Story here.
Excerpt: “The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought … The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.”
Yikes!
And in a related development, it would seem that early human populations in Africa evolved separately for 100,000 years. Story here.
I remember seeing this on either the Discovery or History channel a few years ago. As I recall, when the scientist that discovered the bottleneck in the human genome presented his findings, another scientist noticed that the bottleneck coincided with the last known eruption of a super volcano, specifically Tambora. Take it with a grain of salt - the disaster type shows presented on those channels tend to be a bit over the top. Even so, knowing the two events happened very close to one another is fascinating. I would love to know if there really is a connection between the two.
Let me correct my last post, the last Supervolcano eruption was Toba in Sumatra.
What about the Oruanui eruption?
That’s what I get for going off of memory. I should have looked that up, thanks
If that rocks your world, how about this bombshell: chimpanzees are not only our closest living genetic relatives among the primates, with our lineages diverging about 5.5 million years ago, but there is evidence of repeated divergence and re-convergence. In other words, as the New Scientist article puts it, Our human ancestors were still interbreeding with their chimp cousins long after first splitting from the chimpanzee lineage… Early humans and chimps may even have hybridised completely before diverging a second time.
Wildly speculative shows on the Discovery Channel (e.g., “Humanzee”) have, well, speculated wildly that this hybridization between humans and chimps might be possible even today, and propagated rumors and legends that some “fringe scientists” have secretly done so in the past century but quickly (and conveniently) covered their tracks.
This ties into my theory-tha man evolved in South America (not Africa).
That would explain why that bastard at the zoo throws rocks at the crowd.
I’d have to be incredibly drunk.
:: pulls toothy chimpanzee grin ::
What about the Thai bar Chimps?
It’s true I do see some ape-looking Westerners in the bars.
Do they throw things at the other patrons?
It’s been known to happen. 
You need signs like the zoo:
Do not tease Westerners.
Male will actively defend territory.
I know I’m going to regret this, but…seriously?
Stranger
So how do these genetic studies work? When you compare mitochondrial DNA from different populations, what is it that reveals how long the populations diverged? How do you get an estimate of the population size?
Check out the number of liquor stores.
At some previous point on the board, somebody posted a link to a site that showed the expansion of human range over time as an animation; and it did include the significant fallback (with tiny stranded pockets in some areas) after a volcanic eruption.