Roughly 74,000 years ago, the largest volcanic eruption of at least the last 2.5 million years — and possibly the last 27 million years — spewed as much as 5,000 cubic kilometers of magma and ash, the latter of which spread far and wide from the source. This catastrophic eruption of the Toba supervolcano on the Indonesian island of Sumatra has long been suggested as a trigger for a precipitous period of global cooling known as a “volcanic winter” that in turn might have driven early humans to the brink of extinction. In a new study, researchers dispute these notions, concluding from an analysis of climate-sensitive microfossils preserved in lake sediments in East Africa — the ancestral home of early humans — that the region experienced little or no cooling following the massive eruption.