The First Great Awakening

Part 2, The Toba Eruption.

     The first 130,000 years of Sapiens existence was relatively benign for the most part. We as a species had settled into a survivable niche in the ecosystem of ancient Africa, especially in and around the great rift valley, which is in present day Ethiopia. With a firm grasp on hand held tools (pun intended) such as hand axes, knives, spears, and scrappers we were capable of butchering scavenged meat and keeping other hungry species away while we were. I cannot forget to mention the importance of fire. When our ancient ancestors figured out how to harness and recreate fire at will truly put us on a course for greatness as a species. It was fire and our ability to control it that set us up for stardom as a species. Fire allowed us to cook our food, cooking makes more foods edible year round and releases more nutrients and calories from both meat and vegetables. All these extra calories gave us extra energy which in turn made our brains 20 percent larger than our closest evolutionary cousins. It was our larger brains that allowed us to develop complicated languages and to think cooperatively. It is our ability to work cooperatively and to communicate that made us who we are as a species, but as usual I digress, we must go back to 74,000 years ago, I will post about fire, tools and food at a later date. As I was stating before I went off topic, Homo sapiens had settled into a nice little niche as scavengers and gatherers (hunting small game occasionally) in the African savannahs and the Rift valley until the first real extinction level event came crashing down on us.

  Seventy four thousand years ago a volcano in what is present day Sumatra erupted. It was one of the largest eruptions the Earth had ever known and it spewed ash miles into the atmosphere causing a volcanic winter that lasted between 6-10 years. The earth was already in the midst of another Ice Age and it is believed that some places dropped 20 degrees almost overnight. This ecological disaster caused a world wide catastrophe that nearly led us humans to extinction. At the height of the volcanic winter it is purported that there may have been as few as 40 “breeding pairs” of Homo Sapiens left in the world. Think about that for a minute, 40 breeding pairs means under a hundred sapiens left alive. Remember we weren’t the only HUMAN species alive back then as I stated in Chapter One, there were at least four other Homo species wandering the earth when Toba erupted; Neanderthal, Homo Erectus, Homo Florensis (hobbit man) and the Denisovans, all of them except for perhaps Erectus, who had been around for nearly 2 million years and was the first Human species to leave Africa, lived through the Toba explosion. Researchers, including myself, believe that Erectus, if they were still around then were probably killed out by the eruption since they mainly resided in Asia and would most likely have been in the “kill zone”. Sad that after 2 million years they were wiped out by a volcano, again that is a post for another time. So within a few years of the eruption there were less than a thousand of us left and the landscape we were used to was gone. Lakes, rivers and savannahs just disappeared. North Africa became a desert wasteland cutting us off from escaping the continent so the few surviving Sapiens did the only thing they could, they headed for the coast. Why Sapiens hadn’t really adapted a coastal life before is a slight mystery but most researchers believe that sapiens were content inland in the rift valley and had no need to expand their ecology at the time. “Necessity is the Mother of all invention”, I’m not sure who coined that first but it applies here for sure. Sapiens were pushed out of the mainland and onto the coasts do to the natural catastrophe that had reshaped the landscape and the climate they were used to. Ironically it is our time in the caves of the Western and Southern shores of Africa that gave us what truly makes us stand apart from any other species of animal on this planet, culture. It was on the coasts that the rag tag bunch of survivors found our spiritual and cultural roots. In the caves where our ancestors not only survived but thrived after a near extinction level event is where archaeologists first discovered things like red ochre (primitive paint that could only be used for decoration or artistic expression) seashell necklaces, flutes made from bird bones and the other artifacts that would come to signify our cultural and spiritual awakening.

The shorelines were teeming with resources; shellfish, seaweed, seals, birds and a plethora of fish species, it was heaven on Earth to these people who had just crawled out of a barren wasteland nearly extinct and completely lost. Researchers believe it was the abundant shellfish and fish that made our ancestors even smarter as these highly nutritious foods became a staple of our diets, urging our brains to expand even more. It is my personal belief that the food may have something to do with it but what I think really spurred on our first great leap forward was the mere fact that we as a species had just survived an extinction level event and found a home that was like no other, the Garden of Eden if you will. As we began to settle and thrive on the coasts our ancestors retold the tale of the eruption the climate change and the resulting migration to the sea and all the blessings that came with it as a sort of spiritual tale. Our first religious story if you will. The coastal caves our ancestors fled to became our first spiritual or sacred lands, we began to paint ourselves and adorn ourselves with jewelry as a way to signify our connection to the land that saved us and gave us new life. Had our brave ancestors not made that difficult journey across the inhospitable landscape to the coast 74,000 years or so ago we would have never survived and you and I wouldn’t be here right now.

In conclusion, it is my belief that the Toba eruption actually spurred our spiritual and cultural evolution forward by forcing our ancestors to flee to the coasts. It was in these caves that we gave thanks and praise to the spirits for keeping us alive and helping us to not overcome the worst catastrophe we as a species ever saw but to thrive after nearly becoming extinct. I should note that every Homo sapiens alive can trace their mitochondrial DNA (the maternal DNA) to one African woman, known as Mitochondrial Eve, to about 75,000 years ago. This means you really do owe one of those surviving few people your entire existence. In the next Chapter I will take a closer look at the actual life in and around those caves. I hope you enjoyed this installment and cannot wait for you to read the next post. Until then have a great day and as always………………PEACE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

above image: various perforated shells found in a cave in South Africa that date back about 70,000 years ago.