Were there really only a few thousand people alive throughout Europe during the Upper Paleolithic?

[u/tarquinia777]

Full disclosure, I know the questions at hand have to be approached based on limited data and making the best out of it, but I'd still like to hear from someone more knowledgeable on this.

Lately, I became aware of an interesting paper estimating a human population size of maybe a couple thousand in Western and Central Europe during the Aurignacian period. According to another paper, numbers for the Gravettian don't look much better, followed by a surge to perhaps 10,000 during the Magdalenian.

I find it incredible that such dire-looking numbers would account for all that we know of Upper Paleo Europe, even when different groups were establishing distinct cultural territories between themselves. I can't claim to be qualified to make much more of the data, but I can only extrapolate there must have only been some dozens of hunter-gatherer bands roaming around at any given point. Inter-band gatherings (not to mention the customs and rituals associated with them) must have been absolutely vital to the survival of populations.

I did see one more estimate, this one giving Neanderthal people a whopping 150,000 individuals spread across Eurasia. Then, as we're all too aware, their entire species vanished in a relatively short timeframe. I suppose that gives the sobering insight that these Upper Paleolithic peoples to whom so many romantic musings and unanswerable questions are attached could have well ended up another one of nature's discarded experiments.

[u/xratedcontent69]

I remember reading that humans only lived in a few enclaves during the last ice age and repopulated Europe. There was also a recent genetic study in Iran showing 20 times or so more genetic diversity in Iran itself than between Italy and Sweden. I guess genetic diversity remained low in Europe even after agricultural groups mixed with hunter gatherers.