'07: The Unrecognized Messiah

www.megasociety.com/noesis/180.htm
Wisdom and Compassion

Homo sapiens is a primitive species whose primary activity is internecine tribal warfare and whose secondary activity is destruction of the ecosystem. Obviously human wisdom and compassion have not evolved as rapidly as the intelligence associated with technology and weaponry. Maybe for this reason "human stupidity" actually has survival value for our species. If the mean absolute I.Q. were 150 rather than 100, and if there were no correspondingly increased levels of wisdom and compassion, then perhaps we would have eradicated our species from the planet. Is stupidity, itself, the long awaited but unrecognized Messiah?

Copyright © 2006 by Richard May.
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http://technorati.com/posts/n7JyPgPlqSohEaU+JpUxnHThbMY6y5v2yNFYXyiGN+I=
TIPS ON PUMPING GAS

Got this from onemansblog, it originated from an email and contains something that I have been hearing about from fellow motorists. "Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening….your gallon is not exactly a gallon. In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role.

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www.hindunet.com/forum/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=77812&Main=77811
Alexander the Great and Persian King Darius, Battle of the Issus River
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Alexander the great was not Blonde. Ancient Greeks and Macedonians were not blondes. In reality ancient greeks and Macedonians were not blonde. The blondes were from the slav race that settled in Macedonia much after Alexander the great. It could be possible that Alexander was not blonde because he was a Macedonian and Slav were blonde who settled later on in Macedonia. Even in History channel show they had depicted Alexander with black hair.Many Greeks are dark skinned and dark haired, some could even pass off for an Iranian or Indian. They've always had a thing for dying their hair blonde. The rest are a result of racial mixing when the germanic tribes invaded soon after the fall of the Roman empire. The region formerly known as Macedon is apart of Greece. Ancient Greece consisted of a number of states (Ionia, Athens, Macedon, Thrace, Sparta, etc).The founders of Ancient Greece were the Proto-Greeks, who were a pre-historic Indo-European tribe from Central Asia. They inherited their culture from the Middle East (Egypt and Mesopotamia), not from Northern Europe.The Greeks of that time were not "primarily" descended from Dorians, they were primarily descended from the Mycenean Greeks but the Dorians did influence their phenotypes to an extent. There isn't any evidence to prove that Dorians were Northern Europeans though.I've also already posted the most ancient picture of Alexander there is, so I don't really see any need to explain it. As the saying goes, "a picture speaks louder than a thousand words". In other words, Alexander did not have blonde hair.All those Greek scholars you mentioned were also from a few centuries after Alexander's death, and all their accounts (except for Diodorus) were written after Alexander's mosaic was created in Pompeii in the 1st century BC. The majority of modern historians have also agreed that the mosaic of Alexander is a faithful rendition of an original Hellenistic painting by Philoxenos in about 300 BC. As for Plutarch (and all those other Greek scholars), he never described Alexander's hair colour or eye colour in any of his accounts. He only described him as Xanthenein ("fair"). George Tsonis, a Greek-Canadian and a scholar of Greek, Roman and Persian history, the Greek word for Alexander's complexion is Xanthenein (fair). This description simply marks Alexander's complexion as being fairer than the other Greeks of his time. Yes, he was relatively fair, but not necessarily flaxen-blond in the Nordicist sense. From the Tufts University Lexicon Xanthenein is roughly translated as fair or a yellowish-brown color. A related term, Xanthizo, can also be to "make yellow" or "brown." No wonder there is confusion!

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www.geocities.com/capitolhill/senate/9443/
Ancient Macedonia
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BRIEF BACKROUND
Macedonia was a country to the north of Greece. It lied on the Aegean Sea. The Greeks considered Macedonians as barbarians. The end of Greek dominance in the known world, or as it is otherwise known the Macedonian Era began at The Battle Of Chaeronea August 338BC.

THE MACEDONIAN ERA

In the year 357BC the threat to Greece did not come from Persia but from the young and intelligent King Phillip 2 of Macedonia. At first Phillip began interfering in the affairs of Greece as the ally of one or another state. To begin with Phillip acted peaceably. In August 338BC the Macedonian army met the combined forces of Athens and Thebes at the Battle Of Chaeronea. The main Macedonian weapon was a long pike, the sarissa, terrifying to men armed only with short lances and swords. It was used by foot soldiers in the Macedonian phalanx an indestructible body of men, sarissas and shields. As long as the walls of the phalanx were not broken it was indestructible. There was fierce fighting from the start with neither side gaining the upper hand. The Greek General said "you have to keep attacking until you push the enemy back to Macedonia" and Phillip remarked "the Greeks just don’t know how to win". Phillip ordered his left wing to drop back steadily, the Greeks sensing victory urged on but what they didn’t know is that they were walking into a well-rehearsed trap. The Macedonian cavalry (horsemen) led by Prince Alexander then came and attacked. The entire Greek wall was broken and they were cut down each one by one. It was a great victory to the Macedonians, as they had wiped out the army of the proudest civilisation of their time in a few hours in August 338BC at Chaeronea. The people of Athens were terrified of the news of Chaeronea and Phillip was granted Athenian citizenship. Alexander was sent to Athens bearing the bones and ashes of the Athenians who had fallen at Chaeronea and in return was given Athenian citizenship. Phillip pushed on to Sparta and his task was complete, the days of the little states was over, what a pity the Greeks couldn’t unite themselves but had to have a conqueror do it for them. At the drunken wedding feast of Attalus King Phillip was murdered by one of his own guards who was suspected to be in the pay of the Persians.

INVASION AND DEFEAT OF PERSIA

The Greeks, who had breathed a sigh of relief over Phillip’s murder, began to realise that Phillip’s son was as much to be feared as Phillip had been. Alexander was twenty-one when he crossed the Hellespont as Commander-in-Chief of the Macedonian Army and the league of Corinth. He took an army of 35,000 Macedonians and 7,600 Greeks. King Darius did not take Alexander seriously at first. The Persians meet the Macedonians at the river Granicus and there objective was to kill Alexander as they thought he was the key and without him these Macedonian invaders would go home, although Alexander was very nearly killed only to be saved by a friend. The Persians were in a great position and attacked the Macedonians. Alexander drove the Persian left-wing up a hill and with that out of the way, then the Macedonian line started moving. Once within bow shot Alexander led the cavalry to charge all out, knowing he must get through. The Persian archers and troops turned and ran, Darius himself ordered his chariot to be turned and fled himself, deserting his army which went on fighting. When the Persians heard of the news that King Darius had fled himself they retreated and nothing much could be done to the Persian army before night fell. The Macedonians saw what true luxury was for the first time as the Kings chariot was captured which one could imagine was a fairytale dome of gold and embroidery and precious stones.

THE END OF DARIUS

The Persians had taken battle position near Gaugamela with Darius himself in the centre. Alexander kept back his Macedonian fighters in most of the battle until he saw a gap in the Persian line and then when he saw one he led his Macedonians into the gap and the line broke, and as before Darius turned and fled. All was not well on Alexander’s left as the Persians had broke through the phalanx so Alexander and his Macedonian Companions went to help. The news had got through that Darius had again deserted them. They turned and fled still angry and undefeated. He went to the palace of Persepolis and the treasure he knew was there. At Persepolis there was more gold bars and coins than in the whole of the western cities. Alexander heard of Darius' whereabouts and went. Then they saw the men they were after and two of them stabbed Darius and left him there lying in the dessert. The first Macedonian who got there gave Darius a cup of water-he was dead before Alexander saw him.

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE

The Macedonian Empire went as far as India, as was the largest empire the world had ever seen. Alexander The Great of Macedonia (the first king to be known by the words the great after his name) is considered to be one of the best military leaders of all time and a military genius to say the least.

THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER

Alexander's army had enough and wanted to return to their homelands, they convinced Alexander to return home although Alexander became very ill on the way back to Macedonia. Alexander died on the 13th June 323BC of malaria in Babylon.

THE END OF THE MACEDONIAN ERA

The Macedonian Empire ended on the 22nd June 168BC as they were conquered by the Romans, although a Roman General who fought them, never forgot and often confessed to his friends in Rome that he had never seen anything more alarming and terrifying than the Macedonian Phalanx.

THE PROPAGANDA

Macedonians should not be recognised as Macedonians as they have been of Greek nationality since 2000BC.

Macedonians whose language belongs to the Slavic family, must not call themselves Macedonians as 4000 years ago they spoke Greek and today still speak nothing but Greek.

Macedonia has no right to call itself by this name as Macedonia has always been a region and is today a region of Greece.

Bulgaria's view is that Macedonians are ethnically Bulgarian.

& that Macedonians are simply Western Bulgarians.

The Serbs believe that Macedonians are misguided country cousins who belong in a Greater Serbia. (Yugoslavia)

THE FACTS

Macedonia was never a region of Greece. On the contrary, Greece was often subject to Macedonia. In 1913, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria divided Macedonia into three parts. (BALKAN WARS)

Ancient Macedonians were a distinct European people and proud of their nationality, their customs, their language and their name. The same applies to their descendants today.

Ancient Macedonians regarded Greeks as neighbours not as kinsmen. The Greeks treated the Macedonians as foreigners ("barbarians") whose native language was Macedonian not Greek.

Macedonians claimed kinship with the Illyrians, Thracians and Phrygians, not with Greeks.

Greeks said Macedonians were "barbarians" (a word which means non-Greek)

Demosthenes, the great Athenian statesman and orator, spoke of the Macedonian King Phillip2 of Macedon as: Quote, "...Not only not Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from anyplace that can be named with honours, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave."[Third Phillipic, 31]

The Macedonian "barbarian’ defeated Greece at the Battle Of Chaeronea in August 338BC. The date is known as the end of Greek history or as The Macedonian Era.

Alexander The Great spoke Macedonian and was proud of his ethnicity. However the Macedonian language then was not used as a literacy idiom. The first native written language in Macedonia is the idiom called Macedonian or Old Church Slavonic (Cyrillic Alphabet) and is the basis of all Cyrillic alphabets today.

Alexander won his empire with 35,000 Macedonians and only 7,600 Greeks and called it the Macedonian Empire not the Greek Empire.

Today’s republic was created by Josip Broz Tito the anti-fascist leader of Yugoslavia during the 2nd World War who recognised Macedonians as a distinct nationality with their own language and customs.

The claims by Bulgaria that Macedonians are of Bulgarian ethnicity are entirely false due to the facts that the Tatars a people from the east who invaded the balkans during Byzantine times mixed with the Gypsies and Turks in the Balkans and created a new race of people which go by the name of Bulgarians. The Tatars dropped their native name and language in favor for the Macedonian language with its Cyrillic alphabet and customs and created the Bulgarian nation which is east of Macedonia and today has in its boundaries the Pirin region of Macedonia.

By the Treaty of Bucharest, in August 1913 Macedonia was divided among Greece, Serbia (Yugoslavia) & Bulgaria. Greece gained Aegean Macedonia and renamed it Northern Greece or Greek Macedonia. Bulgaria gained Pirin Macedonia and abolished the Macedonian name. Serbia gained Vardar Macedonia and renamed it Southern Serbia and it was included in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats & Slovenes. Later renamed Yugoslavia. Macedonian freedom fighters in 1944 created its Macedonian Republic (named Macedonia from then on, not Southern Serbia) but it was not entirely independent.

