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
Yes but the point is even that so called diversity is nothing, it’s fractions of a percent, mainly certain disease resistances/weaknesses like malaria and genetic disorders IIRC. In the overall human genome the differences are extremely small.
Separating humans by race is ridiculous the more you dive into genetics
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.
X-Men: Emo fictional characters driven by the need for episodic sales with scientifically impossible abilities. Sure!
Sorry. Traumatized by my childhood best friend’s Marvel obsession.
3000 - 10000 humans, not a 1000. With a 1000 there would be serious genetic variability issues and the species would probably have gone extinct. Another species of big apes would have filled the void, so not a big deal.
