Major Volcanic Eruption May Have Wiped Out Neanderthals

The reason why Neanderthals no longer walk the Earth has long remained a mystery, and now one group of scientists is taking a closer look at a major volcanic eruption that may have, at least in part, wiped out our early human ancestors.

The Campanian Ignimbrite (CI) eruption in Italy 40,000 years ago was one of the largest volcanic cataclysms on Europe. It spewed a significant amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2) into the stratosphere that blanketed the region and significantly lowered atmospheric temperatures. And while it did coincide with the final decline of Neanderthals, so did dramatic territorial and cultural advances among our ancestors, referred to as "anatomically modern humans".

Scientists have debated in the past whether or not this particular super-eruption triggered the final fall of the Neanderthals, with recent research saying that it wasn't enough to lower temperatures to be a significant contributor to their demise. Now, that same research team is testing this hypothesis further with a sophisticated new climate model.

"While the precise implications of the CI eruption for cultures and livelihoods are best understood in the context of archaeological data sets," the researchers said in a press release, the results of their study quantitatively describe the magnitude and distribution of the volcanic cooling and acid deposition around 40,000 years ago.

In their climate simulations, lead author Benjamin Black and his colleagues found that the largest temperature decreases after the eruption occurred in Eastern Europe and Asia - regions that did not include where final Neanderthal populations were living, which were in Western Europe. (Scroll to read on...)