A new scientific study has revealed that around 900,000 years ago, early human ancestors came very close to extinction. The global population dropped to just 1,280 reproducing individuals and stayed at that level for a long time—117,000 years.

The study was published in the journal Science and is based on a computer model created by scientists from China, Italy, and the United States. They used genetic information from 3,154 present-day human genomes and applied a special statistical method to trace back the history of human populations.

According to the research, about 98.7 per cent of human ancestors were lost during this period. The scientists said that this sharp fall in population lines up with a missing section in the fossil record. It may have led to the appearance of a new kind of early human—possibly a common ancestor of both modern humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals.

"This bottleneck is congruent with a substantial chronological gap in the available African and Eurasian fossil record," the study highlighted.

What caused the population collapse?

Scientists are not completely sure why the population suddenly fell, but they believe the climate in Africa may have been responsible. Around that time, the Earth was going through the mid-Pleistocene transition. Africa became colder and much drier, with longer and more severe glacial periods. This made it harder for early humans to survive.

Yi-Hsuan Pan, a senior author of the study, said their findings “open a new field in human evolution”. He added, “It evokes many questions, such as the places where these individuals lived, how they overcame the catastrophic climate changes, and whether natural selection during the bottleneck has accelerated the evolution of the human brain.”

Today, despite that near-extinction event, the human population has grown tremendously and crossed eight billion people as of 2025.

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