Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago 356
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientific American has a story on researchers from the University of Utah who have calculated that 1.2 million years ago, at a time when our ancestors Homo erectus, H. ergaster, and archaic H. sapiens were spreading through Africa, Europe, and Asia, there were probably only about 18,500 individuals capable of breeding in all these species together (PNAS paper here). Pre-humans were an endangered species with a smaller population than today's gorillas and chimpanzees. Researchers scanned two completely sequenced modern human genomes for a type of mobile element called Alu sequences, then compared the nucleotides in these old regions with the overall diversity in the two genomes to estimate differences in effective population size, and thus genetic diversity between modern and early humans. Human geneticist Lynn Jorde says that the diminished genetic diversity one million years ago suggests human ancestors experienced a catastrophic event at that time as devastating as the Toba super-volcano in Indonesia that triggered a nuclear winter and is thought to have nearly annihilated humans 70,000 years ago."
Pfft... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Pfft... (Score:5, Funny)
And a mere 6000 years ago too. All that business about 70,000 and 1.2 millions years ago is a distraction to test our faith.
Re:Pfft... (Score:5, Informative)
We also have written evidence that Frodo set forth from the Shire in order to destroy the One Ring before it fell into the hands of Sauron. But so what?
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Re:Pfft... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, the whole race started from just two people, right?
More like from a guy having sex with his rib.
Re:Pfft... (Score:5, Funny)
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>I'll just feel bad for you
How could you not say "I'll just pray for you"
We were saved! (Score:3, Funny)
Luckily, magic underwear was discovered and humans survived the event.
Re:We were saved! (Score:4, Funny)
Luckily, magic underwear was discovered and humans survived the event.
I'm reading about a new theory that argues H. Sapiens actually DID die out and was replaced by the nearly identical H. Idioticus. Personally, I could see such a genus appealing to magic underwear for survival.
This means ... (Score:5, Insightful)
this means that we're really all brothers and sisters, right?
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Only if you believe in evolution. Or creation.
So, Only 18,500 Individuals Capable of Breeding? (Score:3, Funny)
Sounds like where we'll be at after another three seasons of American Idol.
Re:This means ... (Score:5, Interesting)
More than that, I read a year or so ago (it may have been covered at slashdot, I don't remember) that it was mathematically proven that everyone on earth shares common anscestors from as little as a thousand years ago.
Besides, there was the other near extinction 70K years ago. Wht I find interesting is the near extinctions were probably what led to modern humans' intelligence and other traits (like humor) that makes us so different from other species.
Re:This means ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The ones that died had wings, could shoot laser beams out of their eyes, and could mind meld using their ponytails. And all we got was 'intelligence' and 'humor' and looking over the unwashed masses, I see not even most of us got that. Bah.
Re:This means ... (Score:4, Funny)
You mean we survived a near extinction event and all I got was this lousy intelligence and humor?
Re:This means ... (Score:5, Informative)
You can find just about any belief "in some societies" if you look hard enough. The reality though is that in the English language the words brother and sister have a specific meaning: persons who share at least 1 biological parent. Some relatives from millions of years ago don't count.
Besides, from a biological standpoint, once you're to the genetic "distance" of only first cousins (1/8th DNA in common) the chance of birth defects drops off to the point of being completely fine. Indeed "in some cultures" marriages between cousins is very common (heck even in the US with all the attached stigma it's still perfectly legal for cousins to marry in most states). Thinking "we're all related man!" is only a problem from the standpoint of cultural taboo. Beyond the very immediate family it's not a problem.
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The reality though is that in the English language the words brother and sister have a specific meaning: persons who share at least 1 biological parent.
No, it means two individuals who share at least one parent, whether by birth, adoption, or marriage. For instance, of my four kids, two are step-kids and two are from my first marriage; but they all refer to each other as brothers and sisters. Besides, adopted and step-siblings are prevented from marrying just as biological siblings are in most common law jurisdictions.
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That's nice, and tons of kids call their mom's best friend "aunt" too, but an unofficial exception for the purpose of making them feel more integrated and close does not invalidate the true definition of the word. Adopted siblings might "feel as close as brothers and sisters", and if you encourage them they might CALL each other brothers and sisters (heck teach them from an early enough age and they'll call them whatever term you happen to assign), but in reality they are NOT brothers and sisters.
As well,
Re:This means ... (Score:5, Funny)
I think I heard something.
