Good point. I have seen population estimates from 10,000 BC onwards but
nothing before that. Anyone have information back to say 100,000 years
ago?
Tim Ikeda wrote:
>
> Walt writes:
> [...]
> >Except for major catastrophes in one area or another another, the
> >growth of the human population has been continuous (as best I see the
> >literature). [...]
>
> You are right in thinking that a population expansion will make
> it harder to win the "last common mother or father 'lottery'".
>
> However, the human population has experienced its current
> level of expansion for only the past few thousand years or so.
> The current rate of population growth is a relatively recent
> development. If you took our current growth rate as a constant
> and extrapolated backwards, you'd calculate that the population
> was *zero* less than 10,000 years ago. That's clearly not the
> case and so the human species must have bounced around a near-
> zero growth rate with a much smaller population (few millions or
> less) for the preceding millennia.
>
> The proposed dates for 'Mitochondrial Eve' and 'Y-chromosome Adam'
> are in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands years BC, a long
> period where human population growth was often "flat" and sometimes
> even negative. It's likely that the current mitochondrial Eve was
> 'crowned' long before humans started their recent, explosive growth.
>
> Regards,
> Tim Ikeda (tikeda@sprintmail.com)
-- =================================== Walt Hicks <wallyshoes@mindspring.com>In any consistent theory, there must exist true but not provable statements. (Godel's Theorem)
You can only find the truth with logic If you have already found the truth without it. (G.K. Chesterton) ===================================
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