I wonder if it was 1280 in one community or split across several disparate and possibly warring groups.

I suppose competition from other hominid species might have pushed one community to band together for survival.

I just can’t imagine one community of any size surviving for very long without carving up territory and battling for scarce resources or hoarding to create artificial resource scarcity.

We’re such a fractured and combative species. If we were down to 1280 today I think we’d still figure out how to fight each other.