I am not sure I remember it right.
I can't be bothered to look it up.
Clearly a prime candidate for an Insightful mod.
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I read somewhere the the most removed any two humans are from each other is 53rd cousins,
That would mean a common ancestor only a 1000 or so years back.
How isolated were the Australian Aborigines over the last few thousand years before white settlement? There are still "full bloods" remaining.
Or do they all have traces of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors and Indonesian fishermen in their blood?
The Tasmanian Aboriginals were more isolated, but none are left.
Re:This means ... (Score:5, Informative)
First cousins have a common ancestor two generations back. So 53rd cousins should have a common ancestor 54 generations back.
54 generations ago, you had (theoretically) 2^54 ancestors (~180,000 trillion). Which means that statistically speaking, every human alive ~1200 years ago was about 200,000,000 of your ancestors.
In other words, such a number is pretty much meaningless....
Re:This means ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This means ... (Score:4, Funny)
However, you are genetically diverse enough from your first cousin that there are no genetic problems, other than sharing undesirable, recessive, genetic diseases.
And of course, sharing undesirable relatives
So... BSG was right. (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously this is when Adama and the fleet landed on Earth. BSG was right all along!
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When Glen Larson made of the story of BSG, he changed "Noah" to "Adama" to make it seem fictional.
Do the same tests on different species (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do the same tests on different species (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree. I think you'd see the same correlations in some species, but not necessarily all.
Let's posit some kind of catastrophic event that puts pressure on early hominids. It does not follow that every species is put under evolutionary pressure, only those that rely on the certain ecological resources to survive. So it doesn't have to be an event like nuclear winter.
Furthermore we might not see these effects in other species because most of the species that survived found the changes brought on by the event favorable to them. The ones that didn't for the most part may not have survived, or may have only survived in certain niches.
Hominids are a special case. Except in a few circumstances migration is not part of their lifestyle, but they have a tremendous latent capacity to migrate, probably greater and certainly more flexible than any land animal. So our posited "disaster" happens, but it doesn't look like a disaster to most of the species that survived. As for those for whom it was a disaster, many perish and a few manage to hold on in isolated geographic niches. These are almost certain to include hominids, with their adaptability and latent capacity to migrate great distances. Most of the hominids either don't get moving quickly enough or don't find a place to survive in, but enough of them do to maintain a breeding population.
Of course, this scenario isn't a scientific one. It's more of a counterscenario demonstrating that we wouldn't necessarily expect to see the same genetic phenomena everywhere we looked.
Slow news day? (Score:2)
Humans Nearly Went Extinct 70,000 Years Ago [slashdot.org]
Re:Slow news day? (Score:5, Funny)
Because 1.2 million is the same as 70,000, right? You must work for Goldman Sachs.
Summary is wrong (Score:5, Informative)
The 18500 people quoted is not the number of people capable of breeding, but the "effective population", an abstract measure of genetic diversity in a species. According to TFA, the effective population of modern humanity is about 10000, and the argument in the article is that this much lower diversity indicates that a lot of genetic material must have been lost in a near-extinction event.
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The 18500 people quoted is not the number of people capable of breeding, but the "effective population", an abstract measure of genetic diversity in a species. According to TFA, the effective population of modern humanity is about 10000, and the argument in the article is that this much lower diversity indicates that a lot of genetic material must have been lost in a near-extinction event.
Yes, the idea that the "effective" population of today's human race is only 10,000 is the most disturbing thing in the article. If that's true then the vast majority of us are not contributing anything worth noting to the gene pool. That's not a very nice thought.
Re:Summary is wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the idea that the "effective" population of today's human race is only 10,000 is the most disturbing thing in the article. If that's true then the vast majority of us are not contributing anything worth noting to the gene pool. That's not a very nice thought.
Other species would develop thicker fur in colder climates. We simply wear thicker clothes. It's not like all diversity is necessary or useful for people that reshape the environment to fit them instead.
say that to the tasmanian wolf (Score:4, Insightful)
(not trying to rain on your parade or anything)
Back on topic. Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crysis... In terms of survival requirements, we should have already sent a few groups to the moon and mars.
People enjoy watching disaster movies like 2012 (I saw it as a comedy myself), but they should realise that focusing all your resources (as a species) on "I want a TV in every room" is a losing strategy.
If I had the money, I would be long gone. "Yes, 21st century society is very advanced and we have everything we need, but if they have a power outage or similar in a hidden bunker in Russia, we all die".
