How a Supervolcano Ignited an Evolutionary Debate
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- čas přidán 27. 05. 2024
- The Toba supervolcano was the biggest explosive eruption of the last 2.5 million years. And humans were around to see it, or at least feel its effects! But what were those effects?
Thanks to Julio Lacerda ( / juliotheartist ) for the reconstructions of the supervolcano (as well as a bunch of other reconstructions used in this episode!)
Produced by Complexly for PBS Digital Studios
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References: docs.google.com/document/d/18... - Věda a technologie
The remnants of Toba supervolcano is a lake with an island in it. In that island, there is another smaller lake. And in that smaller lake, there is also an island.
Caldera-ception
The smallest island isn't named, but everything else is: Lake Aek Natonang is on the island of Samosir, which is in Lake Toba, which is on the Island of Sumatra
Almost like Atlantis
So like our Taal Volcano
Turtles all the way down.
One overlooked result of the Toba explosion is the complete lack of air travel for tens of thousands of years after the event.
Alright that got a chuckle out of me
Tourism industry totally got killed off, now covid is trying for the title
@@mountainhobo you sure? Maybe that was bill gates blowing it and then trying to sell them umbrellas for a profit /s
Air travel continued as normal.
Birds ignored it.
Just as they ignored the event which wiped out their fellow Dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Birds have been flying for 120 million years and have never stopped flying.
P.S. Insects also kept flying.
They seem to be completely immune to being wiped out, for the last 400 milion years.
I'm glad that tiger wasn't blasted to smithereens. It really completes the composition of the photograph
Bad news...this was 70,000+ years ago. That tiger is dead af.
@@Wanker527 also, that camera didn’t exist.
@@oqsy 🤯
@@oqsy ever heard of a joke?
@@lysvakt27 i'm sure you're the one who missing out on the joke here
Please do an episode about the evolution of grass. You've covered trees and flowers already, bit so far the only things you've said about grass was that it didn't exist in the Jurassic but started to be omnipresent (to the point where it formed a whole new type of environment) in the oligocene. Makes me really curious.
Food sources. Rice, wheat, bamboo , etc
Can we please go over the ornithopods & their evolution from having fingers, to thumb spikes to hooves?
this!!
More ornithopod videos period
Talk about a downgrade
Geologists, Anthropologists and Paleoclimatologists: **exist**
Volcano: *peace was never an option*
😂😂😂😂
Super Volcanos: Ding dong, your environment is wrong.
@@mikaruyami "Don't worry, I can fix it for you."
That one was the big boy. Nothing is new. Volcanoes still are unpredictable.
👍 But let's not leave out the geneticists.
Lake Toba’s island is amazing. Me and my friend stayed there for a few days years ago. Like a beautiful relaxed freshwater paradise
I live in Indonesia but never been to Toba yet haha 😅
I was there 15 years ago, it is indeed beautiful
I born and live around the lake ehehe horas
My friend and I
@@ecophreak1 ive been there last year it was amazing
title should of been, "How a supervolcano erupted an evolutionary debate"
This needs more likes.
Should _have._ Not should "of." Should "of" is not even close to a logical phrase. What you hear is the way "should've" is pronounced.
@@MaryAnnNytowl thanks. As someone who's not a native English speaker, this common mistake always confused me because I couldn't understand the meaning of sentences.
Nowadays it's one of those mistakes I can't tolerate.
lmaooo underrated comment
This was such a cool episode for me because I am a geologist and I did a huge term project on Lake Toba last year. I read and analyzed like 50 different scientific papers and articles supplemented with websites and synthesized a presentation to present to my professor at the end of the semester. I read the majority of papers you talked about in this video so I was "Holy crap I read that paper!" throughout most of this episode. This was such a good time. Thank you for doing this episode.
I am interested! is it something you can upload?
First it was Steve, now Patrick Seifert left us too? We'll miss them lol
Amen!
I think we've run out of dinosaur to talk about...
John Davidson Ng
we have Luiz Vieira Pinto Neto now.. that's a cool name
I’m sorry but who steve? And why they leave?
@@rio121rahmansyah well, they were part of the eonites (people who gave lots of support to the channel), but they left this channel's patreon, apparently
Hooray, Kalie is back!...........please don't leave us again🥲
I want to like this message, but it has 69 likes atm :3
They take turns
Sheee soo cute 😍
Down astronomically
@@gr8cescale 😂🤣😂🤣😂😏
I just hope Steve is living his best life.
