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That's a fun list. Random pet-peeve.

"Human ancestors almost went extinct 900,000 years ago. “A new technique analysing modern genetic data suggests that pre-humans survived in a group of only 1,280 individuals.”

Another interpretation is that there were always large numbers of hominids / humans alive at any point in the past 1M years. Rather the descendants of those 1,280 individuals out-breed and out-warred all other hominid / human groups.

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> Rather the descendants of those 1,280 individuals out-breed and out-warred all other hominid / human groups.

Or maybe they out-prosocialed, cooperated for much higher productivity, reproduction (not to mention loyalty), and thrived while the other hominid groups killed and stole from each other.

Edit: Also, there's always the possibility the authors already addressed your question - the more obvious the possibility, the more likely (I don't know in this case). The paper:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487

great points. thanks for the link, too. the abstract reads great, sadly the rest is paywalled.

Tip: Search for the article name and you'll often find copies of it, often shared by the author.

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