Macedonia became a sovereign state in 1991 by referendum. Majority of voters chose independence.

Therefore, the claims put forward by Greece that the Ancient Macedonians and present are Greeks, that their native language was Greek, and that Macedonia was a region of Greece are all false. Historical truth is that Greece inhabited by Greeks and Macedonia by Macedonians. The presence of Greek settlements along the coasts which King Phillip 2 destroyed anyway did not change Macedonia’s ethnic character and like wise, a much longer and stronger Greek presence in Egypt did not change that African land into a region of Greece.

The following is an extract from National Geographic, Vol 189, No.3 March 1996
TODAY IN THE REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
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Today’s Macedonians know who they are, but it’s hard to be Macedonian when other nations deny your existence. Macedonians identify closely with their church, so early in my four week stay I drive into the hills north of Skopje with my guide, Elena Damjanovska to visit the Gorni Sveti Ilija. The isolated monastery was built in the 12th century, when Macedonia was part of the Byzantine Empire, and it survived Tito’s communists as well as the Ottoman Turks, whose 500 year rule of the Balkan peninsula ended only in 1913 which is when Macedonia was divided. Its caretaker Tome Bonevski gives us the key to the church. Later we sample some wine and Tome wants to talk about his family. "Nine of them are in Sweden as guest workers" he says, "but when the war broke out, my grandson came back down from Sweden to do his duty in the Yugoslav army. He ended up in Croatia, in Vukovar, where the worst fighting was. He shook for a month after we got him out of there".The old man drabs his eyes."Macedonians have always been the victims in war" he says "My grandfather died fighting the Turks, and my father was left an orphan when only three. I joined the Partisans during World War 2 and got some of our nation back". "We fought for Macedonia for thousands of years" Bonevski says voice cracking, "and it should be known this piece of land is Macedonia and will always be Macedonia." "When the Macedonian people had no state" says Petar, Bishop of Bitola, "The church protected them from being assimilated into another culture. That’s why Macedonians love their church, even though they are not really very religious." "Go to Ohrid" the bishop advises, "for the pilgrimage to the monastery where St Naum is buried, 50 000 people will be there" Ohrid lies on the shore of Lake Ohrid, one of the two large lakes, the other Lake Prespa in south western Macedonia. Dark mountains cup Lake Ohrid and curve into the haze of the Albanian shore, nine miles away. The lake is fed by cold springs filtered through limestone, water that flows from the higher Lake Prespa, and is one of the oldest and deepest in the world, full of living fossils-trout and other species found no where else. The UN placed both lake and town under environmental protection. We head out for St Naum the next morning led by Dragan Petrovski. Dragan scoops a cupful of Lake Water and drinks freely. "When I was a child we’d take a pan of eel-stew get on a boat in the evening, and spend all night at St Naum. Just give me a tent and I’d live right here. I’d be perfectly happy and I could plant some vegetables. My cousin in California calls me a Balkan peasant for staying here, but I love it."
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St Naum monastery lies on the southern tip of the lake, surrounded by a green meadow eternally soaked in spring water. Families once brought their mentally disturbed to be purged in this place of purity. Before 1912 Macedonia encompassed much of today's northern Greece including Thessaloniki although it was called Salonica then. In the savage Balkan Wars of 1912-13, the Turks were finally expelled from the peninsula, and Macedonia was partioned into three sectors. Vardar Macedonia, including Skopje which is today's Macedonian Republic became part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, formed in 1918 and later renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. Pirin Macedonia went to Bulgaria. Aegean Macedonia went to Greece and is now in northern Greece. The Greeks set out expunge Macedonian loyalties in its new territory in 1913, they shipped in ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor, which diluted the Macedonian population and forced out thousands of Macedonians. Hristo Melovski, a professor at the University of Skopje, was born in Aegean Macedonia or as the Greeks call it, Greek Macedonia. "They Told us our name was now Mellios," he says, "and it was forbidden to speak our language-for every Macedonian word, you would be fined 30-40 Drachmas." Greece bristled anew when an independent Macedonia emerged on its northern border. They were out raged by the 16 Point yellow sun in a blood red field, which they considered Greek as it was found on the grave of Phillip2 of Macedonia. But how can it be Greek when the Greeks considered Phillip and all other Macedonians as "barbarians" a word which means non-Greek. Macedonia was forced to change its flag or would not be recognised by the Greeks and its powerful Washington lobby. Where is the justice in that? Macedonia’s internal wound remains the Albanian question. Macedonians are 67% of the population and Albanians 23%. The official language is Macedonian or as otherwise known Old Church Slavonic with its Cyrillic alphabet. Nade Proeva a professor says, "we all pay taxes to support these Albanians and their twelve children each." "They say will beat you in the beds." "We don’t have a mother state, like the Albanians, we only have our land, and they want to divide it again. Enough is enough there is nothing left to divide!" Albanians and Macedonians don’t socialise much. A young Albanian man said "The Macedonians have a force and army organised against us."

"Not against outside enemies?" I ask.
"No against us."
"You can ask 200 Albanians."
"If one disagrees, I will buy you dinner."
"What about the war?" I ask, "Will it happen?"
"You can smell the powder even here." They reply.

Serbia is still Macedonia’s most likely ally. Macedonians and Serbians fought alongside each other as Partisans in World War 2. Josip Broz Tito encouraged development of the Macedonian language and culture. Josip Broz Tito's portrait appears behind every desk in Macedonia. Macedonia avoided conflict in 1991 by convincing the Yugoslav army stationed there to take its weapons and go home and that they would not claim a share of the weapons. This left Macedonia in peace but defenceless until the UN and America stepped in. The Americans patrol villages to be seen, not to fight if 25 000 Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks or Albanians appeared on their border. "We protect ourselves, but otherwise weapons down." They go on patrol on a sunny afternoon when a Macedonian man in Slaniste approaches us to greet us. " I have no place else to go" he says laughing, "I am married to a Serb." He and Sgt. Albert Ochoa, a Mexican American from Los Angeles, engage in a sort of semiverbal conversation. They are soon laughing and shaking hands vigorously and calling each other a "drugar" a Macedonian word which means a special friend for whom you would die for.
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The Map Of 'The Creator'
www.rense.com/general24/civ.htm
Pravda.ru- 5-1-2-Translated by Vera Solovieva
120 Million Year Old Map Found
Proof Of Ancient Civilization
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A discovery by Bashkir scientists contradicts all traditional notions of human history: stone slabs which are 120 million years old and covered with the relief map of the Ural Region. This seems to be impossible. Scientists of Bashkir State University have found indisputable proofs of an ancient highly developed civilization's existence.

The question is about a great plate found in 1999, with picture of the region done according to an unknown technology. This is a real relief map. Today's military has almost similar maps. The map contains civil engineering works: a system of channels with a length of about 12,000 km, weirs, powerful dams. Not far from the channels, diamond-shaped grounds are shown, whose destination is unknown. The map also contains some inscriptions. Even numerous inscriptions.

At first, the scientists thought that was Old Chinese language. Though, it turned out that the subscriptions were done in a hieroglyphic-syllabic language of unknown origin. The scientists never managed to read it. "The more I learn the more I understand that I know nothing," - the doctor of physical and mathematical science, professor of Bashkir State University, Alexandr Chuvyrov admits.
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Namely Chuvyrov made that sensational find. Already in 1995, the professor and his post-graduate student from China Huan Hun decided to study the hypothesis of possible migration of Old Chinese population to the territory of Siberia and Ural. In an expedition to Bashkiria, they found several rock carvings done in Old Chinese language. These finds confirmed the hypothesis of Chinese migrants. The subscriptions were read.

They mostly contained information about trade bargains, marriage and death registration. Though, during the searches, notes dated the 18th century were found in archives of Ufa governor-general. They reported about 200 unusual stone stabs which were situated not far from the Chandar village, Nurimanov Region. Chuvyrov and his colleague at once decided that stabs could be connected with Chinese migrants.

Archive notes also reported that in 17th-18th centuries, expeditions of Russian scientists who investigated Ural Region had studied 200 white stabs with signs and patterns, while in early 20th century, archaeologist A.Schmidt also had seen some white stabs in Bashkiria. This made the scientist start the search. In 1998, after having formed a team of his students, Chuvyrov launched the work. He hired a helicopter, and the first expedition carried a flying around of the places where the stabs were supposed to be.

Though, despite all efforts, the ancient stabs were not found. Chuvyrov was very upset and even thought the stabs were just a beautiful legend. The luck was unexpected. During one of Chuvyrov's trips to the village, ex-chairman of the local agricultural council, Vladimir Krainov, came to him (apropos, in the house of Krainov's father, archaelogist Schmidt once staid) and said: "Are you searching for some stone stabs? I have a strange stab in my yard." "At first, I did not took that report seriously, - Chuvyrov told. - Though, I decided to go to that yard to see it. I remember this day exactly: July 21, 1999. Under the porch of the house, the stab with some dents lied.

The stab was so heavy that we together could not take it out. So I went to the city of Ufa, to ask for help." In a week, work was launched in Chandar. After having dug out the stab, the searches were stroke with its size: it was 148 cm high, 106 cm wide and 16 cm thick. While it weighed at least one ton. The master of the house made special wooden rollers, so the stab was rolled out from the hole. The find was called "Dashka's stone" (in honour of Alexandr Chuvyrov's granddaughter born the day before it) and transported to the university for investigation.

After the stab was cleaned of earth, the scientists could not entrust to their eyes... "At first sight, - Chuvyrov sais, - I understood that was not a simple stone piece, but a real map, and not a simple map, but a three-dimensional. You can see it yourself."

. . . ."How did we manage to identify the place? At first, we could not imagine the map was so ancient. Happily, relief of today's Bashkiria has not changed so much within millions of years. We could identify Ufa Height, while Ufa Canyon is the main point of our proofs, because we carried out geological studies and found its track where it must be according to the ancient map. Displacement of the canyon happened because of tectonic stabs which moved from East.

The group of Russian and Chinese specialists in the field of cartography, physics, mathematics, geology, chemistry, and Old Chinese language managed to precisely find out that the stab contains the map of Ural region, with rivers Belya, Ufimka, Sutolka," - Alexandr Chuvyrov said while showing the lines on the stone to the journalists. - You can see Ufa Canyon - the break of the earth's crust, stretched out from the city of Ufa to the city of Sterlitimak. At the moment, Urshak River runs over the former canyon." The map is done on a scale 1 : 1.1 km.

Alexandr Chuvyrov, being physicist, has got into the habit of entrusting only to results of investigation. While today there are such facts. Geological structure of the stab was determined: it cosists of three levels. The base is 14 cm chick, made of the firmest dolomite. The second level is probably the most interesting, "made" of diopside glas. The technology of its treatement is not known to modern science. Actually, the picture is marked on this level. While the third level is 2 mm thick and made of calcium porcelain protecting the map from external impact. "It should be noticed, - the professor said, - that the relief has not been manually made by an ancient stonecutter.

