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Letter: Another explanation for doomed early human clan

Published 30 July 2025

From Spencer Weart, Hastings- on-Hudson, New York, US

Your description of traces of an isolated population of early humans, never more than a few hundred individuals, has them “scattered over a distance of 1500 km” from Britain to Poland. This is more likely to point to a single, cohesive clan that, over centuries, migrated either east or west over this distance. Such a small, inbred population would have accumulated many genetic defects over time, making their extinction in the harsh glacial climate almost inevitable(5 July, p 30).

Issue no. 3554 published 2 August 2025

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