Same dude. God bless Steve
I still miss Steve.
what happened to him
@@user-ck1zi8qf4i no one knows. I'd guess he stopped being a supporter for some reason.
@@user-ck1zi8qf4i I think that he had to stop supporting cause maybe he’s going through something? I’m not completely sure I’ve only heard what possibly happened off of the comments from another video. But I hope Steve is ok and is doing well
Well, clearly the Orangutans only survived because they went and hid in their libraries. 🙃🤣
Ook!
@@TomLuTon Ook?
And then the new Spezies comes...
Bigfoot
Sorry if i missed the reference but...
They are orangutan, they definitely live in the hutan just like their name
@@dyefield2712 Clearly you have not read Terry Pratchett's Discworld
Do episode on When India was an island!
W
That's a good episode idea!
Yes please!
The flood basalt eruption?
More like small continent
Thanks, Kalie for mentioning the Ar-Ar radiometric dating method. That sent me on a search to find out the latest in radiometric dating methods. Very interesting.
"Toba, or not Toba, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The cinders and ashes of outrageous fortune,
Or to count pollen in a Sea of troubles,
And by counting, end them:" --William Shakesvolcanologist.
And laughter erupts...
*ANN-alyze* - beware the long A! 😊
Groan...
Well played, sir
I see what you did there.........
I swam in Lake Toba when I spent a week on Samosir Island (in the middle of the lake). The blast that left that size of crater behind staggers the imagination.
It's without doubt the worst natural catastrophe modern Humankind ever faced in terms of absolute size. However the Campanian Ignimbrite Eruption c. 40 Ka ago in South Italy (with rocks reaching all the way to Ukraine) was arguably a close one and for Neanderthals it was certainly the worst catastrophe ever, only a few pockets survived afterwards (but also killed many communities of Homo sapiens in the area and the end result was the expansion of a more uniform culture: Aurignacian).
@@LuisAldamiz Thanks for the info! I'll go look that one up. 👍
@@LuisAldamiz Indeed. Probably equalling Samalas, Taupo and Tambora.
@@wenderis - Not familiar except for Tambora but AFAIK it was much worse: there's been nothing like either mega-euroption ever since for all I know, these are events that only happen every so many tens of thousands of years, not in historical scale.
@@LuisAldamiz Well, it's hard enough to quantify 'explosiveness' - VEI has its limitation - defining 'worse' is even harder. The fact that eruption of Samalas, and especially Tambora, occured in historical times in a relatively populated area which affected more human (and biodiversity) should count in the 'worseness scale'.
Damn Patrick Seifert left 😔. Now only John Davidson NG remains from the OGs
Yeah : ( but i think Jake Hart has also been supporting for years even before Patrick Seifert and John Davidson Ng.
@@Cats83747 that’s true!
The genetic bottleneck might have come about because of multiple factors, with disease factoring in as well as environmental changes.
Or just, only a small group of people initially left africa.
It would be intresting to see how human evolution could have been effected without this bottleneck.
Disease would be too hard to spread to almost all human population at the time, localized population death would made more sense.
@@metalhammer303 Probably Global Warming happened thousand of years earlier. Lol
@@prahastha1618 disease doesnt necessarily mean a contagion
Toba means anus in Portuguese. I giggled when she said Toba eruption
@JZ's Best Friend i don't know if they already used this slang at the time
@JZ's Best Friend I meant the specific Toba slang. These things change over time and there's a lot of synonyms used
Would love to get a Doggerland episode!
*Googles Doggerland* I second the motion. All in favor?
I went on a boat trip in Lake Toba. It was simply beautiful.
My watching of this was abruptly interrupted by my porridge becoming too hot and erupting half of its content on the stove.
🤣🤣🤣
Has your toester ever erupted a collumn of smoke and bread ash?
7:58 Sulfur aerosols would indeed have a cooling effect, as they apparently did from the 1940s through ~1970, but I don’t get the argument about water vapor, unless the volcanic source significantly increased concentrations of H2O in the stratosphere, as water vapor in the troposphere has a very short recycling time, which is in equilibrium with surface temperatures. Something missing from this argument? Volcanic ash also has a cooling effect, but its lifetime in the atmosphere is quite short, as shown by the global impact of Pinatubo eruption in 1991. Some discussion of the impact on stratosphere needed.