It is simply impossible. It is obvious that the stone was machined." X-ray photographs confirmed that the stab was of artificial origin and has been made with some precision tools. At first, the scientists supposed that the ancient map could have been made by the ancient Chinese, because of vertical inscriptions on the map. As well known, vertical literature was used in Old Chinese language before 3rd century.

To check his supposition, professor Chuvyrov visited Chinese empire library. Within 40 minutes he could spend in the library according to the permission he looked through several rare books, though no one of them contained literature similar to that one on the stab. After the meeting with his colleagues from Hunan university, he completely gave up the version about "Chinese track."
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The scientist concluded that porcelain covering the stab had never been used in China. Although all the efforts to decipher the inscriptions were fruitless, it was found out that the literature had hieroglyphic-syllabic character. Chuvyrov, however, states he has deciphered one sign on the map: it signifies latitude of today's city of Ufa. The longer the stab was studied, the more mysteries appeared. On the map, a giant irrigative system could be seen: in addition to the rivers, there are two 500-metre-wide channel systems, 12 dams, 300-500 metres wide, approximately 10 km long and 3 km deep each.

The dams most likely helped in turning water in either side, while to create them over 1 quadrillion cubic metres of earth was shifted. In comparison with that irrigative system, Volga-Don Channel looks like a scratch on the today's relief. As a physicist, Alexandr Chuvyrov supposes that now mankind can build only a small part of what is pictured on the map. According to the map, initially, Belaya River had an artificial river-bed. It was difficult to determine even an approximate age of the stab.

At first, radiocarbonic analysis was carried out, afterwards levels of stab were scanned with uranium chronometer, though the investigations showed different results and the age of the stab remained unclear. While examining the stone, two shells were found on its surface. The age of one of them - Navicopsina munitus of Gyrodeidae family - is about 500 million years, while of the second one - Ecculiomphalus princeps of Ecculiomphalinae subfamily - is about 120 million years.

Namely that age was accepted as a "working version." "The map was probably created at the time when the Earth's magnetic pole situated in the today's area of Franz Josef Land, while this was exactly 120 million years ago, - professor Chuvyrov says. - The map we have is beyond of traditional perception of mankind and we need a long time to get used to it. We have got used to our miracle.

At first we thought that the stone was about 3,000 years. Though, that age was gradually growing, till we identified the shells ingrained in the stone to sign some objects. Though, who could guarantee that the shell was alive while being ingrained in the map?
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The map's creator probably used a petrified find." What could be the destination of the map? That is probably the most interesting thing. Materials of the Bashkir find were already investigated in Centre of Historical Cartography in Visconsin, USA. The Americans were amazed. According to them, such three-dimensional map could have only one destination - a navigational one, while it could be worked out only through aerospace survey. Moreover, namely now in the US, work is being carried out at creation of world three-dimensional map like that.

Though, the Americans intend to complete the work only to 2010. The question is that while compiling such three-dimensional map, it is necessary to work over too many figures. "Try to map at least a mountain! - Chuvyrov says. - The technology of compiling such maps demands super-power computers and aerospace survey from the Shuttle." So, who then did created this map? Chuvyrov, while speaking about the unknown cartographers, is wary: "I do not like talks about some UFO and extraterrestrial. Let us call the author of the map simply - the creator."

It looks like that who lived and built at that time used only air transport means: there is no ways on the map. Or they, probably, used water ways. There is also an opinion, that the authors of the ancient map did not live there at all, but only prepared that place for settlement through draining the land. This seems to be the most probable version, though nothing could be stated for the time being. Why not to assume that the authors belonged to a civilization which existed earlier? Latest investigations of the map bring one sensation after another. Now, the scientists are sure of the map being only a fragment of a big map of the Earth.

According to some hypothesis, there were totally 348 fragments like that. The other fragments could be probably somewhere near there. In outskirts of Chandar, the scientists took over 400 samples of soil and found out that the whole map had been most likely situated in the gorge of Sokolinaya Mountain (Falcon Mountain). Though, during the glacial epoch it was tore to pieces. But if the scientists manage to gather the "mosaic," the map should have an approximate seize of 340 x 340 m.

After having studied the archive materials, Chuvyrov ascertained approximate place where four pieces could be situated: one could lie under one house in Chandar, the other - under the house of merchant Khasanov, the third - under one of the village baths, the fourth - under the bridge's pier of the local narrow-gauge railway.

In the meanwhile, Bashkir scientists send out information about their find to different scientific centres of the world; in several international congresses, they have already given reports on the subject: The Civil Engineering Works Map of an Unknown Civilization of South Ural." The find of Bashkir scientists has no analogues. With only one exclusion. When the research was at its height, a small stone - chalcedony - got to professor Chuvyrov's table, containing a similar relief. Probably somebody, who saw the stab wanted to copy the relief. Though, who and why?

http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/04/30/28149.html
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http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00301/project%20thinkquest/pages/new_menu1.html
What is Racial Harmony After All?
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It is when people of different races with the same nationalities come together to work and live harmoniously as one big family in a nation. Any insensitive or unthoughtful decisions made by governments or an authorities will trigger a big load of racial issues such as racial riots, strikes, and even lawsuits, etc. Hence, everyone should have be very clear of their counterparts' cultures and practices so as to avoid any unnecessary mistakes, whether it be in a casual speech or in daily behaviour.

www.asiafinest.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t120042.html
Anyone Know About Kim Ung-Yong?
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ChangGang May 15 2007, 01:41 AM
damn what a nerd!
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Catinmyfridge May 16 2007, 07:36 PM
More about Kim Ung Yong: People with Korean blood have a reputation for having high IQ. There was a North Korean who was in the Guiness Book of Records for having the highest IQ. And there's Sho Yano: he's half-Korean (mother's side) and half-Japanese. He probably inherits his genius gene from his Korean mother as intelligence is passed on via maternal genes. Incredible - he was playing Chopin by the age of three. He could have been another Mozart if he had trained in music.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sho_Yano

Environmental pressures and adaptation account for the high IQ of East Asians. Koreans are arctics, they came from the region of Siberia, though they admixed with Southern Jomon type people when they migrated south. (Does that mean we will become less smart as time goes on as environmental pressures like cold climate aren't a factor in our survival anymore?)

www.harbornet.com/folks/theedrich/JP_Rushton/Race.htm
A Life History
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And for those of you who say intelligence is not hereditary but mostly environmental, science proves you wrong: G the general intelligence gene, race differences in average IQ are largely genetic, evolution of races and intelligence. The few studies done (such as Daniel Vining's) show a narrower SD for E. Asians, and in fact most non-whites have narrower SDs than whites. Gottfredson gave a average IQ for whites at 101.4 with a SD of 14.7 on the WAIS. Asians had an average of 106 with a SD of 15. (go to page 8). I trust Dr. Gottfredson and her associates more than I do Daniel Vining, whos works are more outdated.I feel the bigger story is the structure of intelligence, and others have pointed this out also. E. Asians are significantly skewed toward visuospatial intelligence - good for computation, memorization and such.visuospatial is left-brain. memory is right-brain. However, with low to just below average verbal intelligence, there appears to be a lack of both types of intelligence (or possibly both hemispheres) working together on ideas, hence the lack of individuality, creativity and inventiveness. There's a different age standard for asians and whites. As you know, the typical black-white-asian spectrum is present in average age of maturation. Coordination, reaction time, and g have different peaks for each age. Blacks develop the fastest and die earlier; e. asians develop slower and die later (4-5 years later than whites). Most of the tests showing the 4 point gap (in verbal) with east asians vs. whites are ones tested at an early age- after three years, Asian verbal iq jumps 9-13 points (to 102, or thereabouts as pre-teens) while white verbal drops 1-2 points (towards 101-102 as well). At a young age, blacks are also at 97 verbal iq. The gaps widen as people age; Asians do have a big gap between visuospatial and verbal, but their verbal is still the highest of the three major groupings. In actuality, asian math controlled for g is the worst. Extremely high IQ blacks make good mathematicians. The fact that some blacks can be genius mathematicians might have something to do with the higher testosterone level of African males, speculatively? IQ 190 Philip Emeagwali (Extrapolated; Nigerian Mathematician) However I believe success in work and life depends mainly on ambition; intelligence is important but without ambition, you won't have the drive to succeed.
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Moobie May 16 2007, 07:43 PM

(Does that mean we will become less smart as time goes on as environmental pressures like cold climate aren't a factor in our survival anymore?) It might. But if the future becomes more meritocratic and G-loaded it will, and people from Mongolia, China, Tibet, Korea, much of Japan, etc, are from the same population group that evolved 40,000ish years ago, iirc. But Japan has some Ainu in them and China- a few mixed minorities in the south and in Xinjiang.

http://anthropology.net/2007/07/06/mount-toba-eruption-ancient-humans-unscathed-study-claims/

Mount Toba Eruption - Ancient Humans Unscathed, Study Claims

At about 74,000 years ago, Mount Toba on the island of Sumatra erupted in a massive explosion that supposedly rocked the Middle Palaeolithic world to its very foundations, bringing contemporary human populations to their knees, reducing the global population level to around 15,000 individuals, thereby precipitating a so-called bottle-neck of human evolution, as proposed by Stanley Ambrose, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discussed in this BBC News article from 1998, and in an essay at the Bradshaw Foundation, in the same year. However, recent discoveries made by Michael Petraglia, from the University of Cambridge, have now cast doubt on this theory…

(the team)…found the stone tools at a site called Jwalapuram, in Andhra Pradesh, southern India, above and below a thick layer of ash from the eruption of the Toba volcano in Indonesia — an event known as the Youngest Toba Tuff eruption. The tools from each layer were remarkably similar, and Petraglia says that this shows that the huge dust clouds from the eruption didn’t wipe out the population of tool-using people. "Whoever was there seems to have persisted through the eruption," he says. This is the first archaeological evidence associated with the Toba super eruption, says Petraglia, and it contradicts theories that the eruption had a catastrophic effect on the area that its ash blanketed.

Following this eruption, a phase of dramatic global cooling ensued, evidenced by a 6-year global winter, which in turn was followed by the onset of the Würm glaciation event. Petraglia proposes that only modern humans could have survived such an event, giving as his evidence the supposed similarity of the lithic assemblage, and purported others, which he claims correspond with those found in Africa dating to around 100,000 bp, by which time modern anatomically modern humans had been extant there for some 100,000 years.

Petraglia thinks that modern humans — rather than Neanderthals or other hominins — are the only species that would have been able to persist through an event as dramatic as the Toba eruption. This theory will spur much debate, he admits, because modern humans were not thought to have reached India, from Africa, so long ago. "It’s controversial," says Petraglia, "but it makes a lot of sense." Petraglia and his team compared the tools they found to others from Africa from different periods in this week’s edition of Science1. The Indian tools look a lot like those from the African Middle Stone Age about 100,000 years ago, when modern humans were thought to have lived, he says. "Whoever was living in India was doing things identical to modern humans living in Africa." Neanderthal toolkits found in Europe are very different, he says. This is more evidence, he says, that the plucky ash-covered inhabitants of Jwalapuram were modern humans.

