00:00Imagine standing in the middle of Europe 40,000 years ago.
00:04The landscape is rough, cold, and unforgiving.
00:08Fast food is scarce, and there's no internet.
00:11Suddenly, from out of the woods steps a figure, stocky, strong, and with a face that is quite unusual.
00:18This human looks similar to us, but something about them is different.
00:22Their brow is heavy, their nose is broad, and their body seems to be built to fight nature itself.
00:28Well, congrats!
00:30You've just met a Neanderthal.
00:32You might have thought that Neanderthals were basically ancient humans, but that's not really true.
00:38We come from the same genus called Homo, but we, all modern humans, belong to one same species called Homo sapiens.
00:46However, there used to be lots of human species before, and Homo neanderthalensis was just one of them.
00:53And they actually were kind of cooler than us.
00:55So, what in the world has happened to them?
00:58Neanderthals lived for a long time, for about 360,000 years, across Europe and parts of Asia.
01:0740,000 years ago, the place we now call southern Italy was sitting on top of a huge disaster,
01:12a massive supervolcano called Campi Flaigre.
01:16This big boy is huge, about 9 miles wide.
01:20That's about 10 to 20 minutes in a car to get across it all.
01:23But there were no cars then, remember?
01:25At the time, it was quiet for a while.
01:28But one day, suddenly, it blew in what became one of the biggest volcanic eruptions Europe had seen in 200,000 years.
01:36The catastrophe was so crazy that ash, gases, and debris altered the climate across the entire continent.
01:43What comes next is usually called a volcanic winter.
01:46Average temperatures drop, the sky gets darker, and life becomes even harsher than it already is.
01:53The eruption, known as the Campanian Ingrambrite, caused Europe to cool by as much as 7 degrees Fahrenheit.
02:00Doesn't sound like much?
02:02Well, the drop of even 1 degree would cause winters to become harsher, causing horrible snowfall, rains, and floods.
02:09Crops would struggle to grow, leading to food shortages.
02:12The weather would go wild, too, with storms and droughts.
02:16Kind of like now.
02:18Except multiply this by 7.
02:20Events like these cause some huge chaos in modern times.
02:24You can imagine what it did to the Neanderthals.
02:28But in reality, a simple volcanic eruption shouldn't destroy an entire species, right?
02:34Well, yes.
02:35The truth is, the Neanderthals were already hanging by a thread back then.
02:40And all because of us.
02:43They've been in a tough spot for a while.
02:45They lived in places that are now parts of Europe, Western Asia, and the Middle East.
02:50Modern humans, us Homo sapiens, entered Europe and were giving them some serious competition for food and shelter.
02:57Homo sapiens were sneaky dudes.
02:59Better at finding food, easily adapting to different environments, and using more advanced tools.
03:05We were pushing Neanderthals out, trying to get the same resources.
03:09We literally made their extinction a slow and very unpleasant process.
03:14So, while the volcano definitely made things worse, it wasn't their only problem.
03:19And they didn't completely disappear after the eruption.
03:22Some of them hung on in isolated places, like Gibraltar, for another 12,000 years.
03:29That's because it's likely most of the severe cooling actually happened farther east, away from where the Neanderthals were trying to survive.
03:36And it didn't hit their homes as hard as we thought.
03:39In fact, the eruption may have even helped them, at least for a while.
03:44Some scientists say that the volcanic fallout might have slowed down modern humans' expansion into Neanderthal territory,
03:51and gave the poor fellas a little more time to survive.
03:55So, the Campyflegre eruption was a nasty event, but it only delayed the inevitable.
04:01Campyflegre is a wild card.
04:03It's also known as the Fields of Fire.
04:06The air itself there is thick with legend.
04:09The Greeks and Romans believed this volcano was the gateway to the underworld.
04:13Even an ancient Roman poet, Virgil, mentioned this in his famous story, The Aeneid.
04:20The hero, Aeneas, must descend into the underworld, and this place is exactly where he starts.
04:26Back in the day, this landscape was full of Roman villas, spas, and fishponds.
04:31The elite had the time of their lives there.
