International Activist Forum: Lake Toba Heritages

History of Lake Toba

Lakes often form in depressions caused by glacial erosion (Great Lakes of USA) or by down-dropping of large blocks of the crust (the lakes of East Africa), but such gentle processes didn't cause Lake Toba in Sumatra.

In 1949 the Dutch geologist van Bemmelen reported that Lake Toba was surrounded by a vast layer of ignimbrite rocks. Toba was apparently a huge volcano! Later researchers found rhyolite ash similar to that in the ignimbrite around Toba in Malaysia and even 3000 km away in India. And oceanographers discovered a vast dusting of Toba ash on the floor of the eastern Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. These scientists quickly realized that the Toba eruption, dated at 75,000 years ago, was the most recent truely large eruption on Earth. Bill Rose and Craig Chesner of Michigan Technological University combined all the information on the extent of the Toba volcanic material to deduce that the total amount of erupted material was about 2,800 km3. About 800 km3 was ignimbrite that travelled swiftly over the ground away from the volcano destroying everything in its path, and the remaining 2,000 km3 fell as ash, with the wind blowing most of it to the west. Such a huge eruption probably lasted nearly two weeks. Very few plants, animals or humans around this part of Indonesia would have survived.

http://vulcano.und.edu/vwdocs/vw_hyperexchange/toba.html

Tales of Pusut Buhit - Centrum of Earth

Times has passed in hundreds or event thousand of years, Earth slowly evolutes to be a wise place for a new life of a living mankind, Nature found its way, disaster have changes into a harmony, world has change into a new. The legend of Pusut Buhit (Centrum of Earth), is a tales of a first mankind a live after the giant collapse, which indigenous Batak believed as a genesis of a new world and Lake Toba is a place where nature provide all necessities for human to start a new life, they also believe the first mankind from Pusut Buhit created to protect the earth and guard the sense of fairness. . . more about pusut buhit

Accommodation

USD 50/participant

Participant will stay in a shares Tradional Bataks homestay at front lake Toba Village of Tuk – tuk, Samosir Island, shuttle bus to camp, Ferry ticket, airport transfer and IAF 2008 T-shirt + free entrance to cultural performance and Music concert.

Excluded; airfare ticket, visa and others personal expenses.

Camp site: USD 28/participant,
Include; huttle bus to camp, Ferry ticket, airport transfer and IAF 2008 T-shirt + free entrance to cultural performance and Music concert.

Note: Accommodation fee to support income generating activity to indigenous Bataks