However, we know that modern humans weren’t the only individuals capable of withstanding sudden and extreme climate change, as Eurasian Neanderthals lived through the Riss glaciation which occurred from 180,000 bp - 130,000 bp, and they also survived the Mount Toba event, regardless of its supposed global impact. It’s possible too that Homo erectus lived on as late as 50,000 bp in Asia, and if Homo floresiensis turns out to be a genuine new species, they too survived this event (n.b. - but see this latest update from John Hawks, which I’ll attempt to address later) Moreover, lithic assemblages, whether in India, Africa or Europe don’t always indicate exactly which species of Homo may or may not have been responsible for their manufacture, as pointed out by Stanley Ambrose…

(who) disagrees with Petraglia’s conclusions. "It is highly speculative to say the eruption had no impact," he says. Ambrose argues that Petraglia’s sample size is too small to make proper comparisons with other tools. And, he adds, "stone artifacts cannot be used to differentiate Neanderthals from African moderns."

…which raises the question of exactly which species of Homo would have been living in India at the time of the Toba event. At 74,000 years bp, it is generally assumed that anatomically modern humans were still resident only in Africa, from where they would emerge at around 50,000 bp to commence their purported total replacement of all other species across the globe, culminating in the extinction of the Neanderthals at around 24,500 bp. However, we know this can’t be true, because as John Hawks points out in his post on this topic, Australia was populated by moderns by at least 50,000 bp, and quite possibly even earlier still, at around 60,000 bp, depending on one’s interpretation of the widely different/wildly conflicting dates given for Mungo Man. And if Homo erectus managed to navigate the open seas to Flores at 840,000 bp, it would appear that modern human behaviour is a great deal more ancient than in its comparatively youthful Middle and Upper Palaeolithic claimed origin, meaning that theoretically any species of human from Homo erectus up to and including early Homo sapiens could have prevailed in a post-Toba environment. But even more crucially, there is evidence of modern and symbolic behaviours coming out of India at dates far earlier than these Middle Palaeolithic dates, as indicated by Robert Bednarik’s paper from here, in which he details what may be evidence of Indian palaeoart dating back to around 300,000 bp, making it roughly contemporary with ostrich shell disc beads from Lake Fezzan in Libya. On a very generalised basis, it could be argued that there were constant pulses of emigration from Africa to Asia, dating back from the Acheulean, through the African Middle Stone Age, as indicated by the purported modern survivors of Mount Toba, followed by others at around the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic boundary of Eurasia, and especially western Europe, plus many other African exodus which have so far remained undetected. On the other hand, others might argue that what we are seeing here is evidence for various multi-regional events, in which local populations in Asia and Africa evolved in some kind of parallel, possibly mediated by more or less frequent encounters and genetic exchange between the two populations over the course of hundreds of thousands of years. But until fossil evidence is retrieved from sites like Jwalapuram, we will have no clue as to the true identity of the makers of the stone tools and other sites alluded to by Petraglia - even if, and when fossil remains are recovered, further clarification as to the geographical origin of those specimens may be in need of yet further clarification. (TJ) see also: Early Indian Petroglyphs project

45 Comments
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[...] Mount Toba Eruption - Ancient Humans Unscathed, Study Claims At about 74,000 years ago, Mount Toba on the island of Sumatra erupted in a massive explosion that supposedly rocked […] [...]
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Steve Krause July 8, 2007 at 11:37 am
It’s nice to see that anthropologists appear to be more willing to state publicly what has been obvious to the interested general public for many years now: The commonly presented model of early hominid/human migration patterns is overly simplistic in the extreme and in at least some respects completely wrong.
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Timaeolithic July 10, 2007 at 8:30 am
Thanks Steve, although I should point out that I’m not anthropologist in the traditional sense as I’ve never studied the subject academically, so I can’t claim to speak for the profession as such - however, there is more data being published that indicates (to me at least) that the African exodus total replacement model of the Middle/Upper Palaeolithic, supposedly giving birth to modern mankind, does itself need to be replaced completely, and moreover the whole idea of archaic humans being inferior to ourselves, H.Sap, is seriously flawed. Tim
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Ken Hogan July 25, 2007 at 8:31 pm
From the studies I have seen, compare it to the Mt. Tambora eruption that was 28 times smaller than Mt. Toba. The destruction of archaic humans would be unavoidable. In 1816, the "year without summer" untold hundreds of thousands of humans died. The eruption would have wiped out all but a few thousand very tough Neanderthals. Mt. Toba dropped the planet into a 5 year winter, and continued with a 19,000 year ice age. Ancient archaic species that resembled us, and who at that time were hunter-gathers would have be wiped out. The Cambridge University study released on May 8th of this year confirmed that the DNA of the New Guinea and Australian people are all decedents of the North Africa group coming out at the end of the ice age about 55,000 years ago. The ending of the Mt. Toba ice age. The whole idea of archaic humans being inferior to ourselves is without doubt true. The modern humans coming out of Africa migrated as hunter-gathers down the sea coasts through to Asia. In 47,000 years we have gone from sitting in a cave around a fire to landing modern humans on the moon. The archaic humans had a much longer time frame than that to exist and never progressed farther nor improved their living habits as shown by their tools and living conditions. There is no convincing proof other than a few tools above the ash that any archaic humans survived the eruption. The archaics barely changed the way they made a tool in a hundred thousand years. We change clothing styles every year. There is no doubt they were inferior, that is made plain just by reading this computer.
Ken
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TerryT July 26, 2007 at 2:38 am
Hey Ken. You say:

The eruption would have wiped out all but a few thousand very tough Neanderthals.

But Neanderthals lived miles away, in Europe. And yet pre-modern humans survived in Southeast Asia, much closer to the eruption. How do you account for that?
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Ken Hogan July 26, 2007 at 8:34 pm
What pre-modern humans are you speaking of? I know of no findings of an pre-modern humans camps or living areas found after the Toba eruption except for a few tools that are argued were pre-human above the ash. That is the only evidence I am aware of, and that is disputed. As I said, as a hunter-gather species with nothing to gather and no way to store food, the likelyhood of survival was almost non existent. If that were not so, the DNA findings would not indicate that every person alive today is decended from appox. 10,000 modern humans out of North Africa. It would confirm that Southeast Asia was empty as they migrated out of Africa and down the sea coasts. See the May 8th study finally released by Cambridge University on the DNA studies confirming that we all came out of Africa about 55,000 years ago. The 10,000 DNA combinations have been known for sometime. We are all kin.
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Ken Hogan July 26, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Actually, if you will look at the Bradshawfoundation.com it will explain with much more numbers and facts than I can put on this post. Ken
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Victor Grauer August 1, 2007 at 9:33 pm
The new Toba discovery looks to be extremely important:

1. If Petraglia et al are correct, it would appear to be the earliest archaeological evidence for modern humans in that part of the world and therefore a huge boost for "Out of Africa."

2. It also creates some problems, however, because some sort of bottleneck is needed to explain all sorts of things that need explaining — such as discontinuities in the genetic evidence — also human phenotypic (and cultural) diversity generally. If the Toba explosion failed to generate a catastrophe sufficient to produce such a bottleneck, then something else must have done the job — a Tsunami perhaps.

3. If, as Hogan states, the eruption would have produced a truly monumental catastrophe, then perhaps the only logical explanation is that small amounts of exceptionally hardy individuals might have survived in scattered areas throughout Asia. That too would have produced a bottleneck. I guess we just need to wait and see what other types of evidence will be found associated with Toba tuff.

4. As far as hominids surviving in East Asia is concerned, the prevailing winds appear to have been northwest, which might well have spared any humans east of Myanmar.

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Tim Jones August 2, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Hi Victor - thanks for your comment - Mount Toba seems to be one of those ongoing mysteries, with no-one really sure about its actual impact on the human population - a few years ago it was thought that virtually the entire human race at the time was almost brought to its knees, causing the so-called bottle-neck, although people like John Hawks dispute this idea - plus, those who opt for the ‘Out of Asia’ paradigm could equally take heart from this story, claiming that the modern tools were part of a regional development - some fossil specimens in context of the site would certainly tell us a thing or two, though whether the picture would be conclusively clarified is anyone’s guess…
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Ken Hogan August 4, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I think we should put much more study into the effects on humans that Toba caused than has been done. We have basically three species of hominiods before Toba. After Toba, we have a species that arises that is similar to the others, but the brain is different. The species before us had hundreds of thousands of years to develop and simply didn’t. Some of them made their tools the same way for a hundred thousand years. In about 47,000 years, modern humans circle the globe, killing everything in their way that was dangereous. Giant Cave Bears, Saber-Tooths, Cave Lions, you name it, it’s gone. We let live the dangerous animals we do now out of guilt. Something the other species could not ever accomplish, or even attempt. 50-55,000 years after coming out of Africa, the modern humans land a man on the moon. Something radical happened. What is what we should be looking for. Will we ever find out? Who knows? Not me, but it is the direction for the right people to be going to look closely at. If the Cambridge Univerisity study of May 8th is correct, every person living today came from those migrations. The total DNA combinations come from 10,000 modern adult humans, there is some explaining left to do. The studies I saw would not produce a bottleneck that changes our nature from them to us. We are not them. We adapt, we change, we wonder, we build, we kill our own species in quanity. Something no other species on Earth does. I wonder who is studying this, if anyone? Everyone has the grant money for the DNA studies, but still not understand how we became who we are. Ken
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TerryT August 5, 2007 at 2:02 am

Ken, you comment,

"In about 47,000 years, modern humans circle the globe, killing everything in their way that was dangereous. Giant Cave Bears, Saber-Tooths, Cave Lions, you name it, it’s gone."

You leave out another thing they killed that may or may not have been dangerous: the other human species they ran into.
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Ken Hogan August 5, 2007 at 9:25 pm
Terry T,
If you look at the last paragraph, I noted that we change, adapt, we wonder, we build, we kill our own (I meant humans here) species in quanity. You just missed it, or I wasn’t clear what I meant. That is what is interesting to me. We are the only species that kill their own in mass quanities. Why is that? What makes us do what other species will not do? Some fight when they mate, and sometimes, but not often it is fatal. But they don’t line up and kill each other in mass quanities like we do. There has never been a sentient being on this planet that we know of. Evolution has played a trick and produced a species that may wipe itself out because it is so much more intelligent than any other species known. Perhaps so intelligent it destroys itself. That doesn’t sound intelligent, but we are what we are. The most savage, cold blooded killers that have ever walked this Earth. We have no remorse, and for most or all of our history it was kill or be killed by other humans. We make the dinosaurs look like new born kittens. They just killed for food or grazed, mated and died. Up against us, they would with no doubt, have not a chance to live. We would kill each other for the chance to kill them all. We kill for many other reasons than food. How did we get to this point? Wouldn’t it be interesting to know those answers? Ken
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TerryT August 5, 2007 at 10:17 pm
Yes. We are an interesting species.
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TerryT August 5, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Ken. I just went onto your "Veritas" site. You list a few "truths" but a couple of them are actually wrong.

