Many of us have heard about the “Mitochondrial Eve,” our earliest ancestor who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago. A Stanford University study, reported on today at CNN, has concluded that our species became precariously close to extinction about 60,000 years ago. Very interesting. Considering that we have almost 7,000,000,000 people on Earth now, that as recent as 60,000 BCE our species may have numbered at only 2,000 is remarkable.

In a nutshell, the report mentions that little is known about our ancestors between Eve’s time and the time we first started migrating out of Africa. And that this near-extinction was the result of climatological shifts and a series of severe droughts in eastern Africa between 135k and 90k years ago.

The researchers … concluded that humans separated into small populations before the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.

Spencer Wells of the National Geographic Society summarizes it nicely: “Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA.”

And Paleontologist Meave Leakey: “Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction?”

Check out the CNN story in it’s entirety. Really a thought-provoking read.