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Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra Tammy’s views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy’s neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Brian Stout, Former President Trump, Henry Heimuller, Joe Biden, Jerry Falwell Jr., Mike Johnson, Ted Cruz, Joe Biden’s dogs, or Claudia Eagle’s Cats. This Tammy’s Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone. See Bill’s Standard Disclaimer
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Arrowheads found at the site, 74,000 years old
Humanities Almost Extinction
Have you ever wondered how humans survived super volcano eruptions? Well let’s look into it. About 74,000 years ago, Sumatra’s Mount Toba experienced a super-eruption, one of the largest in Earth’s history, possibly kicking off a colossal disruption in the world’s climate. Some scientists have assumed a volcanic winter resulting from the eruption was a big enough shift to wipe out most early humans due to genetic evidence suggesting a steep drop in the human population. But now a cutting-edge study on an archaeological site in northwest Ethiopia once occupied by early modern humans has added to a mounting pile of evidence that proposes the event might not have been so apocalyptic. New research found humans in that location, known as Shinfa-Metema 1, adjusted to the dry conditions brought on by the volcanic eruption in a way that may have helped humanity’s key migration out of Africa to the rest of the world. Microscopic fragments of volcanic glass found alongside stone tools and animal remains in the same layer of sediment at the Shinfa-Metema 1 site, near Ethiopia’s Shinfa River, show humans were occupying the site before and after the volcano erupted more than 4,000 miles away. These fragments are less than the diameter of a human hair. Even as tiny as that they are still big enough to analyze the chemistry and the trace elements. By piecing together evidences from the fossils and artifacts found at the site, scientists began to understand how the humans living there continued on with their lives and moved ahead despite the likely climate shift that the volcanic cataclysm triggered. The climate around the time of the eruption, samples, from ostrich eggshells and fossilized mammal teeth. Shed light on water intake and revealed the animals ate plants that were more likely to grow in drier conditions. The site’s flora and fauna also found an abundance of fish remains in the aftermath of the eruption. The finding is perhaps not surprising given how near the site was to the river, but fish are rare in other Stone Age sites from the same period. People start to increase the percentage of fish in the diet when Toba comes in. They’re capturing and processing almost four times as much fish (as before the eruption. the drier climate, counterintuitively, explains the increased reliance on fish: As the river shrank, fish were trapped in water holes or shallower streams that hunters could more easily target. The fish filled water holes may have possibly created what is described as a “blue corridor,” along which early humans moved north out of Africa once they were depleted of fish. This theory contradicts most other models that suggest that humanity’s main migration out of Africa took place along “green corridors” during humid periods. It demonstrates the great flexibility of Homo sapiens populations and their ability to adapt easily to any type of environment, whether hyper-humid or hyper-arid, including during catastrophic events such as the hyper-explosion of the Toba volcano. Us humans are pretty darn cool. Further evidence also shows that these humans were advanced in bows and arrows and could adapt to changing conditions for food and survival. And contributed to the most significant dispersal of Homo sapiens, that’s us! which ultimately led to modern humans living in every corner of the globe took place around 70,000 to 50,000 years ago.
Tammy
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