"The only hominid species known to survive were the Neanderthal … All Homo erectus,Java man, and any others that might have been on Earth, all evidence of their continued existence was gone."

Java man is now thought to have survived until perhaps as recently as 40,000 years ago if not more recently. The so-called Hobbits also survived until even more recently. Humans also survived in Africa.

"Approximately sixty thousand years ago, as the ice age was diminishing, there suddenly appeared ten thousand modern humans … We are, according to blood MtDNA comparisons, ALL,every human alive on this planet today, descended from those ten thousand modern
humans."

That’s just the mitochondrial DNA, our mother line. Its common origin seems to be at least 150,000 years ago. The Y-chromosome, our father line, has a much more recent common origin. The two lines are fairly independent of each other. Therefore other DNA from previous species may easily still survive today.

"The problem confronting everyone is that at the time, there were no hominids on the planet alive except for Neanderthal. We simply appeared as we are today out of ‘thin air’ so to speak."

Human ancestors have survived continuously in Africa since we first separated from other apes. Changed through selection over the ages of course, but there’s actually no sudden change within Africa we can use as a cutoff point to define modern humans.
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Ken Hogan August 6, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Terry,
Thanks for looking at the website. I should have updated it by now and have not. The information I had five years ago has changed. We still believe that 10,000 modern humans are all the combinations we decended from. I have since seen some sites in far eastern asia that could be survivors of the Toba eruption. So a small number could have survived the eruption, but it takes a minumum of 500 different DNA combinations to keep the group from having serious genetic problems and dying out. (Some claim 5,000) We don’t know how long they would have lasted. The Amish are going through some of those problems now. The study of Picarn Island, where the H.M.S. Bounty landed is a really sad tale of not enough combinations. There seems to be no tell tale signs of continued pre-modern humans after the eruption, even in Africa until about 15,000 years after the eruption. Except of course the Neanderthals until I saw the tool finds in Asia above the ash. That debate is still going on. There were no dated material that I could find at the time. I did look and asked everywhere. Nothing. Things do change though, and those statements could be wrong. What I do stand by is the conclusion that we all decended from those 10,000 adult modern humans, and that they were for some reason either much more intelligent (I believe that) and/or they were much more violent to each other and anything they felt was a threat. You have to remember what I wrote is fiction, and all "facts" are subject to change as we continue to study the evidence. It is just a story, but I used the "facts" available to me at the time. I should update my website. We did apparently appear out of thin air, simply because none of the other species could do what we do. There is no sign of gradual improvements in humans. These 10,000 appeared just as we are today. It is a big mystery as to where they came from and why all of a sudden. In the blink of the eye of time so to speak. Thanks for pointing those things out and I will update my site to reflect the new findings that have been made. Just remember, underlying all that, it is just a fiction book. I meant it to be a interesting alternative to creationism and evolution. We are here for a reason, just not what we have come to believe we are here for. The books reveals there is a very good reason we have no contact with other world civilizations. It’s just a story.
Regards,
Ken
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Freecitizen November 6, 2007 at 4:52 am
Petraglia’s team finding does not prove that YTT did not have a devastating effect as suggested by Professor Ambrose. It only tells us that the population that settled in that area made the same tools or similar tools as the population before the YTT event. Why are people so skeptical about the YTT theory? Mass extinction due to volcanic eruption has happen before. One such example is the Siberian Traps that is thought to have caused the Permian mass extinction 250 millions ago. But Ken posed a different question. How did we come to be a species that kills its own kind on a large scale? On that count, humans is not unique. We can see that ant colonies wage war over territory. It may be between different species of ants but they fight to the end nevertheless. But with the level of intelligence humans possess, the destructive nature of our specie can be extreme. New technology and old habits is a devastating mixture. Ken also ask another question, how did the human specie remain unchanged in the stone age for hundreds of thousands of years and in a relatively short time in geologic terms got to the moon? This may sound outlandish but there seem to be evidence that this planet may have had extraterrestrial visitors in the past. If we are to consider Darwin’s theory as true. Then, we must ask, what biological advantage is there in the evolution of golden hair and bright blue irises?
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Victor November 6, 2007 at 11:25 am
I won’t comment on the "extraterrestrial" angle, but do want to add a few more cents worth of commentary regarding the Toba findings. The evidence Petraglia found by no means tells us that the eruption of ca. 70,000 years ago would not have had a devastating effect on any humans living in India at the time. We are talking, after all, about an 8 foot thick layer of volcanic ash spread over many thousands of square miles! If Petraglia found very similar stone implements both above and below that ash, what that tells us (assuming he didn’t get sloppy) is that SOME humans in that place somehow managed to survive the catastrophe. Hawks wants to believe these findings put the bottleneck theory to rest, but they most certainly do not. An event of that magnitude would certainly have led to population annihilations and/or bottlenecks in all parts of the affected region. The very meaning of a bottleneck requires at least a few survivors, after all. What Petraglia’s findings seem to indicate, if his comparisons with African artefacts are to be taken seriously, is that "modern" humans were in that area during the time of the eruption. If his interpretation is correct, then "bottleneck" theorists like Oppenheimer must be taken very seriously indeed. What Ambrose wants to believe is that the Toba eruption precipitated some important and fundamental change among humans living in Africa, a change responsible for the Out of Africa exodus and the morphological diversity we see among humans in various parts of the world today. I’ve never been able to make much sense out of that. First of all, Toba is nowhere near Africa. Secondly, all the characteristics of modern humans, including language, are found equally througout both Africa and the rest of the world, so it would seem rather pointless to associate some sort of fundamental intelligence spurt with the Out of Africa migration. Finally, if human morphological diversity originated in Africa, why do we find so much of it outside of Africa? If Toba precipitated modern human diversity, then modern humans would have had to be living downwind of the eruption when it occured and would thereby have been affected by at least one and possibly more bottlenecks. Humans living to the east of Toba would NOT have been so affected — and would still resemble Africans, which so many indigenous groups in SE Asia and Melanesia in fact do. Petraglia’s findings reinforce such a theory, contrary to what individuals such as Hawks might want to believe.
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TerryT November 7, 2007 at 1:15 am
Victor wrote,

"What Petraglia’s findings seem to indicate … is that "modern" humans were in that area during the time of the eruption".

This puts modern humans in India by 70,000 years ago. This makes an occupation of Australia by 60,000 years possible but contradicts many dates given for a single out of Africa origin. In fact the greatest difficulty with the theory is that no-one can come up with any real evidence for a date. A date of 40,000 years seems consistent with a possible movement INTO Africa though. And we know from fossils that modern-looking humans had reached the Middle East by about 90,000 years ago. They were then replaced there by Neanderthals until about 60,000 years ago, so perhaps the single origin theory should be more like a double origin theory. Free Citizen wrote,

"what biological advantage is there in the evolution of golden hair and bright blue irises?"

It would pay us to remember that there characteristics are usually associated with pale skin. In fact people with that pale skin become darker under the influence of summer sun. How would we explain any other creature that changed from white to brown with the seasons and had pale coloured eyes? Do we perhaps assume humans obey a different set of biological rules to the rest of nature?
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Freecitizen November 7, 2007 at 6:31 am

The first paragraph of Petraglia’s report ends with this sentence, "Its impact on Earth’s atmosphere and climate (5–7) and on local animal and plant populations remains a matter of contention." Note how a biased view was exhibited before the piece began to describe the findings at the site? The report offers no explanation to counter the evidence of ice core oxygen isotope indicating that after the YTT event, the earth did experience the coldest temperatures in the last glacial period for a thousand years. The piece also does not state with a higher degree of accuracy how much immediately after the YTT it is implied that humans were present in the area. That was and still is tropical area. Flora and fauna would have recovered relatively quickly after the ash had settled. It would take no more than a few generations for humans to reach there from Africa. But if Petraglia’s team were to find stone tools in the ash layer itself, that would reinforce his argument further. However, that is not the case. So, his findings proves nothing. As regard to TerryT assertion about association with pale skin, this argument doesn’t hold much water. If skin can have pigment that turns darker with the summer sun, why does the hair not turn darker too during summer? Unlike humans, polar bear hair do change from white to yellowish during summer but the skin is black all the time and the eyes certainly isn’t blue. What makes humans so unique that it should have a different evolutionary trait apart from other animals? There shouldn’t be and there is no satisfactory answer to explain the need for golden hair and blue eyes. When General MacArthur landed on some remote island in the Pacific with his fleet, the aborigines thought he was god. Is it so hard to imagine that some time in our ancient past, similar things could have happened?
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Victor November 7, 2007 at 7:58 am
TerryT wrote:

"In fact the greatest difficulty with the theory is that no-one can come up with any real evidence for a date."

It’s true that there has been no tangible evidence for an "Out of Africa" migration date — until now. Petraglia’s research does in fact provide us with evidence consistent with the presence of "modern" humans in India at the time of the Toba explosion. He could be wrong, of course, and the tools he found could be the product of some type of homo erectus or neaderthal population. If he is right, however, then the stone tools found beneath the Toba ash would represent the first solid evidence of "modern" humans in that region at such an early date. As far as the earlier presence of modern humans in the Middle East, ca. 90,000 bp, the genetic evidence indicates that this lineage did not survive. There may indeed have been several "Out of Africa" excursions, but apparently none of the lineages survived — and only one left tangible evidence, in the form of fossil bones. The preponderance of genetic evidence tells us there was one and only one Out of Africa migration that produced the Asiatic, European, Oceanic and American populations extant today. As for the date of that excursion, it’s hard for me to understand why so many anthropologists have been so conservative with their dates. 40,000 bp is way too late to account for either Europe or Australia. 50,000 bp is still too close to the dates for the earliest occupation of Australia. 60,000 bp could be right. But Petraglia’s evidence suggests an even earlier date. Why would that be so difficult to accept?
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TerryT November 8, 2007 at 2:59 am
Victor askes,

"Why would that be so difficult to accept?"

It’s not. But even earlier is even easier to accept. After all just because the Y-chromosomes outside Africa probably go back no more than 60,000 doesn’t say anything about mitochondrial DNA. In spite of popular beliefs the two lines are remarkably independent. Mitochondrial DNA outside Africa could easily go back more than 80,000 years, close to "the earlier presence of modern humans in the Middle East, ca. 90,000 bp". I’m afraid it’s impossible to conceive of any sort of genetic evidence that could prove "there was one and only one Out of Africa migration that produced the Asiatic, European, Oceanic and American populations extant today." Free Citizen asked,

"What makes humans so unique that it should have a different evolutionary trait apart from other animals?"

