More humans than thought survived volcanic super-eruption 74,000 years ago, scientists find

More people survived one of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions than previously thought, new research suggests.

The super-eruption 74,000 years ago on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia, was 5,000 times bigger than the Mount St Helens eruption in 1980 that killed 57 people and was the most destructive in US history.

There had been a theory that the eruption of Toba in Indonesia was followed by a “volcanic winter” of up to 10 years, leading to a 1,000-year cooling of the Earth, with the near-extinction of our own species.

But archaeologists have found man-made tools dating from before and after the super-eruption, suggesting it was not as apocalyptic as first believed.

Toba’s eruption was believed to have decimated Asian populations of mammals and hominins – members of the human family tree more closely related to one another than to apes. Of those, only Homo sapiens, to which everyone on Earth belongs, remains today.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/volcano-super-eruption-toba-sumatra-indonesia-survive-asia-a9359231.html