How many people do you believe existed at the Dawn of MAN?

Question

NOT USING the BIBLE as a REFERENCE, What number would you guess? We KNOW there had to be one man and one woman, but who can say how many people existed. I believe only the BIBLE says two. Are there any other sources?

Answer 1

Check out the Discover Channel special "The Real Eve."  It has nothing to do with religion but answers a number of your questions.

Answer 2

There were actually several "Dawns" of Man (Homo)!

In the evolutionary theory, a new sub-species always begins with a distinctive successful mutation whose breeding habits influence the gene pool associated with him or her, contributing to a divergance in the original species...

Early hominins, including Neanderthal Hunter/Gatherers, lived in tribes of 30-200, throughout Europe, Asia and Africa...It's estimated that Neanderthals, who lived in Europe for 300,000 years, neved reached populations exceeding 10,000...

Before 75,000 years ago, we don't know exactly how many total hominins there were, perhaps a few million at most, because they didn't leave a particularly noticable impact on the environment...(Homo erectus also lived until at least 27,000 BP, in Java)

After the Sumatran, Mt. Toba explosion (75,000 years ago), which was the largest volcanic eruption in the past 2 million years (Putting the earth into "Nuclear Winter" conditions for appx. 6 years), it's estimated that only 2-10,000 hominins survived worldwide, which ultimately gave rise to all the living people there are today...

So, in a sense, that became a second "Dawn"...

Answer 3

if you believe in evolution, there is such a fine line between man, and before man, it is almost impossible to decipher.....it happened so gradually it really wasn't much of a sudden happening.

Answer 4

Your speaking of the "Beginning" right, the day marked One in the history of man, as it were.

      This you have to remember didn't happen overnight. This last part skull found in the Olduvai Gorge in South East Africa dates to four million years beyond his cousin "Lucy" found by the Leakey's.

       The skull was dated to seven million years and, came from a upright, walking bipedal. This was evident from the hole in the bottom of the skull.

        So, human behavior started before this, walking upright, probably dated millions of years before this for this amount of evolution to take place, it didn't happen overnight. How many, we don't know.

         If your speaking of modern Homo-Sapiens, about 65.000 years or so ago, to the Neanderthal. Then about 130,000 years ago, before then, if you included the Neanderthal.

Answer 5

It would have been a gradual change from an almost man like creature to a man, I would think it would have to be a group of hundreds or thousands to be viable.

If you have got the last two tigers left in the world you can't expect to breed them and have the species continue as there isn't enough genetic variation to be successful.

Answer 6

If it were one species of "ape-man" that transitioned over first to walking upright and being capable of vocal communication and logical thinking I would guess the numbers would be in the 100,000s or slightly less.

I dont have a source for this but Issac Asimov wrote a great non-fiction about this subject called "Beginnings" and I would recommend it, its an easy and interesting read with many different perspectives and sources.

Answer 7

Because modern humans evolved, the numbers were large.  Any attempt to come up with even a generalized figure is purely speculation.

Answer 8

Two dates should be considered, 10,000 years ago when the Neolithic revolution began and 100,000 years ago when modern humans emerged.

Ten thousand years ago the world population is estimated to have been between 1 million and 10 million.

The Neolithic, or New Stone Age, generally covers the period from 10,000 years ago. It is marked by the "Neolithic Revolution" that coincided with the end of the last ice age. The revolution consisted of domestication of animals, intensive cultivation of certain food plants, and ground stone tools. This lead to the rise of permanent habitations. One of the greatest advances was the development of artistic expression. This is highlighted by the great Neolithic cave paintings and stone "Venus's" Venus figurines are some of the oldest examples of art in the world. They are small figures of the female form. Those physical characteristics of the female are greatly enlarged. The face is lacking in detail and is often just hinted at. Some figures are deliberately broken; some are very detailed, while some are plain, shaped only roughly. They are thought to represent a fertility religion. They are found spread throughout Europe and Asia

Another source, less precise stated:"One hundred thousand years ago there may have been fewer than a million human beings on the planet, indeed as few as 10,000." The date is important as that's about when modern humans were known to have existed.

