When Humans Nearly Vanished
The Catastrophic Explosion of the Toba Volcano
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When Humans Nearly Vanished
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Narrated by:
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Qarie Marshall
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Written by:
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Donald R. Prothero
About this listen
Some 73,000 years ago, the Mount Toba supervolcano in toda's Indonesia erupted, releasing the energy of a million tons of explosives. So much ash and debris was injected into the stratosphere that it partially blocked the sun's radiation and caused global temperatures to drop for a decade.
In this book, Donald R. Prothero presents the controversial argument that the Toba catastrophe nearly wiped out the human race, leaving only about a thousand to ten thousand breeding pairs of humans worldwide. Human genes today show evidence of a "genetic bottleneck", an effect seen when a population of organisms becomes so small that their genetic diversity is greatly reduced. This group of survivors could be the ancestors of all humans alive today.
Prothero explores the geological and biological evidence supporting the Toba bottleneck theory, revealing how the explosion itself was discovered and offering insight into how the world changed afterward and what might happen if such an eruption occurred today.
©2018 Dreamscape Media, LLC (P)2018 Dreamscape Media, LLCWhat listeners say about When Humans Nearly Vanished
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- Kadman67
- 2018-10-30
This book did die, unlike humans
I was very disappointed with this book. There I said it. I was looking forward to hearing this book. With high expectations regarding the story on a seemingly significant in human history, I was first disappointed by the constant reference from kilometers to miles. Yes, the first 100 examples should suffice, but the author goes on and on and on and on with measurement translations. Secondly the author goes into painstakingly detail regarding the last few hundred million years of human evolution. I do understand that this book is supposed to be scientifically based, but the author would have been better served if he focused on the last few hundred thousand years and the events that are the basis of his theory. Thirdly, the author mentions consilience many times in his book. Unfortunately, in this book, consilience was his personal agreement on the facts. There is no scientific consensus regarding the Toba super-volcano and a genetic bottle-neck in humans. The authors manner of spouting item after item and recognizing that his theory is the only theory that anyone could consider is absurd. Many of the items that he states are factually based, but the inference that they ALL must be connected to ALL the events is only based on his personal theory.
I was truly disappointed in the book. If you take out all the authors measurement translations, the droning on and on with human evolution and the issuing of “fact” after “fact”, this would be a very short story. This book would be better classed like the “Ancient Alien” guys in pseudo-science.
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