Mapping of stone tool artefacts on a Middle Palaeolithic occupation surface under the Toba ash. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oxford)
Posted on 03/04/2010 7:13:24 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Newly discovered archaeological sites in southern and northern India have revealed how people lived before and after the colossal Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago... The seven-year project examines the environment that humans lived in, their stone tools, as well as the plants and animal bones of the time. The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks. According to the team, a potentially ground-breaking implication of the new work is that the species responsible for making the stone tools in India was Homo sapiens. Stone tool analysis has revealed that the artefacts consist of cores and flakes, which are classified in India as Middle Palaeolithic and are similar to those made by modern humans in Africa. 'Though we are still searching for human fossils to definitively prove the case, we are encouraged by the technological similarities. This suggests that human populations were present in India prior to 74,000 years ago, or about 15,000 years earlier than expected based on some genetic clocks,' said project director Dr Michael Petraglia, Senior Research Fellow in the School of Archaeology at the University of Oxford... Dr Petraglia said: 'This exciting new information questions the idea that the Toba super-eruption caused a worldwide environmental catastrophe. That is not to say that there were no ecological effects. We do have evidence that the ash temporarily disrupted vegetative communities and it certainly choked and polluted some fresh water sources, probably causing harm to wildlife and maybe even humans.'
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Mapping of stone tool artefacts on a Middle Palaeolithic occupation surface under the Toba ash. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Oxford)
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This one is interesting, but can't use it, can't use, copyright complaint. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. |
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That’s the one that almost killed off humanity.
....which explains why they died out. LOL Sorry. That's just how your thread posted in the forum. I saw it, and it was like catnip. 
Toba! Toba! Toba!
I’ve forgotten where that volcano is.
thx
It didn’t. That’s the gist of the article.
Whoah. I never knew that.
So, what’s the latest thinking on how many humans survived Toba. Is the figure of 2-3 thousand still out there?
I don’t think it was very estimated quite that low (seems like it was more like 15,000, and of course spread out over Africa for the most part), but I don’t hold the idea in much regard anyway. :’)
The team has concluded that many forms of life survived the super-eruption, contrary to other research which has suggested significant animal extinctions and genetic bottlenecks.I posted this topic, yet never thought to ping the Catastrophism list. Wow.
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So now they are saying that there wasn’t a genetic bottleneck 75,000 years ago? I thought the genetic studies had proved that there was, and that this is built into all theories of human evolution. Does this mean all of this is out the window, and they have to come up with new theories?
Well, frankly, there’s no way to prove the existence of genetic bottlenecks, or to put same into a geographical or temporal context. It’s not a bit unlike the guy who claimed that everyone currently alive is descended from a single individual who lived in southern China in 1500 BC — information invented by a computer model.
I should say, *if* there were large numbers of death assemblages *dating* from the the supposed super-eruption (and I’m not one to think there every has been such a thing, Toba or anywhere else) found in various places on Earth, and the associated genetic samples (which would obviously have to survive in sufficient shape to be sequenced) from each of these places could be studied and classified, it would probably show that the dead have the same genetic material as moderns, give or take tens of thousands of years of random mutations.
So the History Channel and Discovery Channel can now remake all of their human evolution shows.
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