Population crash 900,000 years ago nearly killed us off
By ZHOU WENTING in Shanghai zhouwenting@chinadaily.com.cn
China Daily
4 Sep 2023

An international collaboration led by Chinese scientists has found for the first time that population collapse almost wiped out early human ancestors over 900,000 years ago, with the number of breeding individuals falling to as low as 1,280. The…read more…

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Abstract:

One of the most fascinating historical accounts about the fallout of biological evolution theory on human relations is the story of Ota Benga, a pygmy who was put on display in an American zoo as an example of an evolutionarily inferior race. The incident clearly reveals the racism of evolutionary theory and the extent that the theory gripped the hearts and minds of scientists and journalists in the late 1800s. As humans move away from this time in history, we can more objectively look back at the horrors that evolutionary theory has brought to society of which this story is a poignant example.

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Abstract:
The variation of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) between modern humans and Neandertal sequences lie outside the mtDNA sequence variation within modern humans. This variation has led several researchers to conclude that Neandertals did not contribute to modern human DNA and are a separate species that went extinct in Europe. It is feasible that DNA can be retrieved from specimens that died thousands of years ago, given the ideal preservation conditions and extraction protocols. However, DNA also decays as the organism decomposes. Spontaneous hydrolysis, oxidation, and nucleotide modifications are a few of the processes that cause DNA decay and likely interfere with reliably obtaining a mtDNA sequence that accurately reflects the Neandertal mtDNA sequence.

In addition to DNA decay, contamination of samples is also apparent in published Neandertal mtDNA sequences. A comparison of conserved sequence block 2 (CSB2) in hypervariable region II (HVRII) between Neandertal mtDNA and modern man, primates, and other mammals indicate that excess thymine in CSB2 of published Neandertal mtDNA is likely the result of contamination.

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