[rollei_list] Re: OT Lake Toba

  • From: Laurence Cuffe <cuffe@xxxxxxx>
  • To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:40:03 +0100

Further to our discussion of a couple of weeks ago, I note the following article in NewScientist

http://bit.ly/cWDDP5
I think Mt/Lake Toba made the cover.
All the best
Larry Cuffe
On 31 Mar 2010, at 00:15, Hagner, Andrew wrote:

Marc:

You threw me on a loop. Instead of working I got into reading the Wikipedia on Neanderthals. Pretty fascinating stuff. The dates that I saw quoted do not seem to exceed 60,000-80,000 years ago. This brings a bit of a memory for me.

In 1993 I was travelling through Sumatra and spent some time on the Samosir Island on Lake Toba. Fascinating old culture and stunning landscapes. Actually, all my B&W photographs were taken with my Rollei GX. When we finally left the island, the plane flew over Lake Toba and I could not help but notice the characteristic shape of the lake. It looked to me like a caldera. Then I also read in the guide that the lake and the rock formations were dated by the Dutch Geological Survey as being about 60,000-80,000 years. So, having taken some geology during my school years I formed a “personal” theory of this huge volcano exploding and wiping out the dinosaurs whose extinction dated within that time span as I remembered then. BTW the lake, if I recall correctly, is something like 40 km x 80 km in plan view. If Krakatau (which in 1883 was just a relatively small island) explosion could cool the global temperature for several years due to dust in the atmosphere, what impact on the climate would have an explosion of the Lake Toba size volcano?

Then recently I read that Toba, now classified as a caldera, is considered to have been the biggest or one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in the Earth history. It coincides with the extinction of the dinosaurs (kind of) and worse, it is considered that it almost wiped out all human population with the exception of some 2,000 surviving in Africa. Which means that we almost went totally extinct! According to the article, this is the result of relatively recent genetic research. Apparently, the human race as we know it now stems from the survivors of the Toba Volcano cataclysm.

Thanks for the link Marc,  - Andrew (now back to work).

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