You must be fun at parties!
Woooow.
That is a lot of very smart stuff I don't know.
I'm going to guess your college degree is not in underwater basket weaving.
To be fair Pinatubo(VEI-6) was much smaller than Toba, for real volcanic winter comparison it's noteworthy to look at Krakatoa (also a VEI-6, but ejected more material than Pinatubo) and Tambora (VEI-7), curiously both in Indonesia. Tambora itself was the largest eruption in the last 300 years and the largest that has been scientifically observed yet it looks weak compared to the major eruptions on Campi Flegrei and Long Valley Caldera(Also VEI-7 may i add), imagine compared with VEI-8 like Toba and Taupo.
@@caiolucas8257 Recent findings suggest that Samalas/Rinjani Tua eruption in the 13th century is even bigger than Tambora and Campanian Ignimbrite, making it quite possibly the biggest eruption ever observed.
I really appreciate this episode but there are 2 comments that raised my eyebrows. The first is the reference to the malawi lake sediments. Those being relatively unaffected could actually support the idea that humans in that part of Africa world survived in larger numbers than those in Asia. At the very least that particular data point doesn't really support either the idea that Toba was or was not the cause of the bottleneck.
The other was near the end when the human bottleneck is placed at 50,000 years ago, the genetic evidence is actually pointing to a date between 55-70k years ago with most of the genetic studies centering around 60k years ago but a little over 70k being at the upper end of the possible range.
Kallie is back! Yaaay!
I would looove to see an episode on the footprints recently found in New Mexico!
One minor critique here - you mention plant communities recovering fairly quickly... but that's a bit confusing given we're talking so many different time scales here. Does this mean they would have recovered within the year, decades, hundreds of years? Can you quantify that a bit more? Quickly can mean so many different things in geologic time!
Very true, what is quickly in geological time is more than enough to cause an animal extinction and keep the area inhospitable for generations.
I like how in the critique you were very respectable and very nice to the person who did the video. You don’t see that a whole lot so please keep that critiquing style because it’s probably one of the more respectable ones I’ve seen
I’m not sure how fast the ‘quickly’ was but usually I would guess decades to hundreds of years, as the cycle (I forget the cycles name) starts with a disaster and after lichen and moss break down the rock into soil then different forms of plants and after generations large hardwood trees, so I’d guess decades to hundreds of years but how she worded her sentence and the types of plants she’s talking about I’d guess decades
I hope that helps! But again I’m not completely sure so that what I said with a grain of salt
@@RevBucktoothJesus666 a nice change of pace in yt comments..
@@birdybathtime389 That's what I would think too, but if it didn't cause issues for humans or other animal life, then wouldn't it have had to recover quicker than that? So that wouldn't make sense. Either way, quantifying it would have been really useful.
Reminds me of the episode of the Animal Armageddon: “Fire and Ice”
Bruh
That's because the episode was chronicling the Toba Eruption, if very poorly, especially with their portrayal of the ice age animals.
Every time I see Fire and Ice I think of that song by Pat Benatar for some reason.
@@daliborjovanovic510 facts
That's actually pretty depressing. A giant volcano bigger than any other we've ever known wasn't as devastating to orangutans as humans have been...
Prove it.
I have this thought very often. Especially sad is story of sea cows - they lived in Bering Sea and were hunted to extinction by Europeans in 20 years...
Excellent Program as always Eon! Thank you for making it. Is there any indication of prevalent diseases in human bones prior and after the period to give us clues to overall health in global areas? I keep going back to the same idea that ice ages mean having to be in enclosed places ( caves, communal huts, and whatever else ) to survive the cold. It would be opportunity for disease to effect a population. Remember caves have bats and bats have been known to carry disease, for example. It could go through a population in a region like fire.
There are very few human remains from Asia so early. Some are known from South China but very few and rather from later dates. There's just no evidence to make such judgment, even if more fossils existed or are found in the future, chances are they'd be distant in time from the narrow period of the post-eruption.
In Brazil toba is a slang for anus. So when I hear about the toba explosion a volcano is not the first thing that comes to my mind.
