June 11, 2013

Modern humans did not settle in Asia before the devastating eruption of Sumatra’s volcano Mount Toba 74,000 years ago



WHEN did modern humans settle in Asia and what route did they take from mankind’s African homeland?  A University of Huddersfield professor has helped to provide answers to both questions.  But he has also had to settle a controversy.

Professor Martin Richards (who is pictured [left] with colleague Dr Martin Carr), who heads the University’s Archaeogenetics Research Group, co-authors a new article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.  It refutes a recent theory, that there is archaeological evidence for the presence of modern humans in southern Asia before the super-eruption of the Mount Toba volcano in Sumatra.