Hello everyone,
I was recently reading about a near human extinction theory potentially involving a volcanic eruption around 70 thousand years ago. Just thinking about this led me to wonder how time and population is understood through genetics.
Also, how can a number/population size of ancestors be determined based on our genes? How could someone predict that when this near extinction occurred, there were 10,000 people remaining, or 30 thousand, or 100 thousand etc.? And how, with use of genetics can time be determined? Why guess that these events occurred 70,000 years ago, why not a million years ago or 40,000?
I am interested in how people understand these things, purely from a biologic stance with use of our DNA. I am not interested in related evidence from geology or paleontology.
Thanks everyone,