Ever get a lahar running down your leg?
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
When you are a native portuguese speaker and realize that humanity almost went extinct because of Toba.
I had a bean burrito today to eat. I hope I dont have a toba tonite
I can only imagine how insanely beautiful & dangerous old earth used to be , I’ll think about that till I die
It still is.
@@ExtremeMadnessX not the same as living unsheltered around cave bear
I really like the expressiveness of your voice and presentation. Your voice makes the material more interesting. Congratulations!
I wanna see a video on the evolution of the giraffe and its relatives!
I've always loved the story of the first giraffe in France, in a Paris zoo.
Man comes and stares at it for long, long time.
Turns around and says "I still don't believe it."
How very human!
I love how, no matter the joke at the end, the host that day always braces themselves for the worst.
I love that about the girls i visit on weekend.
Kalie is my absolute favorite host. I get so giddy when I open up a video and hear her voice lol. Love you PBS Eons ❤️❤️❤️
What I love about Eons is that instead of going with the previous point of view which most programs do you present other hypotheses and opposing views.and don't tell us what to believe, just leave it up to us to decide. You also mention some viewpoints as "unlikely" or "maybe" or "probably" giving hints that some outcomes hold more water than others which helps in making that decision. Always fascinating as all Eon videos are. I have learned so much from you over the years, I can't thank you enough.
Humans 74,000 years ago: "I should have worn a jacket!"
**dies**
What a fantastic story and presenter (in all the ways one can imagine). Keep the EONS videos coming to unearth the truth of our distant past.
I do enjoy your presentations. You speak clearly, at a fair pace, and your personality takes away the yata yata science attitude. Thank you.
Supervolcanic eruption is what I call myself 6 hours after having taco bell
Either way imagine how long the stories were told of a mega eruption before it’s memory was lost to time.
Amazing stuff!!!
It was just a few hours ago that a friend of mine told me about Toba eruption and now I have a better and visual source to learn more.
wow omg what a nice channel! i owe a big thank you to the whole crew
Thanks a lot for the great content!
Very interesting video! Love this channel 😊❤
Thanks for the great video. I love each of these, and cant wait for the next! I especially like the human journey
Very insightful 🌋, Great video 👍👍
YES YES YES!!!! I know about this volcano and have always wanted y’all to cover it. 😭😭😭
Very interesting video, thanks!
Congrats, close to 2million subs!
awesome content, I am piecing together a few things based on your and other channels content, very interesting stuff.
thanks for sharing
Another, more circumstantial point about the lack of change in stone tools from the area around the eruption is that the people there were not impacted enough to require new kinds of tools to survive. Circumstantial at best, as I am no anthropologist, but that's what I thought of
People were following specific traditions of tool-making, that's what prehistorians call a techno-culture (or just "culture" for short). Only if people survived they could transmit that tradition. We know in fact that "Nubian tradition" tools were being made in Southern India below and above the Toba ash layer. They did survive.
There's not exactly all that many tools that can be made out of stone. Its mostly knifes, flint, and pointy sticks
@@onyxgrnr666 - You have no idea. To begin with flint is a rock type, also known as silex, and not a tool type. It was the most favorite tool-making type of rock in most cases, but depends on availability.
You can make axes, spears, tiny arrow points of many types, choppers, cutters, scrappers, mortar and pestle, hand mills, grinding stones for water and wind mills, catapult projectiles, tiny bladelets to be mounted in sword-like weapons, even pots and ashtrays. And I'm probably just scratching the surface of the many possibilities.
But what matters here are not just tool types but tool styles: are the arrow points back-tipped or socketed for example? The diversity then becomes immense. Other Human species were less diverse but our kind was able to make very different things out of flint (or whatever other stone they had at hand), also bone tools often, including the needle.
I wont call it eruption, more like explosion like Krakatoa and Tambora. The volcanoes literally exploded and vanished. 😨
It is not just about the fact that there are tools but also their "style". A disruption in culture would lead to the creation of slightly different methods of creating similar things. This is usually very obvious. I haven't read the research cited for this culture, but I would imagine they might have evidence of continued use of 'flint' making sites (or whatever kind of stone) as well. Survivors entering the area would bring their own tool making styles and traditions with them. People who never made tools would start from first principles and their tools would probably show a progression as their skills progressed over time.
