Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)
34 comments
·May 9, 2025ljlolel
They found a genetic bottleneck of a couple hundred individuals some hundreds of thousands of years ago so that was probably worse
simpaticoder
There have been several bottlenecks, the worst one was pre-homosapien (~1000 individuals for 100k years): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck.
It is remarkable to imagine that every person alive now, or that's ever been alive, is descended from this same tiny group of beings. And all of this drama occurs in a remote spec of dust orbiting and average star of an average galaxy of 100B stars, among 100B visible galaxies. Even if we had Star Trek level tech, we'd still be approximately as insignificant.
paulpauper
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.
cl3misch
I think the multiplicative midpoint (i.e geometric mean) is more sensible for such a large range, which gives 10k. Still not as bad!
ashoeafoot
But what kept them hovering there for a thousand years? What besieged our ancestors until they developed something to break that siege ?
jowea
I mean, all of non-viral life is descended from a single organism, right? I find that even more remarkable.
kadoban
It seems quite likely that this isn't actually fundamentally true, because the real story was a mess.
If you look at bacteria even, there's a lot of genetic transfer beyond just strict parent/child relationships either just directly or via viruses or other things I'm sure I've never heard of.
The earliest life was probably more like some kind of soup of self-replicating things, closer to a chemical reaction than biological, and then it would have been kind of a sliding scale over a long period of time before we get to anything that really looks that much like "<this> organism begat <that> organism".
The entire concept of organisms themselves are an abstraction over the truth, that kind of works for today's world, but probably less worked when things were new and interesting and messy.
eddd-ddde
I think that's only true assuming no other life has appeared in any other place of the universe.
lo_zamoyski
Why would size determine significance?
And what is significance anyway? What determines whether something is significant?
ashoeafoot
The self repair forces of the ego selecting the tale with the highest praise for me, the chosen one, living at the end of time, made in gods image.
kbelder
Statistically, size or quantity is a major part of significance. But that's not really the sense in which 'significant' is being used here... it's being used as a synonym of 'important' or 'meaningful'. In those terms, you have to ask the question, 'significant to whom?' Significance doesn't exist outside of somebody to attach meaning to it.
Most often, the answer is 'to me, the guy making the observation.'
In that sense, that tiny speck of dust in our corner of the galaxy is very significant. At least to me.
voidspark
Size determines significance by definition of a population bottleneck
ed
Interesting!
> a 2023 genetic analysis discerned such a human ancestor population bottleneck of a possible 100,000 to 1000 individuals "around 930,000 and 813,000 years ago [which] lasted for about 117,000 years and brought human ancestors close to extinction."
And relatedly...
> A 2005 study from Rutgers University theorized that the pre-1492 native populations of the Americas are the descendants of only 70 individuals who crossed the land bridge between Asia and North America.
> The Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck refers to a period around 5000 BC where the diversity in the male y-chromosome dropped precipitously, to a level equivalent to reproduction occurring with a ratio between men and women of 1:17.
actuallyalys
Limits on written records and the limits of what we can derive from genetic analysis means 536 and other years these analyses uncover are probably best understood as local minima rather than definitively the worst.
bmitc
What makes a genetic bottleneck worse than natural disasters and disease?
terribleperson
The genetic bottleneck isn't the terrible thing, it's a symptom of something terrible that must have happened.
bmitc
Thanks. I wasn't thinking about that.
ashoeafoot
The ash cloud went from iceland to china? Where there chronicles about this in local culturesnearby ?
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senderista
> What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse.
Um what? The eastern Roman Empire survived for almost another millennium. Maybe the journalist confused it with the western Roman Empire (which had already collapsed)?
zombiwoof
I’d take 536 over 2025 at this rate
DyslexicAtheist
do we have any records of how society perceived that time. It would be interesting to compare it to how that fares compared to the perceived injustices that modern society complains about.
While it's impossible to directly compare recent events, like the pandemic to the plague, it would be interesting to understand the claim of "the worst year to be alive" between a society that is hyper-distracted and always online today, with a society that walks among the ruins of a collapsing Roman empire ~1500 years ago.
That said, both scenarios seem to ignore non Western history.
macintux
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/11e63o2/what...
Update: This is a remarkable statement. "We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon"
ilya_m
Please change the title to "Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)".
dang
We've added the year (of the article) to the title. Thanks!
olddustytrail
I'm struggling to understand why that has improved anything.
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genter
You're struggling to understand why someone is being pedantic on this site?
Related. Others?
Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34209313 - Jan 2023 (113 comments)
What Was the Single Worst Year in Human History? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32118341 - July 2022 (1 comment)
Volcanoes, plague, famine and endless winter: Welcome to 536 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30621640 - March 2022 (39 comments)
Skies went dark: Historians pinpoint the 'worst year' ever to be alive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26786838 - April 2021 (117 comments)
Extreme weather events of 535–536 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598570 - March 2021 (86 comments)
536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23565762 - June 2020 (356 comments)
Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18469891 - Nov 2018 (4 comments)