Humans came very close to extinction at this time, because only about 1000 of these individual humans were capable of producing offspring. Humankind struggled to survive for thousands of years, until some time during the Stone Age.
You may have heard the theory about how climate change caused by a volcano helped to bring about the near extinction of dinosaurs (chickens still exist), well, around 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba, on Sumatra, in Indonesia, almost wiped out humanity.
As the largest volcanic eruption ever known, Toba poured so much ash, dust and vapour into the air that ash covered the ground and the sun's light was dimmed for about six years. Food became scarce and the Earth became cold and vegetation was wiped out.
Humanity recovered. In 1750 there were 700 million people on the planet and in 1804, the human population reached one billion individuals. Currently, human population appears to be out of control with in excess of 7.5 billion people sharing this planet.
With humanity threatening to overcome the carrying capacity of Earth, we face a future of climate change and possibly wars over diminishing and scarce resources. And yet, the subject of human population is rarely mentioned.
Books To Read
The Crack in Space is a 1966 science fiction novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. On a future Earth (c. 2080 CE) overwhelmed with severe difficulties related to overpopulation.
