OK, I was watching a program on Discovery last night about the magma chamber under Yellowstone.
A part of the program mentioned the Toba Eruption on the island of Sumatra about 74,000 years ago. They said that they think in the six-year-long “volcanic winter” that ensued, that possibly as few as 10,000 humans were left alive.
I did a little searching, and it is also believed–at least by some–that most of the population of Europe died, not being able to survie the volcanic winter, and that humanity was concentrated in pockets along the more temperate zones.
If true, then it would presumably take a few hundred at least, and probably a few thousand for Europe to become resettled.
So. . .
Does the archaeological record indicate a gap in European settlements dating from about the time of the Toba Eruption to “whenever the Africans started resettling, or the few surviving Europeans recovered?”
I suspect that the archaeological record won’t be of much help, since this event predates agriculture by about 64,000 years. So, there weren’t any “settlements,” as we would think of them. All you’re ever going to find are some scraps in the floors of caves that hunter/gatherers used for shelter at the time. Those traces are pretty few and far between.
There’s also the question of who, exactly, the “Europeans” of that time were. IIRC, it would have been Neanderthals, who went extinct without passing any of their genes down to modern humans. I don’t think there were any modern humans in Europe at the time. If you believe that modern humans came out of Africa, it would probably have happened well after the Toba eruption, in any case.
“If you believe that modern humans came out of Africa” … I read somewhere that the asian gene out dates the african gene in people ?.. is this what you were eluding to ?
Interesting show- we watched it too. The “hourglass” model of population size was a little scary, and I thought that they said at the choke point, the population could have been as low as 5000, and not all in the same place.
Holy cow!
I hope someone with some knowledge about mitocondrial (spelling?) DNA will pop in here.
I don’t have an opinion on the subject of where, exactly, modern humans originated (I try to steer clear of making authoritative assertions when I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, usually successfully), but I’ve seen various well-respected anthropologists disagreeing with each other rather vehemently on the subject. The majority opinion seems to favor the “out of Africa” scenario, but the jury is still out.