Throughout history, catastrophes have threatened many human endeavors. We’ve managed to survive them and move forward. Paradoxically, the benefits have been partly derived from the tragedy that might have ended us. We can learn from tragedy.

Our distant ancestors living 900,000 years ago were the victims of a deteriorating climate so inhospitable that the entire human population was reduced to no more than 1,280 individuals. That bottleneck continued for more than 300,000 years. This can be inferred because virtually no human fossils from that time period have been found. Remarkably, this near extinction of humans coincided with the appearance of Chromosome 2, which may have enabled intelligence, and ultimately speech. But we survived.

Once again, about 74,000 years ago, a volcano in the

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