Heliocentric Certainty Against a Bottleneck of Two?

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Claims of Heliocentric Certainty

This is exactly the evidence referenced in Adam and the Genome by Dennis Venema, when he writes (emphasis mine):

As our methodology becomes more sophisticated and more data are examined, we will likely further refine our estimates in the future. That said, we can be confident that finding evidence…that we descend from only two people just isn’t going to happen. Some ideas in science are so well supported that it is highly unlikely new evidence will substantially modify them, and these are among them. The sun is at the center of our solar system, humans evolved, and we evolved as a population.

Put most simply, DNA evidence indicates that humans descend from a large population because we, as a species, are so genetically diverse in the present day that a large ancestral population is needed to transmit that diversity to us. To date, every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple. Even though many of these methods are independent of each other, all methods employed to date agree that the human lineage has not dipped below several thousand individuals for the last three million years or more—long before our lineage was even remotely close to what we would call “human.” Thus the hypothesis that humans descend solely from one ancestral couple in has not yet found any experimental support,— and it is therefore not one that geneticists view as viable.
Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1) - #296 by DennisVenema - Faith & Science Conversation - The BioLogos Forum

Dennis’ use of “human” here is ambiguous. He clarified to Richard Buggs…

@DennisVenema

The heliocentric quote, which I thought was the object of your concern, is about humans (Homo sapiens). When I’m speaking about our lineage leading up to humans at 200KYA I use “lineage” or similar.

The other two quotes remain valid. Does “it seems” sound like I’m saying this is as certain as heliocentrism? That would be quite the understatement. That is a summary statement of all the lines of evidence in the literature to date that do not provide support for a bottleneck below ~10,000 at any time in the last 18MY (which remains the case).

All methods employed to date agree that the human lineage has not dipped below several thousand individuals for the last 3 million years or more – long before our lineage was even remotely called “human”.

…

So: “heliocentric certain”: humans. Pretty darn certain: lineage leading to humans over the last several hundred thousand years (say back to ~500,000 years ago). Confident but not as definitive: lineage over the last few million years. Survey of literature to date: no evidence of a bottleneck greater than thousands anywhere, regardless of time.
Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1) - #308 by DennisVenema - Faith & Science Conversation - The BioLogos Forum

Which I summarized (to his approval):

1. Homo sapiens specifically do not dip down to a single couple in 300 kya to the confidence we have in heliocentrism.
2. Our ancestors as a whole do not dip down to a single couple between 300 kya and 3 mya with very high confidence, but maybe not as high.

Adam, Eve and Population Genetics: A Reply to Dr. Richard Buggs (Part 1) - #322 by Swamidass - Faith & Science Conversation - The BioLogos Forum

So these are the claims in question. At least as I understand from Dennis.