[sillystuff]

Our ancestors may have almost gone extinct 900M years ago. Some researchers looking at genetic data believe we were down to 1280 individuals [1].

Those were pre-human ancestors, but humans aren't special, we are just animals that are more destructive than any species that came before us.

Hubris will likely play a large role in any possible future human extinction event. E.g., doing nothing to curb climate change because we are "smart" and invincible and/or god(s) wouldn't allow things to get that bad, a deadly pathogen develops resistance to all antibiotics because of free-feeding antibiotics in factory farming animal flesh, we use nuclear weapons in conflict X believing it will not escalate (George "Baby" Bush, "I want nuclear weapons I can use" [actual quote]), a pathogen intentionally developed to both spread quickly and be extremely deadly (because we can), that somehow... "no one could ever foresee the possibility..." escaped the lab-- or maybe it will be a large meteor impact wiping out humans (and other large animals) across the globe like a kid stomping on an ant hill.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-ancestors-n...

[anon84873628]

"900M years" is a typo, right? That's the time of the earliest sponge-like animals ever...

[defrost]

I'd hope so.

The linked article talks about the human bottle neck 900,000 years ago, that's almost a million years, but well short of 900 million.

[sillystuff]

Yeah, should have been 900K. Can't edit.

[andrewjl]

I don't disagree with the thrust of your comment but how does one identify the presence or absence of hubris from fossilized remains?

[o11c]

Genetic data is misleading; it only means that number of people had surviving descendants. It's entirely possible that the population never dropped below N, but one particular tribe gradually became dominant and genocided everyone else. Remember that endogamy is the default!