The Campanian Ignimbrite eruption
A caldera near Naples erupts as modern humans and Neanderthals are overlapping in Europe.
- When
- Known to
- ± 140 years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
About 39,850 years ago the Campi Flegrei volcanic field produces the largest European eruption of the last 200,000 years, some 300 cubic kilometres, blanketing the eastern Mediterranean and eastern Europe with ash. It falls within a few thousand years of the Neanderthal disappearance and has often been invoked as a contributing cause, though the ash layer sits above most late Neanderthal sites rather than below them — the timing weakens the argument rather than supporting it.