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> whatever the reason Both Iceland and Italy have had multiple serious eruptions that could have wrapped around 2 or more winters in Europe and N. Africa, star

> whatever the reason Both Iceland and Italy have had multiple serious eruptions that could have wrapped around 2 or more winters in Europe and N. Africa, starving almost everybody. I once read that our mitochondria indicates the human population was down to 5,000 at one time. Here's one article mentioning the Toba explosion 70,000 years ago and blocking the sun for 6 years. There's still a Lake Toba: https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/h...

saurik 5y ago
For this specific theory involving a massive eruption that blocks the sun for years and staves most of the humans, why would other apes--or really anything else that shares the property of generally eating things from the transitive closure of "runs off sunlight"--not have had the same problem?
- saurik 5y ago
  Coming back to this after sleeping I am, if anything, even more confused, as I would have expected that, of all the animals, humans would have had the best hope of being the least effected by such a b"light", as we are the smartest, and often most rapidly adaptable (as we can learn new behaviors almost on a dime), species and so, tp the extent to which there were still something to eat, I would have hoped we would have the least amount of population decline...
anthonypasq 5y ago
its more because only a very small subset of humans left Africa and populated the rest of the world. There is more diversity in sub-saharan Africa than the ret of the world combined.
- madacol 5y ago
  But neanderthals are found in europe, not africa. Doesn't it go against your argument?
  - nicklecompte 5y ago
    There were very few Neanderthals in Europe who had viable offspring with modern humans compared to the size of the (otherwise quite heterogenous) migration wave coming from Africa - and their DNA was obviously very similar to ours from the beginning. So it makes sense that the net impact on genetic diversity wasn’t very large, even if it is detectable.

saurik 5y ago

For this specific theory involving a massive eruption that blocks the sun for years and staves most of the humans, why would other apes--or really anything else that shares the property of generally eating things from the transitive closure of "runs off sunlight"--not have had the same problem?

saurik 5y ago
Coming back to this after sleeping I am, if anything, even more confused, as I would have expected that, of all the animals, humans would have had the best hope of being the least effected by such a b"light", as we are the smartest, and often most rapidly adaptable (as we can learn new behaviors almost on a dime), species and so, tp the extent to which there were still something to eat, I would have hoped we would have the least amount of population decline...

anthonypasq 5y ago

its more because only a very small subset of humans left Africa and populated the rest of the world. There is more diversity in sub-saharan Africa than the ret of the world combined.

madacol 5y ago
But neanderthals are found in europe, not africa. Doesn't it go against your argument?
- nicklecompte 5y ago
  There were very few Neanderthals in Europe who had viable offspring with modern humans compared to the size of the (otherwise quite heterogenous) migration wave coming from Africa - and their DNA was obviously very similar to ours from the beginning. So it makes sense that the net impact on genetic diversity wasn’t very large, even if it is detectable.