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An interesting movie about supervolcanoes with an interesting twist.
At about 30 minutes into the movie, scientists are looking at mtDNA as a way of tracing back into history when exactly a massive supervolcano nearly wiped out the human race. Toba was a supervolcano that erupted about 74,000 years ago in Sumatra and it was because of this eruption, the human race was nearly wiped out, there were only a few thousand humans left. The movie goes on to explain that this supervolcano caused a massive bottleneck in human population and mtDNA shows it. The scientists explain that this could be the reason as to why we are so closely related to each other. The bottleneck effect would have caused only a few surviving families to carry on human life thereby reducing the diversity of the mtDNA pool. I found it very interesting.
At about 30 minutes into the movie, scientists are looking at mtDNA as a way of tracing back into history when exactly a massive supervolcano nearly wiped out the human race. Toba was a supervolcano that erupted about 74,000 years ago in Sumatra and it was because of this eruption, the human race was nearly wiped out, there were only a few thousand humans left. The movie goes on to explain that this supervolcano caused a massive bottleneck in human population and mtDNA shows it. The scientists explain that this could be the reason as to why we are so closely related to each other. The bottleneck effect would have caused only a few surviving families to carry on human life thereby reducing the diversity of the mtDNA pool. I found it very interesting.
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