Modern humans did not enter the Indian subcontinent until after the eruption of Mount Toba in Sumatra nearly 75,000 years ago, according to new research which dispels a previous idea that humans arrived much earlier in the region.
The findings suggest humans left Africa to arrive in South Asia around 55,000 to 60,000 years ago — long after the Mount Toba super-eruption 74,000 years ago. This contradicts claims that modern humans have been living in the region for twice that long. The researchers used a combination of archaeological and genetic data to suggest the new earliest possible date for the exodus from Africa to Asia, LiveScience reported. “The ash from the eruption, which was an absolutely huge eruption, blew across all of India and smothered the whole region in ash,” said study co-author Martin Richards, an archaeogeneticist at the University of Huddersfield, UK. “Modern humans weren’t there when that happened. They arrived afterwards,” Richards said.
Most archaeologists believed humans migrated to what is now India between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago. However, in a 2007 study, archaeologists reported on stone tools unearthed in Jwalapuram, India, both above and beneath the ash layer deposited by the Mt Toba super-eruption. One resea-rcher argued the tools looked similar to those of modern humans in Africa at that time, which suggested modern humans were in South Asia prior to the volcano eruption. To test the idea that humans reached S. Asia before, Richards and colleagues analysed mitochondrial DNA. The genetic evidence suggested people emerged in the subcontinent via the western coast between 55,000 and 60,000 years ago, well after the eruption. Separately, arch-aeologist P. Mellars of Cambridge and colleagues concluded the tools from before the eruption did not resemble those in Africa from the same period.