​Witnessing a supervolcano eruption is certainly not the happiest experience you can have. In fact, there’s a good chance this will be the last image you’ll ever see, as the pyroclastic cloud created by such a phenomenon can travel at speeds of 400 kilometers per hour and reach temperatures in excess of 700 degrees. And this is at distances of hundreds or even thousands of kilometers, depending on the intensity of the phenomenon.

Although the term is relatively old, having been proposed in 1925, supervolcanism has only recently entered the vocabulary of scientists, as well as the general public, as geological evidence for such phenomena began to accumulate.

It is said that the destructive effects of a supervolcano can only be compared to those caused by the collision of the Earth with a giant asteroid. And depending on the intensity, a supervolcano can even cause significant extinction. This happened 252 million years ago when a Siberian supervolcano erupted continuously for 200,000-2 million years, wiping out over 80-90% of all life forms. To give you an idea, back then the volcanic ash layer was over 6,000 meters high in some places, and 7 of Siberia’s 11 million square kilometers are covered in basaltic vents, the result of the aforementioned supervolcano.

And while we’re on the subject of asteroids, let’s not forget that recent data on the Chicxulub asteroid, which may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, shows that the asteroid could not have caused such an extinction by itself. This was probably helped by a supervolcano that erupted around the same time, somewhere in India, and which turned out to be one of the most powerful in the last 500 million years. Not to mention the sharp drop in global temperature that dinosaurs saw for the first time in 150 million years and that preceded these two events. Come to think of it, those dinosaurs really didn’t stand a chance going any further.

In principle, a supervolcano ejects at least 20-40 cubic kilometers of pyroclastic material, compared to a normal volcano that ejects, in extreme cases, somewhere up to 10-20 cubic kilometers. Look at the case of the Tambora supervolcano that erupted in 1815, the last supervolcano witnessed by mankind, which ejected about 45 cubic kilometers of pyroclastic material, causing the so-called “year without a summer”, 1816. By the way, in the case of the Siberian supervolcano, 252 million years ago, the amount of ejected pyroclastic material was at least 3 million cubic kilometers. As a comparison.

However, Tambora was a supervolcano that ranked at level 7 on the Volcanic Intensity Scale (VEI). The maximum is VEI 8. The one where the level of pyroclastic material exceeds 1000 cubic kilometers. And humanity has witnessed two such extreme phenomena throughout its existence. The last one, which occurred between 26,500 and 27,000 years ago, occurred in New Zealand and is known as the “Taupo Supervolcano”. Coincidence or not, it is contemporary with the last glacial maximum. I say coincidental because its implications are still poorly understood, despite recent studies blaming it for large climatic fluctuations in the interval in question.

Supervolcano Toba is a disaster, to put it mildly

Far more important in terms of impacting the evolution of our species was the supervolcano that occurred approximately 73,880 +/- 320 years ago in Toba, Sumatra. Or at least that’s what it was said that he was the one who almost brought us to the brink of extinction. The Toba supervolcano was first talked about in 1993. And since then, it has become synonymous with the supposed almost complete extinction of the human race. It was said that after the aforementioned super-eruption, the entire human species (Homo sapiens) would have been reduced to a maximum of a few thousand individuals. More precisely, from 1000 to 10,000.

The phenomenon coincided with the so-called genetic reduction of individuals of the species Homo sapiens. In particular, genetic diversity fell sharply, which led to the mass extinction of our ancestors. And since it was during this period that the eruption of the Toba supervolcano took place, the logical correlation was inevitable.

However, several questions remained unanswered. For example, why did the Toba supervolcano selectively destroy only ours, while the Neanderthals, who were also there, continued their existence unhindered? And it cannot be said that there were more or much more advanced ones. Then why was the extinction of individuals felt only in humans and not in other species of animals? Because no limits to the genetic diversity of any species have been documented. Even in chimpanzees, gorillas or other primates.

Last but not least, why did the effects of the Toba supervolcano in South Asia hit Africa, where the bulk of the Homo sapiens population was, and not elsewhere? This is if you go by the Out of Africa 2 hypothesis, which says that our humans successfully left Africa only about 60,000 years ago. Something is clearly not connecting. And even bigger problems arose when Paleolithic scientists began to study the impact of the so-called supervolcano.

One of the most prominent of these, Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute, Germany, a former professor at Cambridge and Oxford, has devoted the last two decades to the study of human footprints that appear in South Asia, particularly in India. And according to the data he provided, there are thousands of artifacts that not only predate said eruption, but continue to appear in the archaeological record after it happened.

In particular, around 80,000 years ago, artifacts created using the Levallois technique appear in the archaeological record of India. In case you didn’t know, the Levallois technique was used by two species of humans, Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Using comparative data, Petraglia concluded that the people who made the Indian artifacts were ours, not Neanderthals. And that flies in the face of the Out of Africa 2 hypothesis, because Homo sapiens would have had nothing to do in India 80,000 years ago.