That was my point. The explanation for seasonal colour change is likely to be the same for humans as for any other animal or bird from the same region. Not necessarily the same mechanism of course. Hence the hair needn’t change colour. Polar bears live much further north than humans would have been able to until they had invented warm clothing.
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Victor November 8, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Terry — it’s important to realize that the dating of genetic markers is extremely iffy and vague, so the 60,000 bp figure for Y may well be off by a considerable amount. mtDNA can be traced much farther back, apparently, but that has no bearing on Out of Africa. African "Eve" was born in Africa sometime between 150,000 and 200,000 years ago, apparently. And the "founding’ markers for Eurasia are also located in Africa way back when. Forget about the Middle Eastern migrants, their line seems to have come to dead end, there’s no evidence of it anywhere else. And yes there IS evidence supporting the "one and only one" Out of Africa migration. At least as far as mtDNA is concerned, I’m not sure about Y. All the mtDNA of all living non-Africans can apparently be traced to a single individual. If multiple OOA lineages had survived, the human mtDNA genome would look different. That’s my understanding, at least. As far as blond, blue-eyed, and like that, I see no reason why these have to be adaptations. They could also represent mutations that survived and then prevailed purely by chance, as the result of a severe population bottleneck, most likely in Europe, maybe due to Ice Age conditions. I see no advantage in blondeness or blue-eyedness. Black people survive very well in all parts of Europe as do light skinned people in Africa. Humans are remarkably adaptable and always have been.
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TerryT November 8, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Victor. I was thinking about this mtDNA and Y-chromosome problem today. Now, we are fairly sure Y-chromosome line C for example evolved in Asia, probably the Iranian plateau but I’m not prepared to place a large amout of money on that. But the mutation must have occurred in a single individual. He must have had male children but they would have only half his autosomal or nuclear DNA. His grandsons in turn would only have one quarter of his genes, his greatgrandsons one eighth, and so on. Of course they may have been breeding with close relations so there may have been many shared genes but, say, members of the C Y-chromosome line moved a small way they would have had children with women who were even more different. The genes would even more rapidly become diluted. We do know Y-chromosome C’s descendants eventually reached Australia. I think we can presume that neither the individual with the original Y-chromosome mutation, nor even his grandchildren actually took part in that movement. It would have been a slow migration across Asia, picking up resident genes as it moved. Therefore, in effect, we can say the Y-chromosome itself moved independently of the autosomal DNA or genes. Resident elements of these genes could easlily remain in spite of the expansion of Y-chromosome C. The same thing with mtDNA. But mtDNA is replaced less readily than Y-chromosome, therefore even though "the dating of genetic markers is extremely iffy and vague" mtDNA’s root is more ancient than the Y-chromosome root. The root of both is in Africa but there is no reason at all why they might go back to a single migration, led by a Moses perhaps? A similar process has been assumed to account for many more modern Y-chromosome and mtDNA expansions but the probability it has been happening continuously throughout our evolution is usually conveniently overlooked. It seems people have an emotional need to believe we can point to a particular time and place for our origin. This need probably derives from beliefs we grow up with. We always have to fit new information with what we already believe. I agree "As far as blond, blue-eyed, and like that, I see no reason why these have to be adaptations." However, whenever such things have happened in any other species we have assumed they are adaptations. Why the different approach?
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Sapient November 12, 2007 at 11:47 am
Well, first of all - Petraglias findings may be very interesting in and of themselves, but they do not prove that it was the same people living before and after YTT, as already pointed out. (Assuming so on the basis of what evidence Petraglia’s article cites seems terribly flawed to me. What it says is that the people that lived before and after, were on the same technological level.) The evidence doesn’t even say conclusively that they were of the same species. The stone tool manufacturing techniques that are indentified in the findings as Middle Paleolithic, spans some 300,000 years. That is a time period / level of technology that comprise both Homo Neanderthaliensis and Homo Sapiens (and maybe other coexistent species as well). In what sense then should this be intrepreted as remnants of "modern man" (in the sense most commentators here seem to mean)? It may well be that the pre-YTT deposits were made by later extinct individuals of Homo Neanderthaliensis and the post YTT-deposits were made by individuals of Homo Sapiens, living on a similar technological level. (Or both may be from cultures of Homo Neanderthaliensis, who were later replaced by Homo Sapiens.) Stone age technology at this level is just to uniform in complexity to prevent an accurate identification of who deposited the material i all but some cases. Look at figure 3 in the article - it doesn’t prove what the article seem to imply (continuity)… The technological spread indicated by functions 1 and 2 - the dimensions in the plot - show a very pronounced grouping (South African MSA). A kind of "mainstream" with variations, that completely dominates all findings. That means that, as far as these functions may be used to differentiate between different "strands" of stone age technology, only those that occupy a position outside of the main group can be used as conclusive evidence of continuity! Why? Because when the finds are all within the mainstream, they may originate from two wholly different sources who are both also within the mainstream. So we may have two cultures - both of whom belong within the mainstream technology - leaving behind evidence that we cannot tell appart. That would have been highly unlikely if both the pre-YTT and post-YTT deposits belonged to a smaller subgroup - and almost unthinkable if they showed some unique characteristics. (If they do, I can’t find any evidence of that in the article.) As far as I know, much of the variation in stone tool manufacturing techniques is attributed to "physiological" reasons, such as what resources - types of stone et.c. - are available at the location, more then "cultural" reasons. Two very different cultures in the same environment would tend to produce more or less the same tools in the same manner, because banging stones together can be done in only so many different ways…Secondly, even if the evolutionary development that is assumed to occur during the bottleneck is a necessary cause of the later development is not in itself a sufficient cause. The first humans (Homo Sapiens) after the divide would still be on the same technological level as their predecessors. Therefore nearly indistinguishable from them (in these kind of material deposits). Even if the technological evolution picked up a tremendous speed later on, it was still a slow start. It would still be consistent with the findings. Oh, and thirdly - blondness IS an adaptation; to lack of sunlight. Less pigmentation allow for more effective synthesis of vitamin D in the skin (by ultraviolet rays). In a sun-rich environment that is no problem. (But sunburn is a big problem, hence pigmentation.) But close to the arctic circle the production of vitamin D is severely hampered. (It is recomended that people of darker skin adjust their diet if they live in northern Sweden for example, for this very reason.) Blonde hair and blue eyes are - as far as I know - two traits that have no function but can be explained anyway, since they are the result of deficient DNA. Exclude certain protein encoding alleles, and the hair and irises loose pigmentation. These traits are recessive - in any large population they would eventually disapear. But the population that adapted to the cold climate was small enough for them to "catch a ride" with other and more valuable genes. Although cross breeding with both aliens and Neanderthals have been suggested as the source, there’s absolutely no need for so fanciful explanations…
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Victor November 12, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I’m neither a geneticist nor archaeologist, so not in a position to argue strongly with regard to either of the above posts. Terry, the point of your argument regarding Y and autosomal markers eludes me. While it’s true that the autosomal markers from any individual are going to get diluted over time, the assumption, as I understand it, is that the overall statistics for relatively static populations will remain fairly stable over time. I’m not sure what the significance of Y chromosome line C is, but if it wound up in Australia and started in or around Iran, then it could have originated via a bottleneck event somewhere in S. Asia, very possibly due to the Toba explosion, no? What I do know something about is the musical evidence, which tells me that there is a huge stylistic gap between Africa and SE Asia and Melanesia, that could be traced to something that happened during the original OOA migration. We find an African musical signature only north and east of Toba, nowhere west of it, until we reach Africa itself, of course. We find most of the populations with an African DNA signature north and east of Toba as well. That, plus the need to explain human morphological and genetic differences, makes a strong case for a Toba bottleneck. If not that, then possibly some sort of huge Tsunami at a somewhat later time perhaps. Australian aboriginal music is also remarkably different from anything African, suggesting that the aborigenes could have originated somewhere in S. Asia as a result of the same bottleneck. That would explain morphological similarities with certain "Australoid" tribal peoples of S. India. Sapient — What Petraglia is saying is that the stone tools he found under the Toba ash were very similar to stone implements found in homo sapien sites in Africa. AND different from earlier types of tools employed by pre-homo sapien populations. If that turns out to be the case, then modern humans were indeed in S. Asia during the Toba explosion. He could also be wrong and the tools could have been produced by Homo Erectus or Neanderthals. My point about "white" skin, blonde hair, etc. was that such traits could also be explained as the result of a population bottleneck in Europe that had nothing to do with adaptation. Just because a trait could have been the result of adaptation doesn’t mean it had to have been. Paleosiberians and Eskimos are not caucasian and do not have blonde hair, despite their living close to the Arctic Circle.
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TerryT November 12, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Sapient: "Less pigmentation allow for more effective synthesis of vitamin D in the skin (by ultraviolet rays) … close to the arctic circle the production of vitamin D is severely hampered. Two problems. How long ago did humans get close enough to the Arctic Circle for lack of sunlight to be a problem, and didn’t they have clothes by then? As Victor says, "Paleosiberians and Eskimos … do not have blonde hair, despite their living close to the Arctic Circle." So what does that do to the lack of vitamin D theory? And why is the possibility of hybrids between Neanderthals and humans of African origin part of "so fanciful explanations". Their separation probably had much the same cause as the separation between modern Europeans and the different humans they have ran into over the last few hundred years.
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sapient November 13, 2007 at 7:11 am
Petraglia et.al. may of course be right - but I cannot see that the article proves that. I find their conclusion under-determined by the facts presented. Maybe I was a bit wordy an unfocused in my critique, so I’ll try to sum it up tighter: We have two contradictory hypothesis:A) Continuity between pre- and post-Toba cultures in this localeB) A bottleneck (due to the Toba-event) cause a global repopulation/OoA. The artifacts found from before and after YTT, are more or less similar in technological level, composition, manufacture et.c. At least enough so that the findings are compatible with hypothesis A. But it is not enough to rule out competing hypothesis B. The material finds - as I read the article - could be the result of two wholly different populations, that just happened to leave similar enough material deposits. (Because both their origins had similar enough technology - i.e. were part of the "mainstream" group in figure 3, in the article.)Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find that the article presents enough data on the tool-findings that are at the same time supporting continuity between pre- and post-Toba cultures, yet distinguishes them from other possible sources. Yes, there are some distinguishing characteristics, but I don’t think that they are strong enough to rule out the possibility of parallel origins since a great part of them may very well be the result of adapting the same general technology (shared by many cultures) to the material circumstances at hand (what I called " ‘physiological’ reasons" in my first post). Therefore the conclusion is underdetermined. As to the other issue, the adaptive value of pale skin, lack of blonde hair et.c. among innuites and paleosibirian populations, doesn’t constitute a counterexample to my argument. The mutations that give rise to the differences of, on the one hand, eye and hair coloration, and on the other skin tone, are separate and independent. There exists a marked evolutionary pressure to adapt skin coloration to the level of UV lighting. The correlation between skin coloration of indigenous populations and level of UV-light, can be described with a very neat equation. Innuite and some closely related peoples are exceptions - who don’t have suficiently light skin to correlate to the latitude of their habitats. But the reason for that is in their diet. The vitamin D insufficiency that produces the need of adaptation in the first place, is not a risk for them since their traditional diet is very rich on vitamin D.
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TerryT November 13, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Sapient wrote,

"We have two contradictory hypothesis:"

Surely the easiest way to decide between them is to examine extinction in the wider mammalian comunity. Were there other extinctions in India associated with the Toba eruption? If so the bottleneck looks likely, if not it’s unlikely. As for "The vitamin D insufficiency that produces the need of adaptation in the first place, is not a risk for them since their traditional diet is very rich on vitamin D." So why do they have an eyefold, greatly reduced facial hair and extra keratin in their skin? Presumably nothing to do with the environment they evolved in?
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sapient November 14, 2007 at 9:19 am
TerryT wrote:

"So why do they have an eyefold, greatly reduced facial hair and extra keratin in their skin? Presumably nothing to do with the environment they evolved in?"

