bottleneck
Explanation
This comic explains the concept of a genetic bottleneck through a conversation between what appears to be a teacher/scientist and a student.
The teacher begins: "Dear lord, why are human beings such colossal dumbasses? The call is from inside the cell -- genetic bottleneck." She explains that about 70,000 years ago, a supervolcano erupted and reduced the human population to just a few thousand survivors, creating a severe genetic bottleneck.
The concept is then elaborated: by bad luck, a high proportion of the survivors were "dumbasses," creating a "quite a skew" in the surviving gene pool. The teacher describes this as essentially a "strategy" -- in a high-risk, resource-scarce environment, the surviving population's traits (including less-than-ideal cognitive tendencies) became the foundation for all future humanity. The student asks "So what's your plan?" and the teacher's response involves acceptance of the situation.
The final panel delivers the punchline: "The volcano was bad, but everything after that is just gravy" -- suggesting that all of human civilization's problems stem from this ancient bottleneck event that selected for "dumbasses."
The comic humorously references the real Toba catastrophe theory, which proposes that the eruption of the Toba supervolcano approximately 70,000 years ago caused a severe reduction in the human population (possibly to as few as 3,000-10,000 individuals). While the real theory discusses reduced genetic diversity, the comic takes the comedic leap of suggesting the bottleneck specifically selected for stupidity, offering a darkly funny "scientific" explanation for why humans so often act foolishly.