The population was likely quite 1. small, even miniscule by contemporary standards – no more than about six thousand or ten thousand individuals. The most provocative estimate is a bare seven hundred – about the number of humans that might 2. inhabit a single city block or a village. Mitochondrial Eve may have lived among 3. them, bearing at least one daughter, and at least one granddaughter. We do not know when, or why, these individuals 4. stopped interbreeding with other hominids – but we do know that they began breeding with each other with relative exclusivity about two hundred millennia ago. Perhaps they were isolated here by climate changes, or stranded by geographic barriers. Perhaps they 5. fell / were in love.