This story also comes from Daily Galaxy – see https://dailygalaxy.com/2025/11/this-volcano-almost-ended-humanity/ … scientists have been intrigued by a massive volcano that exploded around 74,000 years ago. It is supposed to have caused a human bottleneck that almost caused the extinction of humanity. It is known as the Toba super volcano. Strangely, no such bottleneck occurred at the Laschamp Event around 40,000 years ago – even though Neanderthals and Denisovans did a disappearing trick along with large numbers of animals.
We are led to believe the Toba super vollcano blanketed the skies in ash, cooled the climate dramatically over an extended period, and brought ecosystems to a halt. Early representations of this story, mangled with obvious hype, painted it as an extinction level event for humans virtually everywhere, leaving behind a rump of just a few thousand surviving souls. How they arrived at that is a lesson in getting carried away with the size of the caldera. It is 100 by 30 km wide – but how much was this due to collapse rather than being blown up into the atmosphere. It was estimated that it was 10,000 times stronger than the 1980 Mount St Helens eruption. That event laid down huge layers of sediment in just a few hours – and in the following few days. Did the Toba supervolcano lay down 10,000 times the amount of sediment that St Helens did? Besides, archaeological investigations of the ash laid down in different parts of the world seem to tell a different storyline. In India people were living prior to the ash layer and after the ash layer, and carried on as usual. Now we also have evidence from a cave in South Africa where a layer rich in cryptotephra = microscopic volcanic glass with a tephra signature. And again, people were living both before and after the event – and even during it. Similar evidence has been found in Ethiopia.
Note … The Toba human bottleneck at 74,000 years was later supported by genetic evidence of such an event. Or rather, it was believed it was supported by genetic evidence. Clutching at straws, perhaps. The idea is derived from an assumed rate of genetic change rather than anything tangible. That same rate of change appears to have been much quicker when it came to surviving Neanderthal genes in modern humans. Hence, it is likely the assumed rate of genetic change over time is an over estimate. The bottleneck may actually be later. Possibly at the time of Laschamp, or even as late as 30,000 years ago.