Long, long ago in a country far, far away something enormous happened … More than 70 000 years ago, at a time
when a number of different hominid species still existed, the core of the island we now call Sumatra exploded in a super volcano.
The resultant cavity
was nearly 100 kilometres (60 miles) long and 30 kilometres (20 miles) wide, immeasurably
deep when it formed. We now call the remnants of the crater Lake Toba. The eruption plunged the planet into a volcanic
winter that lasted for many generations, reducing the world's population of hominid species to, at best, a small number
of breeding pairs, creating a bottleneck in hominid evolution. Sulphuric acid and ash rose to the stratosphere, high
above the weather, and remained, first for decades, then for centuries, reflecting sunshine and darkening the earth. The
Toba eruption produced not only a catastrophic volcanic winter but also an additional millennium long cooling episode within
the unstable cooling of the last ice age that had already started 50 000 years before, causing additional extinctions.
7 500 kilometres to the north-west
of this suddenly formed cavity in the crust of the earth, small groups of hominids still lived east and north
of another very big hole. An immense hollow measuring 1 200 kilometres (750 miles) long and 400 kilometres (250 miles) wide,
a cavity more than 2 000 meters (6500 ft) deep with mountain peaks towering 8 000 meters (26 000 ft) above that, with
massive canyons gouged out of the earth by huge rivers cascading down the vertical sides of an abyss.
The shock waves of the eruption were felt all
over the planet. The compressional ground waves struck first, shaking loose and throwing around huge boulders and toppling
mountains, taking only 20 minutes to cover the 7500 km distance to the cavity where the Black Sea would form one-day.
Then the shear waves hit
15 minutes later and the surface wave 6 minutes after that, causing living creatures to sink into previously supportive soft
soils as the ground waves caused liquefaction.
Five and a half hours later the noise of the explosion arrived, audible over half the planet.
The aerial shock wave soon followed, which hit in the form of storm winds carrying dust and ash as it rolled along
at nearly the speed of sound.
It was the worst of endings and the best of beginnings.
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