Yes, precisely that. But not the environment they live in NOW, they were pre-existent. The arctic environment don’t select for these traits. (As far as we know, anyway. And we probably would.) But neither are they a problem - there’s no evolutionary "encumberance" in carrying these traits so they stay in their genome. About comparison to animal taxa before and after the Toba-event. Yes, that could be one way. Maybe someone will try it (either trying to draw conclusions from what data may already exist or by making new examinations). But it may not prove anything. There’s no way to know what kind of animal fossils there "should be". And even if we don’t find what we expect, that doesn’t necessarily prove that animals of that kind didn’t live in the indian subcontinent anyhow. Maybe they didn’t but without leaving any fossil remains… Or, if they left remains, we might not find it because we look in the wrong place. That’s the problem with archaeology. Absence of evidence, isn’t evidence of absence.
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TerryT November 14, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Sapient wrote:

"Absence of evidence, isn’t evidence of absence."

I’ve only ever heard that argument from creationists and IDers. Am I correct in my conclusion in this case?
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Victor November 15, 2007 at 5:40 am
As I see it, an 8 foot thick layer of volcanic ash is all the evidence anyone should need of the devastating effects of the Toba eruption. It may not have been so devastating as to cause major extinctions, but it would certainly have produced genetic bottlenecks. The real mystery is not whether a bottleneck could have been produced, but whether or not modern humans were in the area at the time. If Petraglia’s analysis of the stone artefacts is correct, they were. And if they were, it’s hard to see how they could not have been profoundly affected by the Toba eruption.
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sapient November 15, 2007 at 6:56 am
TerryT wrote:

"I’ve only ever heard that argument from creationists and IDers. Am I correct in my conclusion in this case?"

You could not be further from the truth. I am as far as possible from a creationist point of view. The maxim - although sometimes abused by religious appologists - is one of the fundamental laws of scientific reasoning. But it IS possible to abuse it, of course. In this "catchy" wording, it is not very elaborate - it avoids one crucial thing that I find many creationists are ignorant about (or just don’t care about); the issue of positive or negative hypotheses. There are times when abscense of evidence IS evidence in itself. If you say "there is a coin in my pocket" and we investigate that without finding any evidence to support your claim, that disproves it. But only as long as our investigation would reasonably find evidence if there was a coin in your pocket. If, on the other hand, I say "you don’t own any coins!" I cannot prove that by saying "Look, I’ve checked your pants and there were no coins in the pockets" because you may own coins without keeping them in your pockets. The difference between the hypoteses demands radically different methods of proof. To make a very streched analogy to Petraglias article - he reports having found two coins, but that doesn’t prove that they were owned by the same person.
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TerryT November 15, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Sorry for the insult Sapient. As soon as I posted it I looked back at your comments and realised I was totally wrong. Again, humblest apologies.
Some time back Victor wrote: "the point of your argument regarding Y and autosomal markers eludes me". The point I was making is that we can’t assume the presence of a particular Y-chromosome or mtDNA line says too much about population migrations. A single gene can move through a population without being intimately associated with a suite of genes.
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Victor November 25, 2007 at 12:12 pm
According to Sapient:

"We have two contradictory hypothesis:A) Continuity between pre- and post-Toba cultures in this localeB) A bottleneck (due to the Toba-event) cause a global repopulation/OoA"

I don’t see A and B as contradictory. A bottleneck is consistent with continuity, not extinction. If the tools found under and over the Toba ash were products of the same culture, as Petraglia claims, that does not mean no bottleneck occurred — even if there were only a few survivors in that locale, they would still have been making and using the same type of tools. Considering the 8 foot thick layer of ash it’s hard to understand how there could not have been a bottleneck.
TerryT:

"Sapient wrote, "We have two contradictory hypothesis:" Surely the easiest way to decide between them is to examine extinction in the wider mammalian comunity. Were there other extinctions in India associated with the Toba eruption? If so the bottleneck looks likely, if not it’s unlikely."

According to a recent paper, "Big Cat Genomics", there could have been at least one: "Tiger genetic diversity dates back to only 72,000–108,000 years ago, when a founder effect established an ancestry for all modern tigers (Table 2). The dates correspond roughly with the catastrophic eruption of the Toba volcano in Sumatra about 72,500 years ago (82)."(p.41)
http://home.ncifcrf.gov/ccr/lgd/staffInfo/staff/pdf/johnson_annReviewHumanGenetics2005_big_cat_genomics.pdf
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Anunaki November 29, 2007 at 11:50 am
The Toba event made people wonder and the wandering ended up on the moon. This … until they found out that they were from Africa themselves.
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TerryT November 29, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Victor, thanks for that. I’ve only just noticed your reply. The link doesn’t come through here but I’ll google it.
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TerryT November 29, 2007 at 7:13 pm
No. Doesn’t work. If you find it again could you please let me know?
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Victor November 29, 2007 at 8:39 pm
I’m not sure what the problem is, but here it is again
http://home.ncifcrf.gov/ccr/lgd/staffInfo/staff/pdf/johnson_annReviewHumanGenetics2005_big_cat_genomics.pdf
It’s a long pdf file so takes a while to download.
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TerryT November 30, 2007 at 12:16 am
Very interesting Victor. Thanks. I notice that Asian leopards didn’t suffer a bottleneck at that time, which is surprising, although the authors mention Asian elephants did.
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Victor November 30, 2007 at 7:29 am
Terry, it would be important to know where in Asia each of these species was centered at the time of the Toba blast. It would have affected those west of Toba but not anywhere else, as the prevailing winds were apparently toward the west — or northwest. Note that many indigenous peoples now living east and southeast of Toba tend to have African morphology and genetics and also share certain important cultural traits with Africa (including what I call the "African signature" in their music) while those living to the west, including the Indian "tribals" apparently do not.
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Rebecca K. December 23, 2007 at 4:05 am
Sapient - I simply had to let you know that I very much enjoyed reading over your extremely reasonable and completely logical arguements. You solidly clarified in so many words on a simple blog things that I have been desperately trying to explain to one of my extremely knowledgeable but damn stubborn professors for the most of my semester thus far! Even while that Terry T. fellow was trying to pick a fight you very confidently and indubitably provided explanations and the like. You sound like a seasoned debater to be honest! I myself am technically a Christian creationist (not all Creationists’ ideas go along with the scriptures in a literal sense) and a very religious one at that. I appreciate the value of symbolism in the scriptures that most religious persons do not. I do not quite understand how or why suggesting that an individual is a creationist would be considered an insult (frankly I can only assume that an individual would only qualify such an idea as an insult out of complete ignorance and bias). Nonetheless, the assertion that you yourself were a creationist made me laugh. Once again, I wholly appreciate your obvious insight on the studies of the paleoanthropological world… even the ideas - though they may be few - presented in your response to this article. By the by, sorry if this sounds like a nonsensical ranting compliment - it’s almost 5am over here and I haven’t gotten any sleep!
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TerryT December 25, 2007 at 1:41 am
Rebbecca K wrote

"that Terry T. fellow was trying to pick a fight."

Not really. I was merely drawing attention to the fact that the difference between humans pre- and post- Toba may not have been that great. There is actually nothing we can use to categorically distinguish "modern" humans from "ancient" humans. That brings up the question of when were humans "created"?
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Alice C. Linsley January 7, 2008 at 4:44 pm
It is pretty difficult to refute the "out of Africa" hypothesis when you look at the physical evidence. Humans were running sophisticated mining operations in the Lebombo Mountains of South Africa 100,000 to 80,000 year ago. These mines include tunnels worked by thousands of miners who dug tons or red ochre. The oldest known counting device was also found in these mountains: the Lebombo Bone, which represents a binary calendar. The Toba eruption, while later, does not seem to have effected populations in Africa directly, but it doubtless did contribute to teh global climate changes that would led to the Guirian Wet Period (likely the time of Noah’s flood). For more on this see:
http://jandyongenesis.blogspot.com/2007/10/africa-in-days-of-noah.html
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TerryT January 7, 2008 at 9:10 pm
So Noah’s flood has now shifted to Chad? I thought it was in the Black Sea. Or in Mesopotamia. I suppose that’s the advantage of myth, it’s very flexible. Noah’s flood can be anytime you choose. And the Toba eruption was long before what your link claims as a date for the Gurian Wet period.
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Ken Hogan March 6, 2008 at 10:40 pm
One of my pet questions is we are obviously no relation to Neanderthal, but no one will come out and flatly say it. That has been proved over and over. They are at least 28 markers different from us. Apes are that close, but the physical differences, such as the contruction of the hips were so different. They were, to say the least, slow. They were made for forest, and mountain. Modern humans because they were fast, were made to operate on the steppe, in forest, about anywhere, as we do today. The intelligence difference is obvious, as the true modern human is only known to be in existence for 60,000 years. The difference between the other species and us include a serious shortening of the face, the fury that our particular species showed. Such as the deliberate extinction of the Giant Cave Bears, that no other species could accomplish. We literally came out of nowhere to take over the Earth, and Toba had to have great influence by reducing the populations of similar species.Tambora in 1815 erupted in about the same area and it caused the 1816 "year without summer" People in New England went hungry, it was a disaster in Europe, it’s always a disaster in Africa. Toba was 28 times as powerful as Tambora and caused a horrific drop in temperature for a 1,000 years before the ice age dropped in. With Tambora, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world died from hunger, weather changes, diseases, from the comparatively small Tambora, how could Toba not have been 28 times worse? Though I am a agnostic, I still come up with we are not from here, and though some people actually get upset at the thought of that being real. The possibility of that being true gets closer as time goes by and continuing studies keep coming up with the same question. Why are we so different, and how did we appear as we are today with the exception of climate, and survival changes over 60,000 years so suddenly? Even with the passing of 60,000 years, we can all trace our origin back to a very small group of modern humans (estimate 10,000 DNA adult combinations). Have any of you seen the skeletons of the so-called humans in the 100,000 to 80,000 years B.C.E.? They all have the thick jawbones, elongated faces, heavy brows of the other species. They may have mined, I don’t know, but I know they don’t look anything like us, but suddenly about 60,000 years ago, we appeared as we are DNA wise and have changed very little. We dominate the world like no one creature has ever dominated it, and we are the only sentinent being ever known on this planet. So many questions, and only half-answers, or no answers. We have a lot of work to do. As for the person who looked at my website, I still have not updated it, as there are some studies being done at the moment, and I will update it when they are finished. They should be more solidly conclusive than the Cambridge University/Stanford study released in April of 2007 as they are an extention of the results. Another interesting thing, do any of you see any of this in normal news? I don’t see anything and it is one of the most controversial questions of our time. One of the reasons it is so important is because about 99% of what we thought we knew, we now know is wrong. That makes it one of the most important questions of our time.Other than should we have let them hang Saddam, or threaten to let him loose? Well, the other would be why are they spending our Social Security money over there, and who is going to pay it back. So, those are two more important questions I guess, but as I said, we have a lot of explaining left to do. I wrote the novel as I did as a wake-up because no one whats to come out and say that Darwin was right, right up to modern humans, and we seem to be the exception for reasons still unknown. The truth of our origin is still not right, and we may never know, at least in our lifetimes, that is why I took my guess at it. Ken Hogan

