Going Ape Over Genomes

For Christmas Erika got me the National Geographic Genographic Project gene tracking. It's pretty cool. It shows how your specific gene makeup reflects humanity's historical movements, what % of you is neandertal, etc. That led me to looking some stuff up, and guess what I discovered: At some point, the population of all humans on earth dropped to somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 individuals.

Ten thousand!!! Heck, let's go on the high end and say fifteen thousand; do you have any idea how few people that is? Here's an idea: The average NHL arena holds 16,617 people (yes, I did that by hand). That means the entire population could have gotten lower bowl seats, but that wouldn't matter because there wouldn't be anyone on the ice to watch play. That said, I've heard that the teams in 97987 BCE were total crap so they probably wouldn't have missed much.

It's pretty tough to wrap the ol' noggin around though, isn't it? I mean... gorillas are pretty screwed, but at least there's still 25,000 alive today. Heck, chimpanzees are critically endangered and there's 21,000 of them kicking around! I bet they wish they'd knocked us off when they had the chance.

SCENE: 10,000 BCE

CARL THE GORILLA: "Hey Ted... looks like we were right. Mr. "I'm too good for the trees" over there isn't doing so well anymore."

TED THE CHIMP: "Smarmy bastard. I hope you rot! Yeah, you! Think you're the only one with opposable thumbs? Oppose this!"

CARL THE GORILLA: "You know what I think? I think we should just take out the whole lot of them. I don't like the way they look. All that tool-stuff... it freaks me out."

TED THE CHIMP: "Hey, I make tools too."

CARL THE GORILLA: "Your mom showed you how to jam a wet piece of bamboo into a termite mound. Not exactly the shuttle program Ted."

TED THE CHIMP: "Whatever. Might as well just leave them alone. It's not like they can do anything to us, right? Heck, you could literally pull his arm off and shove it up his ass."

CARL THE GORILLA: "Heh heh... that would be so funny. I'm totally doing it."

TED THE CHIMP: "Fine. But just this once."

At any rate... looks like humanity has done pretty well for itself since then. The gorillas and chimps? Not so much.


COMPLETE TANGENT:
This is a list of the 5 highest viewed posts all time for my site:

1. Fashioning a Post (Jul 3, 2011) - 1006 views
2. Pontificating on a Probably Return to a Proper Posting Period (Oct. 8, 2012) - 857
3. Moving to Australia Part III: We Have Arrived (Feb 20, 2012) - 344
4. The Burning House (July 2, 2012) - 322
5. I'm Afraid of Emily Dickinson (Aug 14, 2012) - 177

Ok, I get numbers for Fashioning a Post. I mentioned "The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo" in there, and it has a photo from the Swedish film, so that's probably why it's getting pinged all the time. But the second one? 857 hits in 118 days? That's over 7 hits a day! And it's a post about how I haven't been able to post! Hey, feel free to check it out and see if you can tell me why so many search engines seem to be turning it up. It's only about a paragraph long, but it does include the terms "Looking for work" and "Job hunt", so maybe that's it. Still, I wouldn't say posts 1 and 2 are my best work. I'm going to have to step it up a notch if I want to knock off the front runners.