Top 10 Natural Disasters
Natural disasters have changed the course of human history. Although not everyone agrees on their effects, the links between these events and the social and economic changes afterward are intriguing.
Natural disasters have led to some of our greatest innovations, to periods of civil war and political unrest, to the destruction and creation of empires, to massive human migrations and clashes of cultures, and ultimately, to the world we know today.
Lake Toba in Indonesia is home to a supervolcano that erupted some 75,000 years ago. It has been linked to a population bottleneck within our ancestors’ past. The event was by far the largest supervolcanic event in recent geologic history and attained a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) rating of 8, the maximum possible on this scale. It pushed an estimated 2,800 cubic kilometers (670 mi3) of dust and rock into the atmosphere.
The Lake Toba Theory holds that the event coincided with the last major glacial period, which ended some 5,000 years ago, and the event itself led to a 1,000-year-long global cooling event. This may have contributed to or accelerated the planet’s entrance into the last ice age.
A genetic bottleneck in human DNA occurred around the same time as the eruption. According to the theory, the human breeding population fell to between 3,000 and 10,000 individuals around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. The link to Toba is that 70,000 years ago, there were 1,000–10,000 breeding pairs, a very small population of humans who created this genetic bottleneck. As a result, human DNA has one of the lowest proportions of genetic diversity, which is why racism is such a fallacy based on this fact alone.
The Toba eruption would have caused worldwide global ecological disaster, devastating vegetation and the global food chain dependent on it. Bottlenecks have also been observed in other primate groups around this time, including chimps, gorillas, and orangutans as well as in macaques, tigers, and cheetahs.
The timing of the eruption is also closely linked to the migration of early humans from Africa 60,000–70,000 years ago and is quite possibly the disaster that started our epic journey.[1]
9 The Minoan Eruption – Circa 1500 BC
The Minoan eruption (aka the Thera or Santorini eruption) occurred approximately 3,500 years ago and devastated the Minoan civilization and the Mediterranean cultures of the time. The eruption was between 6 and 7 on the VEI, pushing some 60 cubic kilometers (14 mi3) of dust and rock into the atmosphere.
The volcanic explosion and resulting tsunamis wiped out many communities in Akrotiri, Crete (Minoan), Cyprus, Canaan, ancient Greece, Egypt, and most areas of the Aegean Sea. The resulting devastation allowed the Mycenaean civilization to take over the Minoan culture and blend it with their own.[2]
This formed the first advanced civilization in mainland Greece, with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system. It also heralded the first steps toward our modern cultures and the development of Koine Greek, the language of the original Bible.
At the time, the event itself had worldwide repercussions. In China, the volcanic winter effect of the Thera eruption corresponds to the collapse of the Xia dynasty, thus allowing the Shang dynasty to rise. The Bamboo Annals describe the time as “yellow fog, a dim Sun, then three Suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals.”
In Egypt, there is evidence to suggest that the calamity heralded the end of the Second Intermediate Period. Apocalyptic storms, climatic change, and tsunamis were the gods’ way of showing displeasure with this period, resulting in the New Kingdom period and ancient Egypt’s most prosperous time as well as the peak of its power.
8 The Bhola Cyclone – 1970
The Bhola cyclone struck the coast of Bengal in 1970 in an area then known as East Pakistan. Today, we know that area as Bangladesh. The storm was responsible for over 500,000 deaths, with most from a storm surge that inundated the low-lying islands of the Ganges peninsula.[3]
At the time, Pakistan was ruled by a military junta headed by General Yahya Khan. Their response to this disaster was utterly disorganized, and many thousands died needlessly while awaiting relief operations. Unfortunately for the junta, an election had already been called for just a month after the event took place. This resulted in an overwhelming landslide victory in East Pakistan for the Awami League.
During the months that followed, continuous civil unrest and distrust between an already marginalized East Pakistan and the central government resulted in one of the worst periods in modern world politics. The Bangladesh Liberation War broke out, later developing into the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.
This led to multiple heinous atrocities, resulting in the Bangladesh Genocide of 1971. Sadly, 30 million people became displaced and three million people died. Pakistani soldiers raped between 200,000 and 400,000 Bangladeshi women. Compare this to the modern-day exodus of five million from the Middle East because of Islamic fundamentalism, and it puts the current situation neatly in context.
The Bangladeshi Liberation War was also fought as part of the larger Cold War. The superpowers fought over ideology within the region, exacerbating the problem for political gain and proof of their ideologies. The US supported its old ally Pakistan, no matter the atrocities they committed, and the Soviet Union supported India and Bangladesh.
It was all ended by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar with The Concert for Bangladesh in 1971. No, not really, this is sarcasm. Megastars have zero power in conflict, but this was the first major global superstar event of its kind.
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