Roughly 800,000 years ago, our ancestors faced a peril so dire, scientists believe it nearly wiped us out. According to a groundbreaking 2023 genetic analysis published in Science, the global human population may have plummeted to just 1,280 breeding individuals, a sharp bottleneck that lasted for about 117,000 years.

According to Smithsonian Magazine, this dramatic decline likely coincided with extreme climate events like glaciation and prolonged drought, which would have decimated food sources and made survival brutally difficult. Using a new statistical method called FitCoal, researchers analyzed the genomes of over 3,000 modern humans to reconstruct ancient population sizes. Their results revealed a staggering 99% loss in our ancestral gene pool during that era.

Interestingly, this timeline overlaps with a mysterious gap in the African and Eurasian fossil records, suggesting it may mark the emergence of the last common ancestor of modern humans, Neanderthals, and Denisovans. It’s a sobering reminder of how close we came to disappearing, and how resilience and adaptation shaped the story of our survival.