Middle Paleolithic Assemblages from the Indian Subcontinent Before and After the Toba Super-Eruption
Michael Petraglia,1,2*
Ravi Korisettar,3
Nicole Boivin,1
Christopher Clarkson,4
Peter Ditchfield,5
Sacha Jones,1
Jinu Koshy,3
Marta Mirazón Lahr,1
Clive Oppenheimer,6
David Pyle,7
Richard Roberts,8
Jean-Luc Schwenninger,5
Lee Arnold,8
Kevin White9
The Youngest Toba Tuff (YTT) eruption, which occurred in Indonesia 74,000 years ago, is one of Earth's largest known volcanic events. The effect of the YTT eruption on existing populations of humans, and accordingly on the course of human evolution, is debated. Here we associate the YTT with archaeological assemblages at Jwalapuram, in the Jurreru River valley of southern India. Broad continuity of Middle Paleolithic technology across the YTT event suggests that hominins persisted regionally across this major eruptive event.
1 Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QH, UK.
2 Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA.
3 Department of History and Archaeology, Karnatak University, Dharwad 580 003, India.
4 School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
5 Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QY, UK.
6 Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK.
7 Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PR, UK.
8 GeoQuEST Research Centre, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, New South Wales 2522, Australia.
9 Department of Geography, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading RG6 6AB, UK.
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: m.petraglia{at}human-evol.cam.ac.uk