First Steve and now we lose Patrick! :(
Great video though, thanks
Nice video, thank you!
Great video!
Great episode
I bet many people wish the Yellowstone super volcano eruption will be just like the Toba super volcano eruption.
I am
I think some people would like to set it off with a nuclear weapon.
It's a sad state right now. Like, so many people passively wishing death to our species because we're on the brink of collapse.
@Eastern fence Lizard it isn’t likely to be larger. The last eruption from toba was larger than the last three super eruptions from Yellowstone
@Eastern fence Lizard not really, Yellowstone would still do a huge amount of damage
I've been missing your braids, but these soft curls are lovely, too. Thank you for another great episode.
hmm i’m a little confused as to why sediment from lake malawi is used as a reference, doesn’t the theory already suggest that those region wasn’t as affected as the Asian region??
Great vid. Love your voice.
Great stuff!
this video was sooo good!
Love this channel 😯☺️
Awesome vid
I love these!
Great vid 🤘
It's always a good day when eons releases
This channel kicks ass.
O Toba ta pegando fogo!
I wasn't expecting Bear Lake to make an appearance lol
Bravo - very interesting
Great discussion about the tradeoffs
Eons is always fascinating!
Thank you, on hearing of the Toba eruption I had wondered if other apes had shown a similar bottleneck.
Very interesting topic! The history of humans is so complex, and it’s fascinating to find out more about scientists are uncovering that history.
The explosion of krakatua in the 1890ties was seen even in Europe. Painter Edvard Munck did his paintings with assumed influence of those color changes
Take the effort to look it up. Krakatoa, 1883, Edvard Munch.
maybe the best channel in the youtube. Congrats!!
Had the Wikipedia page for this open as you uploaded this
Neat
Yay Kallie so glad to see you're Back!!
I love these videos
The water vapor thing makes sense, it's on an island
Rittmann, who wrote the first earnest teaching book of volcanology remarked the ignimbrites of Toba "the largest ignimbrite fields". There is in Northern Italy a mighty ignimbrite layer, in which was found the remnants of a small lizard, that died of the eruption.
Please could we get an episode on Dinocrocuta? It’s an amazing animal that needs a video all to itself ❤️
*Googles Dinocrocuta* Oh cool, like a hyena thing... THAT'S AS BIG AS A HUMAN, HOLY CRAP."
@@Cec9e13 yeah, dinocrocuta was OP. I’m sure tierzoo would rate it S+ tier
@@Cec9e13 vla la promesacapitulo 8o en español
Thanks!
well done
Yay! Thanks!!!
It's so funny that "Toba" mean "anus" in PT-BR
Ok now a lot of Portuguese comments make sense
Can't wait to see the Eons episode on the footprints discovered in White Sands!
Se você é brasileiro duvido não ter soltado uma risadinha com ela falando da "erupção do toba" entre outras coisas kkkkkk
I wonder if it actually meant that
kkkkkkkkkkkk obviamente
Toubah? Toba? Kkk
Temos que explicar isto para os gringos.
Salve galerinha do mal, demorei pra achar vcs aqui
A cada Toba dito era uma risadinha que eu soltava
Please most more often
lmao that lion's face is really squashed at 5:09
Someone needs to activate the reset again.
I wonder how humans will handle a megavolcano eruption today
Hoarding toilet paper!
Not well
Poorly
There'd be claims 5G or whatever new tech causes volcano eruptions
@@bri1085 you should be worried about strong radio waves going off near you at all times.
Cool. I wish you had a video for each continent showing how it came to be where it is from the beginning and the events that precipitated the changes. For example; I just watched some great animation that showed how South American traveled into its current position, then I had to watch all the others, but I don’t know what pushed it there or what caused the sudden lakes to come and go and where did that mountain range come from? India is a fabulous travel adventure but I don’t know what caused that either.
Tectonic plates.
Idk where exactly you'd find it but the history of the tectonic plates and how they move is what you want to learn.
Ah, the one active super volcano that is bigger than Yellowstone is. I’d also add that the toba eruption wasn’t the largest in the last 2.5 million years, it was the largest in the last 25 million years
Love PBS Eons
I really enjoyed this episode
yay new eons