04:34What they didn't know, though, was that they were standing on treacherous ground that could go crazy at any moment.
04:40The Campyflegre is not your typical volcano.
04:46You'd imagine a single towering peak, but the landscape looks deceivingly calm, with small features popping up here and there.
04:53But if you flew above it, the site would be insane.
04:57A gigantic circular basin, peppered with volcanic cones and craters, like scars from the Earth's violent past.
05:05The danger here lies in its subtlety.
05:07The ground beneath your feet is constantly shifting, even when you don't notice it.
05:12Every so often, the land rises, only to sink again, sometimes by several feet, as magma or gas moves beneath the surface.
05:21It's incredibly creepy.
05:23The risk is almost invisible.
05:25The Campyflegre is a massive depression formed by two colossal volcanic eruptions.
05:31One of them was the one that cooked Neanderthals, and another happened 15,000 years ago.
05:36The most famous eruption, though, happened in the 16th century, and it was horrifying.
05:43The year was 1538.
05:46For years, the people of Pozwoli had noticed something unsettling.
05:50Land that once sat below the waves was slowly rising.
05:54What was once the sea had become new ground.
05:57Rumblings from deep within the Earth were terrifying, but had become a normal part of life.
06:02Earthquakes started in the early 1530s, small at first.
06:07But in just eight years, they became the norm.
06:10Until one day, on September 28th, horrifying tremors shook the ground.
06:15By the next evening, as the sun dipped below the horizon, a massive crack ripped open the Earth near the ancient Roman town of Tripergoli.
06:23From this gash spewed fire, smoke, and a rain of volcanic ash miles away.
06:30It was thick and muddy, lightly mixed with underground water.
06:33The ground trembled as hot pumice rock was thrown high into the air.
06:38And then, a new mountain began to rise from the land.
06:42This was the birth of what we now call Monte Nuovo.
06:46Eventually, things seemed to calm down, as if the Earth was catching its breath.
06:50For days, things seemed quiet.
06:53Locals relaxed a bit.
06:55They began to approach the new, mysterious volcano, a crater with something that resembled boiling within it.
07:01People visited it like a new attraction.
07:03But then, just days later, the disaster struck again.
07:08At night, without warning, a new mountain went wild.
07:12A blast from the southern flank hurled scoria, chunks of jagged volcanic rock, into the air.
07:17This one was fatal for 24 people.
07:20The debris found afterwards was huge and coarse.
07:24For centuries after, the only signs of life from the Monte Nuovo were small fumaroles, jets of gas seeping from the Earth.
07:32But then, even those faded away.
07:34Now, it's just a lush green cone.
07:37A pretty, sleeping giant.
07:39But the ground near Naples, Italy, is still alive.
07:45The Campi Flegre sits quietly for now.
07:48But it might not be for long.
07:50It's showing signs it might be waking up again.
07:53This supervolcano looks like a hellish landscape, with its boiling mud pits, geysers, and steam vents.
08:01Romans and medieval Christians once believed it was a gateway to the underworld.
08:05And who can blame them?
08:07What's spooky is that recently scientists detected unusual activity under the surface.
08:13In 2012, Italian authorities raised the alert level on the volcano from green to yellow, meaning that it needs close monitoring.
08:22There are certain changes that usually happen before an eruption.
08:25The magma below starts releasing gases, which could weaken the rock above, eventually triggering a disaster.
08:34Unfortunately, no one can predict exactly when or if it will erupt.
08:39But if it does, the consequences could range from a minor inconvenience for locals to a global catastrophe.
08:46Its last tiny eruption happened in the 16th century.
08:49And it wasn't too bad.
08:52But if history repeats itself, like it was with Neanderthals, we're all cooked.
08:57An eruption like that could lead to global cooling, crop failures, and widespread famine.
09:03Right now, a group of scientists is trying to get a clearer picture of what's happening beneath the surface.
09:08The Campi Flegre deep drilling project is working to drill a 10,000-foot borehole, hoping to check out the magma chamber up close.
09:16But at least for now, the supervolcano remains quiet, and let's hope it stays that way.
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