Five Times Humanity Almost Went Extinct (and Why You Exist Anyway)

From Mammoths to Plague: The Deadliest Eras Our Ancestors Survived

Picture this: your dad, his dad, his dad, and so on, stretching backward through time like a line of dominoes. Eventually, the trail of fathers and mothers stops at a nameless figure squatting in the dirt, chewing a beetle, and trying very hard not to die before sundown. That’s your ancestor.

No shoes. No antibiotics. No TikTok.

Here’s the kicker — if any one of your ancestors had slipped at the wrong moment, been eaten by something with teeth, or just failed to reproduce, you wouldn’t exist. You’re here because a thousand generations before you somehow didn’t die when everything in the universe wanted them to.

So let’s honor their stubbornness by ranking the five deadliest periods in human history. From “bad but survivable” to “you might as well write your will at birth.”

5. The Ice Age (20,000 Years Ago)

The last Ice Age wasn’t just a chilly season — it was a planetary endurance test. Average global temperatures dropped 10°F (6°C), and two-mile-thick ice sheets crushed North America, Europe, and Asia.

Survival meant building huts from mammoth bones, stitching hides into clothes with bone needles, and chasing six-ton mammoths armed with nothing more than sharpened sticks. Dinner could — and often did — fight back.

If starvation didn’t kill you, an infected cut probably did. Without antibiotics, every scrape was a potential death sentence. And yet, humans adapted. They tamed fire, invented new tools, and even found time to paint on cave walls at Lascaux. Art born in a freezer.

4. The Dawn of Agriculture (10,000 Years Ago)

You’d think inventing farming would make life easier. Spoiler: it didn’t — at least not at first.

Instead of roaming after mammoths, humans settled in villages, planted crops, and invented houses. But farming meant monotony and malnutrition. Diets shifted to carbs with less protein. Skeletons from the era show stunted growth, anemia, and teeth that rotted straight out of their skulls.

Worse? Living together invited diseases to spread like wildfire. One bad harvest, one locust swarm, or one freak flood, and an entire village could starve. Congratulations, agriculture — you created civilization and also invented mass famine.

3. The Mongol Invasions (13th Century)

If you were alive in the 1200s and saw dust clouds on the horizon, your city had about three minutes to exist.

Under Genghis Khan, the Mongols carved out the largest land empire in history, stretching from China to Eastern Europe. Their method was brutally efficient: arrive fast, hit harder, erase everything. Survivors (if there were any) were often marched ahead as human shields in the next battle.

Historians estimate the invasions killed 40 million people — roughly 10% of Earth’s entire population at the time. In other words, one man’s empire-building binge depopulated the planet more effectively than most natural disasters.

2. The Black Death (1347–1351)

Europe’s worst houseguest arrived in 1347 via fleas and rats. The Black Death (bubonic plague) didn’t just kill people; it dismantled society.

You could catch it by shaking hands, sharing a cup, or just breathing the same medieval air as someone infected. Symptoms included swollen lymph nodes, fever, vomiting blood, and death — usually within a week.

By the time it burned out, the plague had killed between 30% and 60% of Europe’s population. Entire villages vanished. Economies collapsed. Doctors wore plague masks stuffed with flowers because apparently “good vibes” was the pinnacle of medieval medicine.

1. The Toba Supervolcano (74,000 Years Ago)

And here’s the ultimate near-death experience: the Toba eruption.

When Toba blew its top in Indonesia, it hurled 670 cubic miles of ash into the sky — enough to bury the U.S. under a blanket of soot. Sunlight dimmed for up to ten years. Temperatures plunged by 27°F (15°C). Ecosystems collapsed. Rivers dried up. Forests turned to barren deserts.

For early humans, already scraping by, it was catastrophic. Global population shrank to as few as 3,000 survivors — the entire human race balanced on a razor’s edge. Every single person alive today descends from that tiny band of desperate people who somehow didn’t give up.

You're the Miracle

Here’s the wild truth: you exist not because life is easy, but because your ancestors were absurdly, stubbornly hard to kill. They survived ice, famine, war, plague, and volcanic darkness. Each one handed the baton forward so you could sit here scrolling articles with snacks at your side.

So maybe cut yourself some slack. You’re already the product of 74,000 years of impossible survival.

Stay stubborn, stay curious, and remember: you are the miracle your ancestors fought mammoths for.

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