The population of our ancestors may have suffered a serious moment of decline at the beginning and middle of the Pleistocene, with a drastic decrease in reproductive individuals, of which only almost 1,300 remainedwhich threatened humanity as we know it.
A study published today by Science led by the Chinese Academy of Science raises the theory that it does between 800,000 and 900,000 yearsthere was a “bottleneck” in whose beginning 98.7% of the ancestral population was lost.
The suggested reasons for this population decline are mainly climatic: glaciation events that caused changes in temperatures, a possible long period of severe drought and loss of other species potentially used as a food source, according to a statement.
The research is based on a genomic model called FitCoal, with which they were able to accurately determine demographic inferences using human genomic sequences from 3,154 individuals from 10 African and 40 non-African populations.
The modeling indicates that “bottleneck effects were directly found in all 10 African populations, but only a weak signal of their existence was detected” in the remainder, the authors write.
That period, which would have lasted some 117,000 years, coincides with the time when many researchers believe that lived the last common ancestor of DenisovansNeanderthals and Homo sapiens.
An analysis article published by Science and prepared by scientists from the British Museum who were not involved in the study indicates that this “bottleneck” theory It has to be proven with human fossils and archaeological evidence, for which there is a chronological gap in the fossil records of Africa and Eurasia in that period.
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The work also suggests that in that transition between the Early and Middle Pleistocene only about 1,280 breeding individuals remained that they were able to maintain the population during that period, but with a loss of genetic diversity.
The team, also made up of Italian and American researchers, indicates that although the study has shed light on some aspects of the early to mid-Pleistocene ancestors, many questions remain to be answered.