Kanazawa University

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Co-author institution on the K-Ah study; published a Japanese-language summary on 2026-10-20

A volcano off southern Japan erupted 7,300 years ago, burying the archipelago in ash and killing many of the hunter-gatherers living nearby. New statistical modeling of 540 radiocarbon dates shows the human toll was sharply uneven: some regions emptied, others declined hundreds of kilometers away, and populations in northern Kyushu kept growing.

Updated Oct 23