A review of the environmental impact of the 74 ka Toba super- eruption on the east of southern Africa

Abstract

Southern Africa’s Middle Stone Age offers a special opportunity to answer important questions about the interaction of people with the environment; this interaction, however, is detected partially in the archaeological record. People’s responses to different climatic changes are not always obvious because human behaviour is both diverse and versatile. In this review article, we argue that geographically separate people in southern Africa were impacted differently by the aftermath of the 74 ka Toba volcano super-eruption, which originated in Indonesia. This was due to many physical and behavioural factors. First, the proximity of the subcontinent to major air circulation systems, along with its varied topography, provided many habitable environments for people. Second, human behaviour is flexible because it is guided by group-specific cultural norms as well as accumulated social knowledge which allows adaptation to varied resources on the landscape. Therefore, the severity of this super-eruption was mitigated by cultural resilience emanating from both pre-existing survival strategies and the potential to develop them. We conclude that, while the Toba super-eruption may have been catastrophic in some parts of the world, there were many ecological factors that prevented it from devastating the southern African ecosystem; and while the eruption may have affected people, its real impact might be better understood independent of assumptions derived from the Toba Catastrophe Theory.