's climate in the opposite way water levels Rose flooding vast areas this led to predictable consequences restructuring of ecosystems food chain disruptions hunger and death before the onset of the 0. 9 ma event the human population might have reached several 100,000 individuals but after this catastrophic event the population decreased let's recall this figure gear once again approximately 98.
7% of individuals disappeared Humanity found itself in a situation where only exceptional ones survived therefore the catastrophe 900,000 years ago spared few species and some disappeared from the face of the Earth forever imagine our planet as an arena for a brutal Survival game some players like homo antecessor couldn't withstand the trial and left the state age for good homo antecessor is one of the most mysterious ancient human species that lived in Europe about 1 million years ago this species served as a bridge between Homo erectus and Homo H highle bensis connecting the past and the future they were Advanced enough to use tools and Hunt but the harsh conditions of the 0. 9 ma event may have been an insurmountable challenge for them despite its skills and intelligence this species disappeared giving way to more adaptable homo H highle binus they had more advanced cognitive abilities and were more social beings compared to other members of the homogeneus the use of more complex tools and possibly fire gave them a critical advantage in the struggle for survival research suggests that homo heidelbergensis might have been the first to build more or less sturdy Huts the earliest example of such a find is a stone foundation dating back 700,000 years in prla tiza Czech Republic this dwelling likely had an arched roof made of thick branches or thin poles supported by a foundation of large stones and soil such a hard skill could have enabled homo H highle berenis to effectively withstand harsh climate and predators contributing to their survival but the 0. 9 ma event affected not only ancient humans but also many animal species the event coincided with the so-called middle Pine transition a global and longterm shift in climate Cycles it may have been just one part of this transition in any case the changes were of a planetary scale involving the transformation of all ecosystems such shifts almost always come with mass extinctions many large mammals vanished unable to adapt to the rapid climate change for instance saber-toothed cats like meganon didn't survive this period ancient canids like xenos almost completely died out and several species of ancient Pumas disappeared marine ecosystems also underwent significant changes many small vertebrates vanished and even large marine animals had a hard time entire branches of ancient shark and dolphin geni went extinct one possible cause of mass extinction in the oceans could have been a sharp decline in oxygen levels in the world ocean this condition was triggered by changes in ocean current circulation which in turn were driven by global climate change it's a miracle that we didn't appear in this list of extinct species yes the 0.
