On: Why 536 was 'the worst year to be alive' (2018)

[pqtyw]

There might have been many times more people living entirely isolated populations which would have left no descendants. Which is not unlikely given the extremely low population density.

[deepsun → pqtyw]

Might have been. Or might have not. That's my question basically, why does parent comment claim there were many more humans?

[Tepix → pqtyw]

Possibly. Otoh, we‘re social animals and cutting ties with the other groups would be disadvantageous.

[pqtyw → Tepix]

Even if all modern humans were confined to Africa if there were only 10s of thousands of them distributed across a significant part of the continent there is no way they would've had actual direct ties to each other.