[meteorite-list] Human bottleneck around 70,000 years ago

From: Philip R. Burns <pib_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:22:36 2004
Message-ID: <5.2.0.9.2.20030611121929.03332630_at_pibburns.com>

At 01:39 AM 6/11/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>"New research suggests the human race was nearly wiped out 70,000 years
>ago, when a crisis reduced
>the population to about 2,000 people. The theory has reinvigorated the
>debate on whether humans really
>did come 'Out of Africa', or whether the species evolved in little pockets
>around the globe."

  ...


>In order to get back 'on topic', I'm now wondering whether or not the homo
>sapiens' close brush with
>extinction might have had anything to do with meteorites, asteroids,
>meteoroids, comets, meteors, death
>stars, and/or alien attacks. That should cover relevancy!

The giant volcanic eruption of Toba in Indonesia about 75,000 years ago has
been suggested as a possible reason for the decline. Toba was the largest
known volcanic eruption in the past two million years.
It probably released an order of magnitude more sulfuric acid into the
atmosphere than Tambora in 1815, possibly the largest Holocene
eruption. The acid injection may have caused a 3C to 4C drop in
temperature in the midst of an already glacially dominated climate.

Here are some references.

Ambrose, S.H. (1998) "Late Pleistocene human population bottlenecks,
volcanic winter, and differentiation of modern humans." _Journal of Human
Evolution_, vol. 34 (6), pp. 623 - 651.

Rampino, M. & Self, S. (1992) "Volcanic winter and accelerated glaciation
following the Toba super-eruption." _Nature_, vol. 359 (6390), p. 50.

Rampino, M. & Self, S. (1993a) "Bottleneck in human evolution and the Toba
eruption." _Science_, vol. 262 (5142), p. 1955.

Rampino, M. & Self, S. (1993b) "Climate-volcanism feedback and the Toba
eruption of ca. 74,000 years ago." _Quaternary Research_, vol. 40, pp. 269
- 280.


-- Philip R. "Pib" Burns
    pib_at_pibburns.com
    http://www.pibburns.com/
Received on Wed 11 Jun 2003 01:33:45 PM PDT