The eruption of the Mount Toba supervolcano some 74,000 years ago was the closest thing to an apocalypse that we live on the planet, as it suffocated our Earth in a volcanic winter for more than a decade, almost exterminating humanity in the shadow of its dust. Or so we think.
Now, new evidence buried under African soil almost 9,000 kilometers deep reveals a different story : one in which Toba launched a deadly explosion, but somehow, humans survived and even thrived in the dark wake of this super-eruption.
When the Indonesian supervolcano blew off its top, covering some 2,800 cubic kilometers of the surrounding area in volcanic ash, it expelled something else, almost invisible: cryptoteph , microscopic fragments of glass pumped into the atmosphere, which were swayed by the wind before falling into the air. surface.
Under the microscope, almost 75,000 years later, one of those dazzling pieces caught the attention of geoarchaeologist Panagiotis Karkanas of the American School of Classical Studies (Greece), while he was sifting through sediments taken from an archaeological site called Pinnacle Point 5-6, located at along the southern coast of South Africa.
“It was a particle from a fragment of millions of other mineral particles that I was investigating . But it was there, and it couldn’t be anything else,” says Karkanas.
Later analysis of the chemical signature of the fragment – and of another fragment, discovered 9 kilometers away – confirmed that both dated from the super eruption 74,000 years ago.
But that’s not all the team found.
As the experts dug, meticulously analyzing every inch of a 1.5-meter vertical column, they also discovered stone artifacts, bones, and other cultural remains of the ancient African inhabitants of the land.
The funny thing is that the archaeological record suggests that the epic outbreak of the Toba volcano did not interrupt the lives of these people, at least to the extent that we can discern from the remains that were buried.
“These models tell us a lot about how people lived on this site and how their activities changed over time,” explains Erich Fisher, co-author of the work, to the journal Nature. “ What we found was that during and after the time of the Toba eruption, people lived here continuously , and there was no evidence that it affected their daily lives.”
If anything, evidence of human activity in the area increased after the super eruption , in stark contrast to previous research that had concluded that the Toba volcanic winter brought humanity to the brink of extinction, with years of full skies. ash, no sunlight, vegetation or life.
How is it possible that humanity survived?
It’s just speculation, but the researchers believe that, in the face of survival, life is easier on the coast. The samples they have discovered, in particular, the first – which shows the impact of Toba on human populations – comes from coastal areas.
As such, the researchers suggest that perhaps coastal life, with its proximity to the ocean and the marine life it contains, could have been what led these ancient humans to overcome this dark age.
Of course it is a hypothesis with which many do not agree, but in the future we will discover what really happened in those remote times. In search of the Holy Grail of geochronology , according to Curtis W. Marean.
Referencia: Humans thrived in South Africa through the Toba eruption about 74,000 years ago. Eugene I. Smith, Zenobia Jacobs, Racheal Johnsen, et al. Nature 2018. doi:10.1038/nature25967
