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TOBA SUPERVOLCANO, A TIME WE CHANGED

By Tom Slattery
Yes, we're all Africans. That has been firmly established. We
humans come from a mutation that occurred in Africa over
200,000 years ago.
Most of us who are not of African ancestry have been shown to
have had ancestors who came out of Africa in two waves, one
roughly 100,000 years ago, the other roughly 50,000 years
ago.
My hypothesis, call it my guess, is that we have our present
slight physical appearance variations that we erroneously
call "race" as a result of the massive explosion of the
super-volcano Toba on Sumatra roughly 75,000 years ago,
midway between these two waves.
The Toba super-eruption created a sulfur and dust cloud that
blocked sunlight, possibly years. Vegetation could hardly
grow if it could grow at all. The result of that was a
massive loss of animal life, including human life. Human
population dwindled to only a few thousand surviving
individuals.
The first wave out of Africa began around 100,000 years ago
and took place before Toba exploded. Among others, these
first-wave ancestors have been shown to have been the
ancestors the present Australian aborigines.
And let me offer a bit of interesting if wild conjecture. By
the fact that these ancestors of Australian aborigines were
able to cross considerable water from the Asian landmass and
eventually arrive and settle in Australia, one might infer
that they had developed adequate nautical competence.
They also seem to have crossed the Red Sea from Africa into
the southern Arabian peninsula to begin their consequential
journey. Use of primitive boats offers a reasonable
explanation.
Large dugout canoes made from rain-forest logs using stone
tools and burn-out techniques would not seem impossible for
them to have manufactured. Primitive outrigger setups may
even have been devised. Rudimentary navigation using sun and
stars and an easing of the workload by using primitive sails
would not seem impossible for them to have used.

Some may have tired to go north into Europe and central Asia,
but there would have been a big problem. The physically
larger and stronger Neanderthals were still prominent and
powerful across the western and southern Eurasian continent.
These first wave ancestors would have been poor match for
them in terms of combat or numbers.
So whether traveling by sea or by land, this first wave of
migration out of Africa appears to have hugged the coast of
south Asia, eventually reaching Australia. It is not
impossible to visualize small fragile settlements growing up
over hundreds of thousands of years along the migration
route. Most or even all of these would probably have been
obliterated by a giant tsunami resulting from the Toba
explosion's mega-earthquake.
After reaching central or eastern Asia these humans of the
first wave probably migrated north around the Neanderthals
and into east Asia. The competition there may have been Homo
erectus. Like the Neanderthals, Homo erectus would probably
not have been unsimilar-looking nor unsimilar self-aware
beings and resentful of the new intruders. But there is a lot
of land in Asia. Whether welcome or not, some of the firstwave people seem to have established themselves there.
The first wave may have gone on, growing in population and
proficiency, for perhaps 20,000 to 25,000 years. Just
consider what we present civilized humans were only 5000
years ago at the beginning of civilization in the Middle
East. 20,000 years is a lot of time to create fixed or
hunter-gatherer communities and increase population.
Then the Toba super-volcano exploded. And apparently very few
of these first-wave humans or their stay-behind relatives in
Africa survived. Both mitochrondrial and Y-chromosome (female
and male) DNA tracing may indicate that a far smaller number
survived.
In an article in the July 2007 Vanity Fair, former Stanford
postdoctoral fellow and Oxford research fellow Spencer Wells,
now head of the Genographic Project, says DNA studies suggest
that human population may have dwindled to as few 2,000
individuals. Inbreeding in extremely small and very isolated
surviving clans might explain our present so-called "race"
appearances.

And they survived isolated for millennia -- some in


Australia, some in China, and some in Africa, where the
second wave had already begun to migrate. But over tens of
millennia population grew.
When population had rebounded, a second wave migrated north,
into where the physically powerful Neanderthals once had
lived in great numbers. They must have been decimated by the
Toba explosion, too, although one might speculate less so due
to their ability to survive in colder climates.
The second wave began heading up into Europe roughly 50,000
years ago, maybe 25,000 years after the Toba super-explosion
and a long enough time to allow human population to grow to
previous levels or more. Whether they genetically mixed with
the Neanderthals or learned from them is an open debate. But
the second-wave lived among or in proximity with them for as
much as tens of thousands of years.
It would seem, then, that from three remnant isolated clans
of survivors of the Toba catastrophe, maybe numbering as few
as 2000 individuals in total for all three, we grew into our
present overpopulation of six-and-a-half billion individuals
with three distinct so-called "racial" appearances.
There may have been an isolated clan of a few individuals in
east Asia, the present so-called "Mongoloid race". There may
have been an isolated clan in Australia, the present
Australian aborigines who are close to African blacks.
And there may have been a small clan of individuals isolated
in central or western Asia or Europe. And some of these may
have mixed with the second wave out Africa that had grown
from a few surviving individuals there.
And the second wave into Europe may or may not have also
mixed with the Neanderthals. There is a debate about red hair
color being derived from mixing with Neanderthals, for
instance.
So that is my wild hypothesis, my guesses about how the
present so-called "racial" divisions could have happened.
END

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