Human occupation of northern India spans the Toba super-eruption ~74,000 years ago

Abstract

India is located at a critical geographic crossroads for understanding the dispersal of Homo sapiens out of Africa and into Asia and Oceania. Here we report evidence for long-term human occupation, spanning the last~80 thousand years, at the site of Dhaba in the Middle Son River Valley of Central India. An unchanging stone tool industry is found at Dhaba spanning the Toba eruption of~74 ka (i.e., the Youngest Toba Tuff, YTT) bracketed between ages of 79.6 ± 3.2 and 65.2 ± 3.1 ka, with the introduction of microlithic technology~48 ka. The lithic industry from Dhaba strongly resembles stone tool assemblages from the African Middle Stone Age (MSA) and Arabia, and the earliest artefacts from Australia, suggesting that it is likely the product of Homo sapiens as they dispersed eastward out of Africa.

Human Evolution in the Center of the Old World: An Updated Review of the South Asian Paleolithic

“…Another example is the ongoing debate of the impact of 74 Ka Toba supereruption on hominin behavior and lithic technology [55,[92][93][94][95][96]. While the Jwalapuram evidence in southern India yielded a problematic wide age range for the Toba-tephra-associated Middle Paleolithic evidence (77 Ka and 38 Ka), a similar investigation at the site of Dhaba in north-central India chronologically narrowed that gap to 79 Ka and 65 Ka [41]. Nonetheless, the lengthy time gap of 10,000 years between the eruption and the post-Toba archeological evidence makes it challenging to draw major conclusions regarding true occupational continuity and it is not clear if fluvial or other processes facilitated occupational/technological continuity by minimizing the ecological impact of the Toba tephra in the immediate region.…”

“…Late Pleistocene contexts and sites are more widespread but also remain inadequately dated. Recent examples of new and previously-known sites that were dated for the first time include Attirampakkam in Tamil Nadu where the later Middle Paleolithic ends at 73 Ka [58], Dhaba in Madhya Pradesh ( [41,79]), the Middle Paleolithic site of Sandhav in Gujarat [36] and Fa-Hien Lena in Sri Lanka [62]; the Sri Lankan evidence has been reported as the oldest known bow-and-arrow technology outside Africa at 48 Ka, making it contemporary with the microliths at Dhaba (also 48 Ka) and Mehtakheri which is 45 Ka [45]. The primary reason for the increase in such dates is the growing application of refined or new luminescence techniques as well as radiocarbon methods.…”

“…Future surveys aimed at filling key geographic and stratigraphic contexts may gradually change this pattern. Over the last few decades, this technology has been increasingly thought to be associated with the initial arrival of Homo sapiens by various researchers, some of the most recent being the Jwalapuram evidence from southern India dated to ~77 [55], the Kataoti and Sandhav evidence from western India respectively dated to 95 Ka [34] and 114 Ka [36], and the Dhaba evidence in north-central India dated to between 79 Ka and 65 Ka [41].…”

“…without a microlithic component) Upper Paleolithic assemblages in India, though numerous sites have been reported. The only date currently available for a blade-dominated assemblage in the entire Subcontinent is 45 Ka for Site 55 in Pakistan [31], making it contemporary with the young Middle Paleolithic assemblages in northern India [38] and old microlithic assemblages in central India and Sri Lanka [41,62].…”

Paleoenvironmental humanities: Challenges and prospects of writing deep environmental histories

“…While long‐term climate constellations and accumulating regime dynamics are more likely to inaugurate long‐lasting and irreversible evolutionary pathways, medium and short‐term climate fluctuations, rapid event‐like climate change as well as extreme occurrences such as the super‐eruption of the Toba volcano on Sumatra ca. 74,000 years ago (Clarkson et al, 2020), the Campanian Ignimbrite eruption in the Mediterranean ca. 40,000 years ago (Fedele et al, 2007) or the outburst of the Laacher See volcano ca.…”