Researchers have discovered how the Toba supereruption in India that happened roughly 74,000 years ago, was not a global catastrophe after all. An ancient and “unchanging” stone tool industry, uncovered at Dhaba in northern India, suggests instead that humans have been present in the Middle Son Valley for roughly 80,000 years, both before and after the Toba eruption.
Crux of the Matter
The Primitive Toba Catastrophe Theory The Toba supereruption was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It was estimated to have caused a global volcanic winter of six to ten years along with a 1,000-year-long cooling episode. It spewed roughly 1,000 times as much rock as the famous 1980 eruption of Mt St Helens.
The Stone Tools that Changed It Archaeologist Chris Clarkson from the University of Queensland, explains how populations at Dhaba were using stone tools that were similar to the toolkits being used by Homo sapiens in Africa at the same time. Both were developed by them to modify their respective environments and the results confirm how humans migrated out of Africa and expanded across Eurasia much earlier than expected, surviving a natural calamity in the meantime.
If the Volcano Didn’t Get Them, What Did? Geneticists agree that back then, there was an unmistakable drop in human genetic diversity, but that shift could be a founder effect. However, without human fossils to back up the findings, there are some who remain unconvinced these tools were made by Homo sapiens. Further studies would be done by scientists to create new archaeological records in times ahead so that a solid reason comes out behind the supereruption.
Humans in India may have survived supereruption 74,000 years ago #HumansinIndia #MountToba https://t.co/gmJg12JFOh — The Hans India (@TheHansIndiaWeb) February 27, 2020
Curiopedia
The founder effect in population genetics is the loss of genetic variation that occurs when a new population is established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population. It was first fully outlined by Ernst Mayr in 1942, using existing theoretical work by those such as Sewall Wright. As a result of the loss of genetic variation, the new population may be distinctively different, both genotypically and phenotypically, from the parent population from which it is derived. In extreme cases, the founder effect is thought to lead to the speciation and subsequent evolution of new species. More Info
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