Lake Toba - once a super-volcano

Volcanoes are fascinating and very dangerous. My grandson, only 4 1/2 years old knows a lot about the eruptions of Pinatubo, Mount St Helens and Krakatoa. He even uses the word paraclystic flow, although with some difficulty (it is even harder to pronounce in Swedish). I am amazed to see the kids of our times.

There are volcanoes that are more devastating than we could even imagine - they are called super-volcanoes and cause mega-colossal eruptions. A theory presented by Professor Stanley H. Ambrose in 1998 suggest that "the six year long volcanic winter and 1000-year-long instant Ice Age that followed Mount Toba's eruption may have decimated Modern Man's entire population. Genetic evidence suggests that Human population size fell to about 10,000 adults between 50 and 100 thousand years ago." read full article.










This enourmous eruption created Lake Toba. I suddenly realized while discussing Toba with my grandson that my friend Mikael had actually been there not long ago. Have a look at his fine reportage Batak published on 591 a couple of months ago.

The images you see here are all from Lake Toba and its surroundings, captured by Mikael Jansson in October 2008. Thank you for sharing them.