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We get around (Score:2)
This suggests that mankind is spectacularly adaptive in comparison to other species.
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The lofty flowering Cherry! The plucky little Apsen! The limping Roo tree of Nigeria.
The towering Wattle of Aldershot! The Maidenhead Weeping Water Plant!
The naughty Leicestershire Flashing Oak! The flatulent Elm of West Ruislip!
The Quercus Maximus Bamber Gascoigni! The Epigillus! The Barter Hughius Greenus!
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Re:say that to the tasmanian wolf (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crysis [sic]
Nuclear war would not have wiped out humanity. It could've killed tens of millions of people immediately, and maybe hundreds of millions more after two years of poor crops and contaminated water, but large pockets would've survived pretty much unscathed. Most of South America, Africa, and Australasia (with the obvious exception of Australia itself on the coasts) would not have been hit at all, in all likelihood. And life would've been rough for those people for a few years, the earth has phenomenal ability to heal itself. Hell, people live in Hiroshima and have picnics at ground zero; I hardly doubt later nuclear weapons would've had longer-lasting effects than the first weak, but extremely dirty, bombs did.
Re:say that to the tasmanian wolf (Score:4, Funny)
Humans nearly went extinct during the nuclear missile crisis
In that event, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts. The radioactivity would never penetrate a mine some thousands of feet deep. And in a matter of weeks, sufficient improvements in dwelling space could easily be provided. Nuclear reactors could provide power almost indefinitely. Greenhouses could maintain plant life. Animals could be bred and slaughtered. A quick survey would have to be made of all the available mine sites in the country. But I would guess that dwelling space for several hundred thousands of our people could easily be provided. With the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.
So what you're saying is (Score:3, Funny)
In that event, I would not rule out the chance to preserve a nucleus of human specimens. It would be quite easy at the bottom of some of our deeper mine shafts.
Mr. President, we cannot allow a mineshaft gap! [imdb.com]
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There's a message in this somewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
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I have my doubts that giving weapons of mass destruction to cockroaches is an effective way to exterminate them. In that sense we are not quite as hard to kill as cockroaches.
(In other news, I've just come up with the Sci-Fi/horror plot of the year.)
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That was done already on an episode of "Fairly Odd Parents."
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Yes, because there are no other species on the planet that grow to take over a local ecosystem. [wikipedia.org]
Agent Smith wasn't a biologist or zoologist, I wouldn't take his word on the behavior of species.
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Nuclear Volcano? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Nuclear Volcano? (Score:5, Informative)
What happened to those? Sounds like an excellent power source...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient [wikipedia.org]
"The Earth's internal heat comes from a combination of residual heat from planetary accretion (about 20%) and heat produced through radioactive decay (80%)"
In a sense, those "green geothermal" power plants are really nuclear power plants.
Re:Nuclear Volcano? (Score:5, Funny)
Oh no. We better get greenpeace on that to put a stop to that nuclear nonsense.
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The term comes from the liklihood of nuclear annhailation that we faced in my youth. "Nuclear winter" was the dust from all those thousands of atomic weapons blocking sunlight, keeping plants from growing.
The term morphed to include other causes of the "winter" besides nuclear war.
Nuclear winter? Volcano? Paging xenu... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm just saying, there's some suspicious congruencies there.
That was the reason! (Score:2, Funny)
More evidence supporting the B Ark theory of human origins...
The Ancients died of a plague and most of them asc (Score:3, Funny)
The Ancients died of a plague and most of them ascended.
we're next (north americans) (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_Caldera [wikipedia.org]
ah yes, i've heard of mexicans and canadians, there's only a few in the world, but they're real. as for these so-called "americans", i believe this is a mythical nationality, i don't think they ever really existed. they're just bogeymen made up to scare small children
Castastrophic Event? (Score:2)
Hands up, everybody who... (Score:2)
...thought at first that the headline was "Humans Went Extinct Nearly 1.2M Years Ago" and thought, "Boy, we're doing pretty well for an extinct species..."
Didnt we already know this? (Score:2)
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That is rather easy to say, probably within the next 100 years and we will be the cause ourselves, either war or famine, or sickness, but in any case the cause will be greed and overpopulation.
