Comments on: Mount Toba Eruption – Ancient Humans Unscathed, Study Claims

By: A volcanic miscellany: Ibu, Toba, Kasatochi, Cotopaxi « The Volcanism Blog

A volcanic miscellany: Ibu, Toba, Kasatochi, Cotopaxi « The Volcanism Blog — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:57:36 +0000

[...] Red Sea. One chapter is devoted to the Toba eruption of about 74000 years ago, which may (or may not) have brought about the near-extinction of humanity. This topic naturally leads to speculation [...]

By: bonus

bonus — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 09:05:35 +0000

Pre-toba eruption anatomically modern humans were 4 times as genetically diverse as fully modern humans are, while the genetic diversity within fully modern mankind is one THIRD of the difference between modern humans and neanderthals. That means neanderthals did not become phyliogenetically distinct from our own ancestors until the latter was decimated in the Toba eruption, so I call them homo diversus instead.

By: ScienceBlogs Channel : Physical Science | BlogCABLE.COM

ScienceBlogs Channel : Physical Science | BlogCABLE.COM — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:45:41 +0000

[...] any strong evidence that these two events are directly connected, but clearly there must have been some hardships for our ancestors during this potential decade of cooler [...]

By: Roy Wilson

Roy Wilson — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:11:51 +0000

Interesting discussion about our ancestors. Perhaps as DNA analysis becomes more sophisticated, we’ll have more answers, but surely an event like Toba would have placed an enormous amount of pressure on the natural selection process, with only the fittest surviving to pass on their genes, and putting a premium on adaptability, which might help explain the technological explosion over the last 60,000 years. As to modern humans being the only ones to kill in massive quantities, it’s probably because earlier versions lacked the ability to do so. Even American Indians were known to drive entire herds of buffalo over cliffs just to harvest their tongues (a delicacy).

By: Cherokee Gene

Cherokee Gene — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 09:17:40 +0000

A couple of nights ago I saw a television special on the Toba disaster. The claim that all of us are descended from only 5000 women some 70,000 years ago was truly amazing. I find it more amazing since my major life hobby is genealogy. I am wondering here however not about the past and which of those 5000 women I am descended from but the implications of a future Toba. All of the rant from environmentalists about how man is destroying the environment “irrepairably” seems plain silly when we realize another big blow from the earth itself could drive us back into premodern days. The question remains how to we protect our posterity from this very real possibility. Modern society is built not on independence but by growing interdependence. The fresh squeezed grapefruit juice I buy (at a high price) in a super market in Shanghai came from Florida only a few days earlier. The Chinese in fact argued fanatically in the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s about NOT depending upon foreign food imports. There memory of course was about the starvation that accompanied the Great Leap Forward and the collapse of agriculture in the late 1950’s. To me then the implications of Toba are on the necessity of reordering our own society to withstand the unknown that could be a comet from the sky (goodbye, dino) to another Toba. For all of you, this discussion has been really good and I appreciate the obvious effort of all to be civil and to provide so much careful, rational analysis to the problem.

By: Frank W. M.A.

Frank W. M.A. — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:00:02 +0000

ladies & genleman,

thanks a lot for your interesting discussion. One little request: Do you have any idea how many individuals of h. sapiens could or should have lived before the toba eruption?

F. W.

By: Kambiz Kamrani

Kambiz Kamrani — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:16:21 +0000

Lay off the crack. It kills.

By: D. Thomas

D. Thomas — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 04:13:30 +0000

Has anyone else wondered if the Toba Catastrophe might not have evolved into a story about an angel with a flaming sword keeping Adam’s descendants from returning to Eden? An event of that magnitude, with consequences of that duration, might easily spur enough speculation among survivors to have an effect on the gene pool – sexual selection on the basis of demonstrated superior intellect (e.g., who can come up with the most entertaining myth)?

By: tevan

tevan — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 17:39:22 +0000

It is such a refreshing pleasure to read comments from intelligent people, who can discuss and debate without bickering and insulting each other. I’m not an anthropologist, but this is all incredibly fascinating. All I ask is please define the first use of an acronym or abbreviation in your comments.

By: Allyn Flinchbaugh

Allyn Flinchbaugh — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:16:19 +0000

Blond hair & blue eyes can easily be explained in an artic climate, or atleast blue eyes.

People get so hung up on natural selection that they forget the other half of Darwin… sexual selection. There are some birds that for no practical reason show a preferencen for mating with a bird with a particular color (blue) or some such on its feathers.

I did hear a study that showed that blue-eyed men showed a preference for blue-eyed women (but women blue-eyed or otherwise had no eye color preference in men) The presumption was that such a preference would evolve in men since blue-eyed couples should not have brown-eyed children, there would have been abandonment by men of children that CAN’T be theirs. Natural selection of paternal abandonment characteristics do not imply the necessity of CONSCIOUSLY being aware of genetics and recessive characterstics.

In artic climates, blond hair would seem to let more sunlight in to the scalp than dark hair, which does raise the question of north Asia, but Scandanavia is more geographically isolated than Asia.