Answer 9

There is DNA evidence of a "genetic bottleneck" in humanity's past, with an upper limit of around 10,000. The implication is, therefore, that there were more than that, prior to the bottleneck: several times that number. About Alopecia Areata

Alopecia areata is a particular disease affecting hair growth in the scalp and elsewhere. The loss is the cause of great concern to those affected, ...

home.vicnet.net.au/~aasa/About%20Alope... - 13k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

My intention here is to refute the above assertion, that Alopecia Areata is a disease (it is not more a disease than the relative hairlessness of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is, compared with, say Pan Troglodytes [the chimpanzee] ). Instead, it should be regarded as an evolutionary adaption.

ALOPECIA AREATA (MALE PATTERN BALDNESS):                                                                                                                                                                                                          Has a great deal to do with the fact that human beings (Homo Sapiens Sapiens) are a relatively hairless, and physically weak, (chimpanzees are several times stronger, yet smaller) and need a lot of high nutrient foods to maintain their large brains.                                                                             Those brains can take up to 40% of the blood pumped by the heart*. We are somewhat like sponges, perspiring a great deal, when compared with other primates.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                We evolved in tropical, and sub tropical East Africa, in the enormous rift valley, with its many and variable environments, from a group of hominins (on the evolutionary path leading to Homo Sapiens Sapiens).    



We have only adopted regular bathing very recently. For millions of years, our ancestors never bathed. During sexual intercourse, the areas covered by the pubic hair on the male and female come into repeated contact. If it wasn't for the retention of that pubic hair, the stickiness involved in the partial drying of sexual fluids would have caused skin to be peeled off, exposing the area to infection (flies, as vectors of disease/parasites).                                          No doubt, this is what happened to some groups, which were devoid of pubic hair, to the same extent that we are relatively hairless in other parts of our body. They were selected against, in the evolutionary pool, just like those which were uniformly hirsute, and unable to forage, scavenge, and hunt in the heat of tropical/subtropical Africa, in the middle of the day, because, for them, as with the big cats, it was too hot to do anything but lie down in the shade. As a result, those with less body hair had little competition, and were able to provision the females in their tribe better, receiving more sexual favours as a result of "bringing home the bacon", thereby producing more offspring, bearing similar characteristics. Our ancestors got the best of both traits, perpetuating them to this day.                                                             In my view, male pattern baldness is an evolutionary adaption: an extension of bodily hairlessness (note: it occurs rarely in females, and usually only manifests in males after sexual maturity is attained. It would serve no purpose in females, since they remained in the shade, with their offspring, and may have developed in some groups of males at an early age, but skin cancer takes around 25 years to occur, after initial exposure, so those in which baldness developed early would start to be eliminated, not only by the skin cancer, but by the preference of the females for mating with males displaying no apparent physical defects. In those males in which it developed later, however, by the time skin cancer had developed, their reproductive life would have been over, since they died at a much younger age than we do).                         That thinning of the hair on the head, when combined with a male human's high rate of perspiration, and adequate airflow of low humidity air produces a significant increase in the cooling effect to the brain*, which acts to some extent in a manner similar to the radiator of an automobile. This is supported by the fact that males tend to perspire more than females, who, because they were not highly active in the hottest parts of the day, were not selected for that particular                                                      trait.                                                             In the Amazon jungle, the local tribes perspire very little, despite the heat, owing to the fact that the high relative humidity minimises the effectiveness of perspiration as a cooling mechanism. Incidentally, in every documentary I have ever seen of such natives, like the Yanomamu, I have yet to see one with noticeable alopecia. Note too the lack of facial hair, and chest hair on many Polynesian men. It only takes 30 - 40 generations, to bring about significant changes in a population.                                                      Also there is also a positive correlation between testosterone levels in males, and alopecia. Those males with higher levels of testosterone tend to be more aggressive, competitive, task focused, goal oriented, "alpha males" (I'm not one). They would have spent longer out in the hot sun, and it would have produced a fair degree of reproductive success. Those without such an adaption, but still having relatively hairless bodies, but thick hair on their heads, may well have had more opportunity to mate with the females, provided that they were at least reasonably successful providers. The above indicates that we probably evolved from  several tribal groups, close enough geographically to interact, and interbreed; maybe several hundred individuals, to several thousand. Forget about "Lucy", etc. Those fossilised remains are now considered to have belonged to a male. You really need to be more specific. If you mean bipedalism, then that is a different kettle of fish.

Answer 10

maybe infinity