The Toba eruption (sometimes called the Toba supereruption or the Youngest Toba eruption) was a supervolcano eruption that occurred around 74,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. It is one of Earth’s largest known explosive eruptions. The Toba catastrophe theory holds that this event caused a severe global volcanic winter of six to ten years and contributed to a 1,000-year-long cooling episode, leading to a genetic bottleneck in humans.A number of genetic studies have revealed that 50,000 years ago, the human ancestor population greatly expanded from only a few thousand individuals. Science journalist Ann Gibbons has posited that the low population size was caused by the Toba eruption. Geologist Michael R. Rampino of New York University and volcanologist Stephen Self of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa have supported her suggestion. In 1998, the bottleneck theory was further developed by anthropologist Stanley…
This event is always good to point out when people discuss anything about race. Humans have very little genetic diversity. Height and color features are nothing, we’re basically all the same around the world
But 2/3 of the genetic diversity we have is in Africa
Imagine alien species that didn’t have this bottleneck. It might just be warfare along racial lines all of the time.
Truly the stars had to align for us to exist like this, I think.
If it wasn’t for the Toba eruption, there would be vastly more genetic diversity among the human population and we might have evolved X-Men by now.
