{"id":67909,"date":"2024-05-05T16:09:16","date_gmt":"2024-05-05T21:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67909"},"modified":"2024-05-05T16:09:16","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T21:09:16","slug":"how-indonesias-toba-volcano-changed-human-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=67909","title":{"rendered":"How Indonesia\u2019s Toba Volcano Changed Human Evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Indonesia\u2019s Toba Volcano Changed Human Evolution<\/a><\/h3>\n

The massive supervolcano eruption 74,000 years ago has been blamed for nearly killing off our species. The emerging truth is much more interesting.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n

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A dramatic 2020 eruption of K\u012blauea was nothing compared with Indonesia’s Toba supervolcano eruption 74,000 years ago, the largest eruption of the past 2.5 million years.\u00a0HAWAII VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK\/PUBLIC DOMAIN<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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THEY NEVER SAW IT COMING.\u00a0<\/span>For the small bands of hunter-gatherers across Africa and Eurasia, the day was like any other. Some tracked great herds of migrating animals across expansive grasslands; others moved through dense rainforests, or along the banks of turgid rivers and ephemeral streambeds. Survival\u2014finding food and water, avoiding predators, strengthening the small group\u2019s social bonds\u2014was the order of the day.<\/p>\n

Thousands of miles away, an extraordinary event was about to take place: a cataclysm that would make the entire planet shudder. It would also change the story of our species. The question is, how?<\/p>\n

About 74,000 years ago on Sumatra, the\u00a0Toba supervolcano<\/a>\u00a0erupted on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. It was the most powerful eruption of the last 2.5 million years; by volume, it was\u00a0more than 215 times larger<\/a>\u00a0than the 20th century\u2019s biggest boom, the\u00a0Novarupta<\/a>\u00a0event in\u00a0Alaska<\/a>, and more than 11,000 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. It dwarfed even the three largest known eruptions of the Yellowstone supervolcano.<\/p>\n

In the late 20th century, researchers began trying to reconstruct what happened after Toba blew. According to those early models, inches-thick blankets of ash smothered much of the Indian subcontinent and choked the seas from the Arabian to Chinese coasts. Global air currents swept a haze of sulfur and ash particles across oceans and continents, wreaking climate havoc…<\/p>\n

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