I still believe the earth itself or nature itself has self regulartory effects in the small as in the big, if one species endangers the entire of the host then some self regulatory mechanism strikes in which decimates the numbers again. You can see that in the small with virii and in the big with species doing collect
Hopefully it doesn't happen again (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
Personally, I wonder if this might be the psychological root-event of the persistent and widespread human eschatological theme of 'world destruction by fire' etc. One might even see a parallel event in the Christian Bible's expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden - prevented from returning by "...a flaming sword which turned every way..." (KJV).
It seems that since Troy, we're finding that all the great myths and legends that have come down to us through the ages seem to have some kernel of truth
alternative: small population left africa (Score:5, Interesting)
So... (Score:2)
Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago
So, Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, and software patents existed back then also?
Humans Nearly Went Extinct 1.2M Years Ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Bah, you call that news? Try:
"Humans Nearly Went Extinct 27 Years Ago" [google.com]
the commander's Wikipedia entry says he:
You can follow any of the links in the above search, or here's a particularly lively read. [psychsound.com]
Re:"Nuclear" Winter (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"Nuclear" Winter (Score:4, Insightful)
The effects might be similar, but the fact remains that they're different things. The end effect of a brain aneurism is also "nearly identical" to being shot in the head - you die due to loss of brain function. There's nothing "nuclear" about climatic changes brought about by volcanic activity. It's a thoughtless grasp for "gee-wiz" vocabulary, and thus bad journalism.
Re:"Nuclear" Winter (Score:4, Insightful)
While I agree that it's a totally inaccurate term (unless the disaster were a criticality event of an underground uranium reservoir, or similar) it's also the simplest way to get accross to a non-technical public the intended image. I don't expect them to use the term 'catastrophic clamactic event' in a flowing sentence. A better phrasing would have been "nucler winter-like disaster" or "a 'nuclear' winter", though.
Re:"Nuclear" Winter (Score:5, Funny)
Quite right. Such terms should be reserved for events like the 1912 San Francisco Shellfish Riots.
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Damn you, I actually tried looking those up.
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Re:"Nuclear" Winter (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, when the range between eruptions is 660K to 800K, the low end of that would still make it another 20K years before the next eruption, or roughly twice the entire length of the history of human civilization. "About due" in geological time is very different from most people's view of "about due".
Yes, I'm aware the eruption could come earlier than previously observed, but it's not really worth worrying about events with astronomical odds that you can do nothing about now is it?
Re:"Nuclear" Winter (Score:5, Interesting)
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- In the future we invent time deflectors: you attack us with nuclear warheads, we deflect them to the past
- Atlantis legend was true, and they managed to get nuclear power and blow their entire civilization
- Star Trek XXV, plan to eradicate the new Kirk in particular and Federation in general killing all human predecessors a millon years ago
- LHC (still should be more probable than it open a hole thru time and makes a nuclear winter back then than creat
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It is based on a faith that DNA mutates at a uniform rate over time.
Actually one would expect DNA conservation to indicate kinship regardless of the mutation rate.
Re:The new dogma of genetics (Score:4, Interesting)
The DNA that creates different physical traits does mutate in (more or less) unpredictable leaps and bounds as time goes on. But that's not the DNA they look at in cases like this. There's long strings of junk DNA that does nothing at all - random leftover of mutations that didn't happen to affect our survival one way or the other. Because these don't affect physical traits, they aren't selected for or against and are subject to only one 'force', genetic drift. That's why they're fairly constant.
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Yet, as we're discovering, "junk" DNA is really a misnomer.
It was never [evolverzone.com] meant to denote that it did nothing, just that we hadn't discovered its function yet, so it got put aside for the moment.
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"If you call science a religion of materialism, you're clearly missing the point."
As far as I have heard, science experiments are performed on physical objects, then replicated by other laboratories before the theory is accepted further. This sounds like materialism to me.
Granted, one could argue that fields such as mathematics or cosmology do not perform physical experiments; they make pseudo-theistic conjectures on the universality of their results. The conjectures are debated by panels of authorities i
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I'm getting my PhD in statistics, and I've taken several courses in genetics -- enough to know that all theories in genetics are wrong. ... I used to be an atheist, but I've come to the conclusion that science is just as irrational as Wahabbism. ... Science wants simple explanations, yet the world isn't simple; it is inherently an exercise in circular logic.
You sound like that idiot (Jonathan Wells?) sponsored by Reverend Moon to get a Ph D in biology so that he can destroy the Theory of Evolution from inside.
