12,000 years ago human population was reduced to less than 4000

A recent genetic mapping project suggest that a "bottleneck" in the human gene pool occured about 12,000 years ago. Some suggest that the entire human population was less than 4,000.

Prior to that period, human population was in the billions, then some ostensible catastrophe occured.

I have always wondered why we are here. Those that survive under the most distressed situation, such as in Africa, would be able to make it through conditions that most Westerners would not. Therefore their existence has a purpose.

An analogy is a fireman. 90% of the time they are idle. However, one could argue that they are not very useful since most of the time they are not putting fires out.

However, on that rare occasion when there is a fire, they are indispensible.

Other gene mapping projects also suggest that most of our genetic material is not active. It has been experimentally demonstrated that major changes in environment appear to activate these genes to help the organism adapt to the change in environment.

Europeans are much smaller in stature than Americans. During WWI, the allied forces were in awe at the physical size of US soldiers. The environmental variables such as great expanses of land and low population density and an abundance of food would allow for a larger morphology.

The point is that eventhough we view most people as useless eaters, they may be the firemen of the human race in case of a mass catastrophe that would wipe out most of humanity.