The Toba eruption has been linked to a genetic bottleneck in human evolution about 70,000 years ago; it is hypothesized that the eruption resulted in a severe reduction in the size of the total human population due to the effects of the eruption on the global climate.
Near-extinction!
Modern humans almost become extinct; as a result of extreme climate changes, the population may have been reduced to about 10,000 adults of reproductive age.
Endangered Species: Humans Might Have Faced Extinction 1 Million Years Ago. New genetic findings suggest that early humans living about one million years ago were extremely close to extinction.
A late human population bottleneck is postulated by some scholars at approximately 70,000 years ago, during the Toba catastrophe, when Homo sapiens population may have dropped to as low as between 1,000 and 10,000 individuals.
No! After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs.
Assuming a constant growth rate and birth rates of 80 per 1000 through 1 A.D., 60 per 1000 from 2 A.D. to 1750, and the low 30s per 1000 by modern times, 105 billion people have lived on earth, of whom 5.5% are alive today.
More reproduction followed, and more mistakes, the process repeating over billions of generations. Finally, Homo sapiens appeared. But we aren't the end of that story. Evolution won't stop with us, and we might even be evolving faster than ever.
By 2030, almost all countries will experience “extreme hot” weather every other year due mainly to greenhouse gas pollution by a handful of big emitters, according to a paper published Thursday by Communications Earth & Environment, reinforcing forecasts that the coming year will be one of the hottest on record.
But even if that common ancestor still existed, the fact that evolution is the result of both random mutation and a process of natural selection imposed by environmental conditions, means it's highly unlikely that it would ever retrace its steps in quite the same way.
Co-lead researcher Shimona Kealy said these people probably travelled through Indonesia's northern islands, into New Guinea and then Australia, which were part of a single continent between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, when sea levels were 25-50 metres below the current level.
Broadly speaking, evolution simply means the gradual change in the genetics of a population over time. From that standpoint, human beings are constantly evolving and will continue to do so long as we continue to successfully reproduce.
All living people share exactly the same set of ancestors before the Identical Ancestors Point, all the way to the very first single-celled organism. However, people will vary widely in how much ancestry and genes they inherit from each ancestor, which will cause them to have very different genotypes and phenotypes.
Eventually humans will go extinct. At the most wildly optimistic estimate, our species will last perhaps another billion years but end when the expanding envelope of the sun swells outward and heats the planet to a Venus-like state. But a billion years is a long time.
Still, with some assumptions about population size throughout human history, we can get a rough idea of this number: About 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth.
Humans looked essentially the same as they do today 10,000 years ago, with minor differences in height and build due to differences in diet and lifestyle.
According to a US report, the sea level will increase by 2050. Due to which many cities and islands situated on the shores of the sea will get absorbed in the water. By 2050, 50% of jobs will also be lost because robots will be doing most of the work at that time. Let us tell you that 2050 will be a challenge to death.
2050 is only about 30 years from now, which means it's close enough that we can imagine it happening, but far enough away that we can't confidently say what it will look like.
The model, called Mindy, provides a terrifying glimpse at what people could look like in 800 years if our love of technology continues. According to the company, humans in the year 3000 could have a hunched back, wide neck, clawed hand from texting and a second set of eyelids.
The earth would become warmer, the average temperature will increase. There will be several new weather patterns and the sea levels would rise. Eventually humans would die out. If the insect population continues to decline, all birds that depend on insect for food will become extinct.
In the next 1,000 years, the amount of languages spoken on the planet are set to seriously diminish, and all that extra heat and UV radiation could see darker skin become an evolutionary advantage. And we're all set to get a whole lot taller and thinner, if we want to survive, that is.
Homo habilis, sometimes known as "handyman", was one of the oldest known humans and lived between 2.4 million and 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Historic growth of world population
500 years BCE it was 100 million, and in the year 0 around 200 million people were estimated to live on Earth.
Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human.