"Truth does not give a damn what we conceive. We survive or perish according to our ability to discern the truth correctly and act upon it." - Ken -www.veritasnovel.com/

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http://wapi.isu.edu/envgeo/EG6_volcano/volcanoes.htm
For comparison, the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens erupted only 1 km³ of magma!
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The Toba caldera on Sumatra, Indonesia, site of the second largest volcanic eruption ever discovered. The caldera is partly filled by Lake Toba. The flat area in the distance are pyroclastic deposits from the eruption. Recent caldera forming eruptions, their location, and volume of magma erupted:

Tambora (Indonesia) 1815	50 km³ magma erupted
Kuwae (Tropical Pacific) ~1453	40 km³ magma erupted
Santorini (Thera) Greece ~3600 BP (Before Present)	30 km³ magma erupted
Mazama (Crater Lake) 6845 BP	60 km³ magma erupted

Although large, these Holocene eruptions pale in comparison to events during the Pleistocene:

Toba (Indonesia) 74,000 BP	3500 km³ magma
Yellowstone Caldera 600,000 BP	1000 km³ magma
Yellowstone Caldera 2.1 million years ago	2500 km³ magma

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http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4062021
The eruption of Toba in 72 000 BC was one of the largest in the last few hundred thousand years. 2800 cubic km of magma was erupted. Particles from the Toba eruption remained in the air for 6 years and world temperatures were reduced by 5 to 10 deg C. Toba is an example of a super volcano eruption.
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. . . .I think there is a lack of contrast and a blue cast, probably due to atmospheric haze. The colors and tones are much better in your other shots. This one could be much better. Yours.
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You are correct Philippe, the UV haze makes it difficult to get a clear shot. The depth of the place is still an awesome sight to behold. Lake Toba is the largest volcanic lake in the world and and Samosir Island which was formed in the middle of the lake is even larger then Singapore. Toba caldera produced the largest eruption in the last 2 million years. The caldera is 18 x 60 miles (30 by 100 km) and has a total relief of 5,100 feet (1700 m). The caldera probably formed in stages. Large eruptions occurred 840,000, about 700,000, and 75,000 years ago. Samosir Island and the Uluan Peninsula are parts of one or two resurgent domes. Lake sediments on Samosir indicate at least 1,350 feet (450 m) of uplift. Pusukbukit, a small stratovolcano along the west margin of the caldera, formed after the eruption 75,000 years ago. There are active solfataras on the north side of the volcano. Comparison of volumes produced by some of the greatest volcanic eruptions. The Young Toba Tuff has an estimated volume of 2,800 cubic kilometers (km) and was erupted about 74,000 years ago. The Huckleberry Ridge Tuff, erupted at Yellowstone 2.2 million years ago, has a volume of 2,500 cubic km. The Lava Creek Tuff, erupted at Yellowstone 600,000 years ago, has a volume of 1,000 cubic km. The May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens produced 1 cubic km of ash.
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http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/2007/03/the_toba_supere.html
The Toba Super-Eruption
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A comment posted a few days ago (here) said that the general crisis of survival faced by Homo of 75,000 years ago was due to a massive eruption of Mount Toba on the island of Sumatra. This event was enormous, leaving a huge caldera (shown above), 80 miles x 50 miles, according to the comment. The resultant ash layer probably amounted to 800 cubic kilometers of magma. Temperatures may have dropped 3.5 degrees Celsius. Analysis of the Greenland ice indicates that there was a substantial increase in the atmosphere’s sulfates for six years following the eruption. A follow-up comment said that such a massive event surely had a massive impact. Which sounds true. Personally, I didn’t know anything about it, so I thought I would find out. The Toba link to human extinctions appears to have been proposed in an article by Stanley Ambrose (abstract here). A few years earlier Michael Rampino and Stephen Self had proposed in a letter to the journal Nature (here) that the Toba super-eruption had accelerated a returning Ice Age. These exciting claims inspired serious geological research into the question of whether such super-eruptions can really cause ice ages and mass extinctions. The general answer is no. The most authoritative investigation appears to have been the one made by Paul Wignall, an expert on mass extinctions. His review (available here) found that there were much more dangerous volcanic events than the super-eruptions and he reported:

This brief review of historical and geological volcanism provides little evidence for a link between individual volcanic eruptions and climate change, and no evidence at all for a link with extinctions. (p. 4)

Obviously, an event of such magnitude would have wiped out immediately many local populations, and I am personally quite attracted to it as an easy and wonderfully melodramatic explanation for what happened to the Asian Homo population that disappeared before Homo sapiens arrived. Nobody who has spent as many Saturday afternoons watching adventure movies as I have can fail to be thrilled by the story’s wow factor.

Whether the explanation holds water is another matter. I want to see evidence of a more general extinction at the same time, before I say Case closed. (The Toba eruption occurred almost directly on the famous Wallace Line, a bio-geographical marker showing the differences between very ancient animal distributions. Wouldn't a catastrophic extinction wipe out, or at least blur, the line?)

As for the bottleneck Homo sapiens was experiencing around that time in Africa and the decline of the Neanderthals … I’m less persuaded. There was a 45,000 year spread between the Toba super-eruption and the Neanderthal’s last stand at the Straits of Gibraltar. That’s about 3,000 generations of Neanderthals, too many for any but the thinnest of indirect causal accounts to include Toba.

The comment also included a wonderful scene of "a few hundred breeding pairs [of humans] … huddled behind the Central African massif crowned by Kilimanjaro on the East." One of my proudest moments as an African traveler came when I sat on the lip of a small caldera, Empakaai Crater, overlooking the Great Rift Valley. Mountain peaks, including Kilimanjaro, were visible in every direction. I had been exploring the region from every angle for months by then and amazed my guide by being able to name every one of the peaks we could see.

I would very much love to think that 35 hundred generations ago our species survived thanks to the shelter of those mountains. So why don’t I believe it? First of all, if the local extinctions in Asia are in doubt, how can I take extinctions in Africa seriously? Moreover, now that I am reminded of the view of Kilimanjaro and the Great Rift, I am also reminded that volcanic chaos was no stranger to the human line of descent. Ngorongoro Crater’s caldera was formed by a massive eruption only a few million years ago, surely within sight of some astonished and terrified bipeds. Locally, it was a catastrophe, but the line soldiered on.

Actually, there are so many calderas in that area (Empakaai, Olmoti, and Ngurdoto leap to my mind) that catastrophic eruptions appears to have been part of the evolutionary background in that region. The volcanic rock in the area has been estimated at several hundred thousand cubic kilometers (see here), or well over 100 times the amount of the Toba ash.

The Laetoli Footprints show the track of two bipeds walking through a shower of volcanic ash 3.6 million years ago. Hominids were not strangers to eruptions. Kilimanjaro itself is the site of enormous, frequent volcanic activity. The mountain is formed by three separate volcanoes: Kibo is the central one. It is the tallest portion, famous for its massive and (one-time) snow-covered dome. Kibo is also the youngest mountain.

Two older, formerly separate volcanoes, Mawenzi in the east and Shira to the west, provide separate peaks. The oddities of travel and popular viewpoints have led many visitors to spot Mawenzi, while Shira is almost unknown. I have not been able to find confirmation of this point, but a year or so ago I was astonished to hear on the PBS television series "Nova" a statement that Kilimanjaro (that would be Kibo) is only a million years old. In other words, the whole space between Mawenzi and Shira has been piled up in a million years.

Kilimanjaro is an enormous mountain, the highest one on earth if you measure from base (3000 feet) to peak (19000 feet). For such an enormous wall to have filled in such a geologically-short time, there must have been many eruptions and prolonged flows. And all this happened in the heart of the human evolutionary zone.

Doubtless a great many individuals and groups have been wiped out by volcanic disasters, but it looks to me like the catastrophes are local and not a threat to extinguish a widespread species. But I’m shooting from the lip here and would love to hear from people who actually know what the heck they are talking about. Listed below are links to weblogs that reference The Toba Super-Eruption:

Comments

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But Edward, if you look at the map at the site I gave, the ash plume didn't reach the Wallace Line. It spread north-west. It must have caused catastrophic extinctions in India. That's not conjectural, the evidence is in the geology. The Indian subcontinent blanketed in ash up to 5 metres deep sounds massive to me. I wouldn't say it caused the ice age. The site says it caused a 'nuclear winter' (which it obviously wasn't, not literally) which lasted several years which 'triggered' the ice age. Well, who knows. It also postulates human entry to Australia by 65,000 years ago. That's highly conjectural, there's no evidence for it that I know of. It's a theory. But combined with the migration model postulated (which has Homo sapiens migrating out of Africa 85,000 years ago) it is an interesting one, I think. BLOGGER: It is interesting, which is why I responded with a full post, but upon examination I don't think the idea does as much as it was credited with.
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Damn. Sorry. I meant Edmund. Lousy memory for names.
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I'm inclined to agree. With due respect to Mr Blake, I suspect it caused somewhat less huddling than suggested. But it might have had a fairly dramatic effect on Homo erectus in south-east Asia, for example.
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All of the studies I have seen, espcially in light of what the eruption of Mt. Tambora did to the Northern Hemisphere, as well as the Cambridge University DNA study released on May 8th of this year all indicate a complete extinction of all but a few thousand Neanderthals and 55-50,000 years ago there is DNA evidence that only about 10,000 adult modern humans were alive. 1816 was called "The year with summer". Hundreds of thousands of modern humans died as a result. Mt. Toba was 28 times the size of Tambora. Of course it was total destruction of the ancients. As hunter-gathers, they had no food stores. There is scant or no proof that any species of a human like form survived, save a few thousand very tough Neanderthals in Europe. The eruption not only caused five years of winter, and a thousand years of very cold weather all over the world, it also knocked us into a 19,000 year ice age as the Greenland ice cores show. At the ending to the ice age there were approx. 10,000 adult modern humans left in North Africa. The migrations started down the sea coasts and back to Asia. We are not the species that were wiped out, nor related apparently. In 47,000 years we went from caves and campfires to a man on the moon. The other species barely changed the way they made their tools for a hundred thousand years. We change our clothing styles every year. The difference can be seen plainly by you reading this on a computer instead of thinking in front of a campfire how to feed your group tomorrow. Ken

The quote of the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815 should have been written, "The year WITHOUT a summer."
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Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Unrecognized Messiah