Even more interestingly, identical artifacts were also found after the supposed eruption. We can even speak of continuity up to about 48,000 years ago, when the first signs of better techniques associated with the Upper Paleolithic appear.

Add to this the human fossils from Lida Ajer, Sumatra, which date to about 63-73,000 years ago, when the site was hypothetically uninhabitable. Then the 65,000-year-old human footprints in Australia, which could hardly have existed since the entire human population of South Asia had been wiped out. Last but not least, geological evidence shows that the impact of the aforementioned supervolcano was negligible in East Africa.

Therefore, we are not talking about a 1000-year volcanic winter, as it has been popular until now. And people were there both before and after the super eruption. As for reducing genetic diversity, we have only two options. Either the data is incorrect or, more likely, we have other reasons to consider.

What about Neanderthals?

And lest Homo sapiens be alone in the face of supervolcanoes, a recent hypothesis claims that the Neanderthal suffered an even crueler fate, as it was also driven to extinction by a supervolcano that erupted in southern Italy, which is now about 40,000 years old. . This is Campi Flegrei, the site that experienced the VEI 7 supereruption on the date mentioned. Later, several smaller eruptions took place there, the last one in 1538. And for nearly 50 years now, Campi Flegrei has been showing signs that another eruption (or supereruption) is imminent.

The fact is that this phenomenon was devastating, no doubt, but no one can say whether its effects were only local or global. It has been suggested that the Italian supereruption coincided with the supposed extinction of the Neanderthals at that time. And here other key questions arise, to which it was not possible to find answers.

If the supervolcano mentioned above destroyed the entire human species not only in Europe, but also in Western Asia, why did it not touch Homo sapiens? Why was it a selective extinction? So how certain is the extinction of the Neanderthals 40,000 years ago? Until recently, dating showed that Homo neanderthalensis existed in southern Spain, the Crimea, Romania and elsewhere in Europe up to 28,000 years ago, possibly as early as 25,000 in the case of Gibraltar.

The new decontamination methods, also not without controversy, show that many of the old datings would be wrong and the extinction actually happened around 40,000 years ago. The only exception is southern Spain, where the last Neanderthals seem to have disappeared 37,000 years ago. It may have been a bit longer in Romania too, but the dating hasn’t been redone here for about 40 years, so we don’t risk throwing out any numbers.

Doubts about the impact of the Campi Flegrei supervolcano arose recently when a researcher from Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA, Benjamin Black, created several computer models in his name, in which he reproduced, based on all available data, what it could mother happened in Southern Italy about 40 thousand years ago. No matter how Black turned it, it appeared that the most significant consequences would be felt in the east of Europe, by no means in the west, where one can speak of true Neanderthal possession. In fact, Neanderthals remained practically unaffected by the effect of the supervolcano. We’re not talking about those on the ground, for obvious reasons.

Estimates indicate that the volume of pyroclastic material removed from Campi Flegrei was about 60 cubic kilometers. Some say it could have been 300 cubic kilometers, but there is much controversy surrounding this number. By comparison, the supervolcanoes (VEI 7) from Thera (the one that wiped out part of the Minoan civilization 3,600 years ago) as well as the volcano from Tambora (1815) would have been eliminated in about 41-45 cubic kilometers. And the devastating consequences were recorded around the epicenter. Globally, the situation calmed down quite quickly.

By extrapolation, it is quite possible that even Neanderthals did not have to suffer from the Campi Flegrei supervolcano. We could even witness a paradox. And it was the same supervolcano that helped them survive for several more millennia. How so? Well, it’s very simple. Had its effects been more pronounced in the east, it would have halted or reduced, at least to a predictable extent, the waves of Homo sapiens migration into Europe. And this is only if we look at the survival of Neanderthals many millennia after the super eruption in southern Spain. But this is only a guess. Archaeological evidence tells a completely different story, which we will tell another time.

As for our evolutionary relatives, rest assured, their fate was sealed even without that supervolcano. As Clive Finlayson, a pre-historian who spent his life excavating the Mousterian sites in Gibraltar, said, Neanderthals were already “the living dead”.

Bibliography:

● Finlayson C., 2004, Neanderthals and Modern Humans: An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective (Cambridge Studies in Biological and Evolutionary Anthropology), ed. Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780511542374, p. 268

● Fedele FG, Biagio G., Roberto I. & Giovanni O., 2003, Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption, Heinrich Event 4, and Palaeolithic Change in Europe: a High-Resolution Investigation, In Robock A. & Oppemheimer C., Volcanism and the Atmosphere Earth, ed. Geophysical Monographs Series, ISBN:9780875909981, p. 301–325

● Golovanova L.V., Doronichev V.B., Cleghorn N.E., Kulkova M.A., Sapelko T.V. and M. Sheckley, S., 2010, The importance of environmental factors in the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition, Current Anthropology, no. 52 (5), p. 655-691

Follow our Facebook page, HotNews Science, to be able to receive live information and curiosities from the world of science in real time!

Photo source: profimediaimages.ro