Toba traces: The volcanic glass fragments are thinner than human hair
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The idea that humans nearly became extinct 75,000 ago because of a super-volcano eruption is not supported by new data from Africa, scientists say.
In the past, it has been proposed that the so-called Toba event plunged the world into a volcanic winter, killing animal and plant life and squeezing our species to a few thousand individuals.
An Oxford University-led team examined ancient sediments in Lake Malawi for traces of this climate catastrophe.
It could find none.
"The eruption would certainly have triggered some short-term effects over perhaps a few seasons but it does not appear to have switched the climate into a new mode," said Dr Christine Lane from Oxford's School of Archaeology.
"This puts a nail in the coffin of the disaster-catastrophe theory in my view; it's just too simplistic," she told BBC News.
The results of her team's investigation are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).