German Memories in Asia - A Discussion on Volcanic Winter & Human Evolution

When I was talking to Walker on the beach, a large wave from the Indian Ocean frightened me making wonder whether the tsunami wave was on its way once again towards the Indian Ocean rim countries. The worst Tsunami which hit the Indian - Ocean rim countries in recent history subsequently formed after the earth quake of 26th December 2004 off the coast of Northern Sumatra, the fourth largest earthquake of this century.

Though the sea has risen in the Marawila coastal area and has reached up to the Aquarius Resort restaurant's beach - side garden area, there were no casualties around the Marawila's coastal areas. Marawila and other near by western coastal areas escaped from the tsunami disaster, as the epicenter was located under seawater in Sumatra right opposite that of Marawila.

But the Sumatra region has a record of having faced many disasters and re-shaping human evolution itself on Planet Earth. A new hypothesis about recent human evolution suggests that we came very close to extinction because of a "volcanic winter". Professor Stanley Ambrose of the University of Illinois advocated this idea. He believes that the eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra caused the bottleneck.

"Modern human races may have diverged abruptly, only 70,000 years ago," he writes in the Journal of Human Evolution.

Geneticists have thought for some time that humans passed through a recent evolutionary bottleneck but they had little idea what may have caused it. Scientists believe that an eruption of Toba caused a volcanic winter that lasted six years and significantly altered the global climate for the next 1,000 years. During those six years, there was substantial lowering of global temperatures, drought and famine. No more than 15,000 people survived. When better conditions returned, the human population was able to grow once more and develop the genetic diversity we see today.

"When our African recent ancestors passed through the prism of Toba's volcanic winter, a rainbow of differences appeared," Professor Ambrose said.

While we were enjoying our chat, in the distance from the Bandaranaike International Airport, a passenger jet was taking off over the Indian Ocean taking a course, which could lead to the Gulf or straightaway to Europe.

German Memories in Asia - Exploring the Human Evolution

While we were having a chat by the seashore, twilight has turned into night and the German team who were playing volleyball has already left the beach.

We were discussing many things. The similarities of genes between the human and the chimpanzee became a hot topic in our discussion. When I was telling about genealogy, my other German friend couldn't grasp it, but Walker did quiet easily. I don't know why my other friend couldn't understand it. Perhaps it was because I was conversing in English that he failed to get a mental picture of the theory of evolution rather than any religious bias.

I had a long argument some time back with a friend of mine on the evolution of human - beings as opposed to any religious viewpoint of a god-created world. These predictions on evolutionary theory are based upon detailed evidence of anatomy, the scientific study of the body. This stands in stark contrast to creationists who take their religious text as their starting point and attempt to force-fit the data into their religious paradigm. Those who back such religious works thereby display a profound ignorance of basic scientific methods, which places a huge question mark over the reliability of their own published and presented works. Creationist works, and those who support such efforts, have no basis whatsoever in any scientific procedure and basic plain scientific reality.


I was telling Walker of the recent revelation in the CNN program that 95.5 percent of the chimpanzee and human genes are almost the same and the 75 of the dog's and man's genes also have the same similar features. He was eagerly listening to my conversation.

We don't have to trace the evolutionary path to know who we humans are in order to live peacefully on planet earth. At least if we could go some thousands years back, the realization of one's human origin will create no friction in the world among different ethnic groups who are fighting directly or indirectly as to who is superior to other.

An issue, which was highlighted in the CNN, struck me. There was a genealogist who was giving an interview on his special mission to track our immediate ancestral roots. All want to know their immediate ancestry, whether they belong beyond the their current identifications like American and Australians. Tracking our ancestry will be a million dollar business in the near future. They track using our genes to trace who are our forefathers were and from where they have actually come. His research findings indicate that all our ancestors have some common roots in Africa.