Arguably the most important period in human history is from before humans were humans. 900,000 years ago, according to DNA research, our remote hominid ancestors lived on an incredibly hostile planet, and their numbers were reduced to 1280 breeding persons on the entire planet. This extreme bottleneck didn’t last a short while, but 117,000 years —a period unimaginably long to us modern humans. We don’t know where they lived. All we know is they must have been some tough motherfuckers.