Re:The new dogma of genetics (Score:5, Informative)
But why should we assume a uniform rate over time, when evolutionary theory says that genetic differentiation happens in leaps and bounds?
See, here is your problem, you're assuming evolutionary theory is correct to begin with.
Indeed, much of science is based on a giant leap of faith in linear regression; physicists, chemists, doctors, engineers, all use linear regression without questioning its assumptions.
No, they use linear regression and then test to prove it's a reasonable assumption.
Re:The new dogma of genetics (Score:5, Funny)
But why should we assume a uniform rate over time, when evolutionary theory says that genetic differentiation happens in leaps and bounds?
Sources should always be cited when making this kind of argument. I'll do it for you this time:
Pr. Charles Xavier, X-Men movie introduction speech
Insightful Troll! (Score:2, Insightful)
If this is a troll, it must be a kick-ass troll ...
I think parent poster should be getting insightful instead; talking about not trusting blindly; even if it is science ...
It's only with an open mind, more options can be found. Remember; there used to be science about the earth being flat ages ago.
Re:Insightful Troll! (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is a troll, it must be a kick-ass troll ...
I think parent poster should be getting insightful instead; talking about not trusting blindly; even if it is science ...
It's only with an open mind, more options can be found. Remember; there used to be science about the earth being flat ages ago.
"not trusting it blind, even if it is science", "open mind", "science used to be wrong" etc are expressions and phrases very heavily overused by creationists. He gives the game away by saying things like, "I used to be an Atheist", "science wants simple answers", "Science is as irrational as Wahhabism". It is very difficult to tell a troll from a true believer in Creationism. If Creationist walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, let us just call him a duck and be done with it.
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Remember; there used to be science about the earth being flat ages ago.
[Citation needed]
12th Century fighting techniques manuscripts show that earth was actually already known as spherical at that point in Europe.
The Greeks had a pretty accurate idea of its shape and dimension a few centuries BCE.
The only widely circulated book talking of a flat earth that I can think of would be the bible (the bit about climbing on a mountain so high, one could see the four corners of the earth)
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Genetics today is obsessed with conserved DNA sequences as "proof" of evolutionary kinship. It is based on a faith that DNA mutates at a uniform rate over time. But why should we assume a uniform rate over time, when evolutionary theory says that genetic differentiation happens in leaps and bounds?
Science fail. DNA does mutate uniformly. Genetic differentiation based on the mutations goes in leaps in bounds because of selection pressures that drive evolution,
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so the alleged 'faith' only exists in your imagination.
Isn't that pretty much always the case? Someone who doesn't like (a specific field or conclusion of) science will claim that the science itself is based entirely on untested assumptions and is thus equivalent to faith or "dogma", and the claimant will never have bothered to find out what actual assumptions are being made and what testing has been done to verify the hypothesis. It is, itself, a claim based entirely on a pre-existing belief that the sci
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I put on my robe and wizard hat.
Re:Toba volcano ? Nuclear winter ? (Score:5, Funny)
From The Onion: [theonion.com]
Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World
"Members of the earth's earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.
YIR numbers web 5
According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians--the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government--were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization.
"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."
Re:Toba volcano ? Nuclear winter ? (Score:5, Funny)
"I do not understand," reads an ancient line of pictographs depicting the sun, the moon, water, and a Sumerian who appears to be scratching his head. "A booming voice is saying, 'Let there be light,' but there is already light. It is saying, 'Let the earth bring forth grass,' but I am already standing on grass."
So... an alternate headline would be "Ancient Sumerian on grass hears voice of God".
Re:Toba volcano ? Nuclear winter ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The flood story is most likely a composite of semi-historical and mythological events surrounding the flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It may also be related to the flooding of the Persian Gulf at the end of the last glacial period, when trillions of gallons of sea water flooded into what was a very large (and possibly very fertile) valley. Since the destruction caused by this event, and the resulting 10,000 years of salt-water erosion, would've wiped out any sign of an ancient hunter-gatherer or subsistence civilization in what is now the Persian Gulf, it's impossible to prove. But it's still fun to speculate.
Re:Toba volcano ? Nuclear winter ? (Score:4, Interesting)
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The humans had a huge mineshaft gap over the neanderthals, and were smart enough to keep 10 women for every one man in their mines!
Are you saying that the cavemen weren't smart enough to provide themselves with any kind of survivability insurance? Sounds like they could've used Geico.