Toba: The Volcano That Almost Erased Every Human on Earth
74,000 years ago, the Toba supervolcano in Sumatra exploded in one of the largest eruptions of the last two million years. Ash fell across continents, and for decades scientists believed it pushed our ancestors to the edge of extinction. But the real answer is far stranger.
This episode travels to Lake Toba, the giant caldera left behind by the eruption. It explores the volcanic winter theory, the Toba catastrophe hypothesis, and why human DNA seemed to support it. Then it follows the evidence: stone tools in India, ancient lake mud in Malawi, and microscopic ash in a South African cave, to…
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