The Forgotten Prehistoric War That Killed 95% Of All Men

7,000 years ago something happened that was so severe that it permanently left a scar within our DNA...

Thumbnail by Christian Sloan Hall

If you want more 🦖:

0:00 The Dark Secret Of Our DNA
1:50 The Big Mystery Here
4:43 Massacre Sites
7:12 The Largest Prehistoric Massacre Ever
12:04 WHAT STARTED ALL THIS VIOLENCE?
15:28 How Did The Violence End?

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[PaxJurassicus]

Born too late to fight in the Cave Wars, born too early to fight in the Space Wars, born just in time to fight in the world Wars.

[mister_syre]

We forget how hard, harsh and cruel the old world was and tend to ignore that this could return someday. Appreciate your comfort each day you wake up.

[justin]

Time traveler here, the real reason was a disease that primarily affected men and women were immune to which is commonly referred to as cooties today. There was a lot stronger strain around at the time.

[Shredmoreroy]

My theory: as people started discovering farming, they were able to explosively grow their population. However, they would soon discover that farming comes with the downside of being vulnerable to a bad harvest. So, what happens when you have a lot more mouths to feed, and one disastrous harvest means all those people are suddenly starving? You wage war to take your neighbours' food. It's possible that this huge conflict was famine-triggered in a particularly bad year for the harvest.

[notoriousbigmoai]

Actually, the War of the Triple Alliance that happened in South America from 1864 to 1870 between Paraguay and a coalition of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay was so devastating that it wiped out approximately 90% of the Paraguayan male population. Most Europeans and Americans today don't even know this war existed!

[PoliticallyHomelessCentrist]

Genetic genealogist here. The mitochondrial DNA is also extremely small in comparison to the Y chromosome, so mutations happen FAR less frequently. Mutations occur in the Y-DNA ~1-2x per generation. Meanwhile, mtDNA only mutates on average once per 13 generations. So, this means a bottleneck would be far less noticeable in the mitochondrial DNA if it did happen because it is already so much less sensitive to change than Y-DNA is - it doesn't necessarily mean only men were dying off.

[DeyBawnes]

My ancestors were bashing skulls with rocks, trying to survive, eating each other and today I cant open a jar that I close too tight?

[jorgemigueltavares]

And yet, despite all this, some folks continue to argue that "videogames make youths violent".

[kristiankirilov]

50 people killing upwards of 1500 people is just pure insanity. I can't fathom how gruesome and twisted they were

[jonswap]

The cannibalism is an indication that there was a shortage of food. Maybe the population dramatically increased due to farming surpluses, and then there was a change in climate that made people to turn on each other.

[Neollogia]

People nowadays when they see any bad news: "We live in the end times, never before has the world been so terrible". They have no idea how dramatic humanity's past was.

[catsinq]

I'm NOT an anthropologist, so this is a genuine question. What about a disease that affected men but not women? I vaguely remember learing in school that one of the effects of childhood mumps on boys is infertility as an adult. Could there have been a mumps epidemic? Or some other disease? Anyway, fascinating content. Thank you!

[hoibsh]

I still have remnant genetic PTSD from that forgotten prehistoric war.

[daniel-zhnjyny]

The 1st rule of Prehistoric Fight Club:
We do not talk about Prehistoric Fight Club.

[Tinkster]

Actually it was neolithic tinder - the top 5% of dudes got all the chicks.

[AnnoyingNewsletters]

This is one of the times where precision is language is key.

Men weren't decimated. They were utterly annihilated, with ONLY 5% of them surviving.

[tulliusexmisc]

I don't disagree with the general idea of the video, but I have a few extra points to raise.

First, if you are looking for a single event that removed Y chromosome diversity, you won't find it in the graves of adult men. You need something that killed boys before they grew old enough to reproduce.

Second, agriculture tends to centralise wealth and power in the hands of a few men, the landowners. They can afford to keep many wives and children, while other men can barely feed themselves. The fact that women do most of the work doesn't mitigate this effect, it amplifies it. Polygyny is another mechanism that reduces Y chromosome diversity, because many of the males never breed.

Third, 95% of the human Y chromosome has no homologue on the X and so cannot recombine. If a disease - or any other danger - selectively targets males with a certain allele in the non-recombining Y, it removes that entire lineage, not just the one vulnerable gene. Avoiding this across the rest of the genome is one of the benefits of sexual reproduction in eukaryotes. This last effect could also cause a sudden drop in NRY diversity.

[RENEGADEJon]

The men left over after this conflict: "Ladies, please! We need rest. The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised."

[jasjay]

The video’s core claims—a Neolithic Y-chromosome bottleneck and widespread violence—are grounded in real science and archaeology. Studies like Zeng (2018) and Karmin (2015) confirm the genetic shift, while sites like Talheim and Herxheim show brutal conflict. It ties these to the Neolithic Revolution’s social upheaval, which tracks with historical consensus. But it oversells the scale (95% dead, global war) and undersells alternative explanations (cultural shifts, peaceful lineage loss). It’s not "just trust me"—there’s evidence—but it’s more speculative and less conclusive than presented. For a deeper dive, check the cited studies or dig into LBK massacre research. The truth is grim enough without the Hollywood spin.

[justinholmesrealtor]

In our spiritual stories, as in like sumar, hindustan, greek and germanic. All the gods always had a civil war where 90% of both sides was killed.