You have probably seen it on the news recently, the theory has been around for a while, but the prevailing belief in science is that we were down to just a few thousand people on the planet at one point in our past. The reason they know this is because they trace the mitochondrial dna that is past down from mother to daughter.

Now they are trying to come up with the reason, was it drought or was it this or that. Who knows, but according to science there was a great event that left only a few thousand people on the planet that we all are ancestors of.

That begs a lot of questions. Science really can't tell you how many people there were before that time. It is fun to think about the possibilities.

Think about today. If something came along and wiped out all but 2.000 random people how much of our technology would go into the future. Not a whole heck of a lot. Most people live in third world countries without a high school education, let alone a college education.

Anyway, it is just a little fun fact that can fuel all kinds of theories. Feel free to share yours!

My own theory is we treat older civilizations with little respect for the knowledge they might have had and that a lot of knowledge was lost in whatever it was that was able to take our species from great numbers down to a few thousand.

Hopefully Television doesn't survive......

I watched a documentary about this. It was supposed that the population decline was due to a so called super volcano. The focus of the documentary was on Yellowstone national park and that the caldera below was of sufficient size and pressure to cause an eruption equal in magnitude to that of this event that wiped out all but a fraction of the population in the past.

Personally I think they were wiped out by a disease contracted from a dirty telephone mouthpiece.

Yeah, but I don't think Yellowstone has blown within recent human history; the die-off of our species likely occurred on the order of 250,000 - 100,000 years ago. The geologists calculate that Yellowstone last went off about 600,000 years ago (according to Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything).

The "bottleneck" (as it is referred to) in human populations that resulted in the very small variations in our human DNA (for example, the genetic variation between a raccoon in Florida and a raccon in Oregon is orders of magnitude greater than the genetic variation between an Australian Aborigine and a Native of Norway) is currently thought to be (possibly) the result of the explosion of the supervolcano at Lake Toba in Sumatra.

Harte

Yes, the comparison was of the scale, not necessarily giving Yellow stone responsibility. Anyway it was one of a hundred documentarys I have seen on this sort of genre so I try not to take them too seriously.

I've never heard this theory. It is, however, interesting. So... Yellowstone is a volcano?

The worlds first national park sits atop one of the largest active volcanoes on Earth

discovery.com

scalding hot water shooting outa ground.
VolcaNooo! couldnt be.

sorry ive seen like every thing on discovery and it seems they disaster obsess especially if it effects modern man.

Exactly what do you think super heats the water around yellowstone then?

I think there would be a lot of technology left over. The stuff we have now would last for a century or more before that handful of people had to go back to using plows, horses, spears and log homes. I can't see the human race going back to a Stone Age, there is just too much sharp pointy metal laying about, pretty soon someone would lean how to heat and shape it and BAM! Soon after that another Industrial Revolution.

The population would likely soar quickly. Those people 100,000 years ago probably did not have the tool usage or tactical minds that modern humans do.

Given a couple hundred years the population would be back in the tens of millions.

What?! Then how will we waste away our days?!


Disaster is a ratings booster, isn't it?

As far as the Yellowstone volcano goes, there has been quite a bit of seismic activity there in the past few months...

"The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a light earthquake of magnitude 4.1 occurred at 05:59 AM on March 25, 2008 (MDT) in Yellowstone National Park."

"The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports a minor earthquake of magnitude 3.7 occurred at 02:37 PM on January 09, 2007 (MST) in Yellowstone National Park."
Read more...

The Yellowstone region has produced three exceedingly large volcanic eruptions in the past 2.1 million years. In each of these cataclysmic events, enormous volumes of magma erupted at the surface and into the atmosphere as mixtures of red-hot pumice, volcanic ash (small, jagged fragments of volcanic glass and rock), and gas that spread as pyroclastic (“fire-broken”) flows in all directions. Rapid withdrawal of such large volumes of magma from the subsurface then caused the ground to collapse, swallowing overlying mountains and creating broad cauldron-shaped volcanic depressions called “calderas.”

The first of these caldera-forming eruptions 2.1 million years ago created a widespread volcanic deposit known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, an outcrop of which can be viewed at Golden Gate, south of Mammoth Hot Springs. This titanic event, one of the five largest individual volcanic eruptions known anywhere on the Earth, formed a caldera more than 60 miles (100 km) across.

A similar, smaller but still huge eruption occurred 1.3 million years ago. This eruption formed the Henrys Fork Caldera, located in the area of Island Park, west of Yellowstone National Park, and produced another widespread volcanic deposit called the Mesa Falls Tuff.
The region’s most recent caldera-forming eruption 640,000 years ago created the 35-mile-wide, 50-mile-long (55 by 80 km) Yellowstone Caldera. Pyroclastic flows from this eruption left thick volcanic deposits known as the Lava Creek Tuff, which can be seen in the south-facing cliffs east of Madison, where they form the north wall of the caldera. Huge volumes of volcanic ash were blasted high into the atmosphere, and deposits of this ash can still be found in places as distant from Yellowstone as Iowa, Louisiana, and California.
Each of Yellowstone’s explosive caldera-forming eruptions occurred when large volumes of “rhyolitic” magma accumulated at shallow levels in the Earth’s crust, as little as 3 miles (5 km) below the surface. This highly viscous (thick and sticky) magma, charged with dissolved gas, then moved upward, stressing the crust and generating earthquakes. As the magma neared the surface and pressure decreased, the expanding gas caused violent explosions. Eruptions of rhyolite have been responsible for forming many of the world’s calderas, such as those at Katmai National Park, Alaska, which formed in an eruption in 1912, and at Long Valley, California.

http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm


Some interesting info on this site about the Yellowstone Volcano...... They say it erupts every 600 000 years and that its overdue...

Hope it doesn't happen in my lifetime...

Wow. I never knew that!

I some sort of documentary on Yellowstone, and they called it a "Super Volcano". Maybe that was even the title of the documentary, I don't remember. What I do remember thinking about that documentary, is wow, we are super lucky that we have not as humanity had to deal with anything like a super valcano for thousands of years.

In fact, we are really darn lucky, given all the sorts of major natural disasters that can happen, we have had it pretty easy for a long time. I hope we use the window of relative calm and stability to ensure the knowledge we have gained will survive a major catastrophy.

Where did you read about the genetic variation? Thats interesting stuff, Harte.

Click on the last words in his post, it is a link to what he is talking about.

Also to much "bottlenecking" is not a healthy thing

That link is on the bottleneck in human evolution (pretty cool) but I was referring more to his genetic variation examples (raccoons etc). I do appreciate your help though

Go to google and type in genetic variation in compareable sub-species it will all be there

Did'er-done'er, I have just come back from doing that, thanks

Cool, did you learn anything from it? Genetic varation is a fascinating subject. Sorry my earlier post was not helpful, thought you might have missed the link, but now I see you are way on top of things.

Ya I did , check out this link Genetic variation, classification and 'race' www.nature.com

Me "way on top of things" lol thats a first

Thanks for the link, looks interesting. Oh, I'm sure you have been "on top" of "things" now and again.

Now give us some clever quotes of what ancient man might have said!

Well to effectively cap carbon emissions, we would technically have to go back to the stone age


Or ya know, Find a clean and limitless energy source.