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An ‘ancestral bottleneck’ took out nearly 99 percent of the human population 800,000 years ago. Only 1,280 breeding individuals may have existed at this dramatic era of human history. Popular Science, August 2023 Human ancestors nearly went extinct 900,000 years ago A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals. Anna Ikarashi, Nature News, August 31, 2023 Humanity’s Ancestors Nearly Died Out, Genetic Study Suggests The population crashed following climate change about 930,000 years ago, scientists concluded. Other experts aren’t convinced by the analysis. Carl Zimmer, New York Times, August 31, 2023 The preprint of the paper is at: Hu, W., Hao, Z., Du, P., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Pan, Y.H. and Li, H., 2021. Genomic inference of a human super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition. bioRxiv, pp.2021-05 The paywalled paper is at: Hu, W., Hao, Z., Du, P., Di Vincenzo, F., Manzi, G., Pan, Y.H. and Li, H., 2021. Genomic inference of a human super bottleneck in Mid-Pleistocene transition. Science, 381(6661), pp. 979-984. Yours, Paul H.

I don’t think anyone has posted this yet, but for those interested: The remains known as “Callao Man” and a few other fragments from a cave in Luzon, Philippines, have been described and places into the new species Homo luzonensis, a designation that is sure to cause a stir in the paleoanthropological community. It is based on very few and very fragmentary remains, and is rather young at around 50,000-67,000 years old. One hopes more remains (maybe a skull) will be found in future excavations so that scientists can get a more complete picture of what we are dealing with. DNA extraction attempts have thus far failed. In any event, surely a great site which will be intensely researched and our understanding of late non-human hominins. For more: https://www.google.com/amp/s/relay.nationalgeographic.com/proxy/distribution/public/amp/science/2019/04/new-species-ancient-human-discovered-luzon-philippines-homo-luzonensis

Something about seeing the outline of a hominin cranium embedded in rock... http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/03/07/1619040114.full

So yeah, this took me about a week to make. I handpainted it, and tried to add as much detail as I can. It isn't accurate, but it seems good to me. What do you think? (sorry for the stuff and stickers in the background, my little nieces came over )