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The range is 100,000 to 1000 individuals. This is a factor of 100.. If you take the midpoint ,it's 50k, which is not as bad.

I think the multiplicative midpoint (i.e geometric mean) is more sensible for such a large range, which gives 10k. Still not as bad!

But what kept them hovering there for a thousand years? What besieged our ancestors until they developed something to break that siege ?

The people we descended from could be different from the entire population at that time.

A beneficial mutation followed by rapidly outcompeting other populations might look similar.

The theory is that it was like that for over 100 thousand years. Not just a thousand.

So solitary confinement into a bottle besieged by quasi equal predators unlocks superpowers ?