900,000 Years Ago, Our Ancient Ancestors Almost Died Out!

Amaze Lab

Around 900,000 years ago, before homosapiens or humans ever walked the Earth, our species’ ancient ancestors were at a crossroads. At that time climate change in the form of a rapidly cooling planet was threatening their very existence and now researchers say they might know how they survived.

Transcript

00:00Around 900,000 years ago, before homo sapiens or humans ever walked the earth, our species'

00:08ancient ancestors were at a crossroads. At that time, climate change in the form of a

00:13rapidly cooling planet was threatening their very existence, and now researchers say they

00:17might know how they survived. According to a recent genome study, our ancestors almost died

00:22out completely, with researchers saying that their breeding population was reduced to only

00:26around 1,300 individuals. In modern day, they would be considered functionally extinct,

00:31yet they survived, and we might finally know why. Experts say that while many other species

00:36were dying out, our ancestors instead moved out of their natural habitat of Africa. Researchers

00:41found corroborating evidence suggesting that the cooling event and the migration occurred

00:46in tandem. The cooling would have made ocean levels shrink as much of our planet's water

00:50froze. That means Africa, the birthplace of our prehistoric ancestors, would have become

00:55extremely dry and arid. The evidence suggests this happened at the same time as the hominid

00:59population was brought to the brink, only surviving because a few of our smarter ancestors decided

01:05to get out.

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