So even the "Challenged" crowd, the folks who chew
even when their mouths are empty (and you know
who you are) can "Get" that the asteroid which ended
the Cretaceous period, and the "age of the dinosaurs"
along with it, was also what led to the rise of the
mammals.

...it wasn't so much a deletion as a reset.

Of course you can also see the parallels with Noah's
Ark.

Right?

Well. Speaking rhetorically you can see it... how Noah's
Ark mirrors the natural events which have "Reset" life
here on earth... locally and globally... upon individual
species or across domains.

Rhetorically, you can see it. You can marvel at the
"Coincidence."

Okay, now that your frontal lobe, or what passes for
one in your skull, has been completely lobotomized by
a bible reference, I'm going to talk about the many
off-the-charts huge catastrophes to pummel our
ancestors, and how we could not exist as we do without
them.

The Younger Dryas Cooling

The glacial period, the so called ice age had ended!
The ice was in retreat, temperatures were climbing,
humans appear to have been arriving in the Americas
in greater numbers, spawning "Clovis Culture." Proto
agricultural societies were thriving in the Levant up
into Anatolia.. And then it was all thrown into reverse.

It took over a thousand years for the planet to fully
recover from the Younger Dryas cooling.

Campi Flegrei.

Probably finished off whatever remained of Neanderthals.
One study claimed that most plants in the north hemisphere
just stopped pollinating for a year... from the Volcanic Winter.

Imagine what that did to the food chain, and any Homo trying
to survive on hunter gathering.

Toba

Probably created Neanderthals as we think of them.

Toba had to result in earth changes similar to what would
be seen during the Younger Dryas, only it occurred during
the glacial period (the so called ice age), not afterwards.
I've often argued that when we say "Out of Africa" it's
because of Toba.

See, off-the-charts massive events like Toba have their
worst impact on the northern hemisphere. That's just how
the earth works. All that junk thrown up into the air tends
to collect in the northern hemisphere. And, of course, the
equator gets the most of the energy from the sun so
that's going to recover to something humans can thrive in
the quickest.

North = Neanderthals.

And even "Out of Asia" folks tend to point their fingers
towards Sundaland. But Sundaland was Ground Zero, so
it really sucked to be them.

That leaves Africa.

So even if "Modern Humans" arose in Sundaland and
migrated into Africa, the Sundaland population was
utterly devastated by Toba... leaving a void for the
African group to fill.

They probably interbred with the survivors of the
proto Neanderthals, producing what we think of as
Neanderthals...

I tend to place the retrovirus event on lists such as
this. I see a model where, thanks to Aquatic Ape,
our ancestor species was spread from the east coast
of Africa to what is Indonesia (and beyond). Then the
retrovirus thing happened. Maybe the African population
went extinct, maybe it didn't. But it didn't have to. Their
numbers could have been so few they were absorbed by
the ancestors of Pan, or completely absorbed by a
back migration of the Eurasian population...

Going the other way, Yellowstone of some 8.7 million
years ago likely stamped apes out of Europe, and
sealed the deal on bipedalism.

If you associate bipedalism with Aquatic Ape, and
intelligent people do, then a massive Catastrophe that
heavily favors #1 coastal groupd and #2 southerly
populations had to have an impact. There's just no
way it couldn't.

Not saying that bipedalism first arose amongst our
ancestors then. It could have its roots with the split
from monkeys. I dunno. I'm just saying it was a reset
button, Yellowstone, and that it led to everything which
followed. Which it did.




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