Unveiling the Shadows of Our Past: The Toba Catastrophe and Human Survival In this enlightening episode on our channel, we delve into one of humanity's closest calls with extinction: the catastrophic Toba supervolcano eruption approximately 75,000 years ago. This colossal eruption, occurring in what is now Indonesia, is believed to have triggered a volcanic winter, significantly reducing sunlight and plummeting global temperatures by 5-15 degrees Celsius during an already brutal Ice Age. Our exploration begins with a groundbreaking discovery made in 1993 by an international team of scientists who found evidence of a dramatic population bottleneck during this period. Analysis of human mitochondrial DNA revealed a drastic reduction in the global human population to merely 10,000 individuals, a scenario mirrored in the genetic data of species like East African chimpanzees and Sumatran orangutans, showcasing the global impact of this event. However, the archaeological evidence from sites
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