Abstract Progress over the last 20 years in establishing reliable benchmarks in the Paleolithic of India has been uneven but major successes have been the dating of the earliest Acheulean assemblages in India; the dating of the onset of the Middle Stone Age; the dating of the earliest microlithic assemblages in India; and the dating of the antiquity of human occupation of rain forests in South India and Sri Lanka. Also important is our greater understanding of the Younger Toba Tuff and the impact of the Toba megaeruption 74 ka ago on hominin populations in India. Major uncertainties persist over when the genus Homo first entered South Asia; when our own species, H. sapiens first entered South Asia; the age of the earliest blade assemblages in India; and the antiquity of its rock art.

Volcanic features are common on geologically active earthlike planets. Megascale or “super” eruptions involving >1000 Gt of magma have occurred on both Earth and Mars in the geologically recent past, introducing prodigious volumes of ash and volcanic gases into the atmosphere. Here we discuss felsic (explosive) and mafic (flood lava) supereruptions and their potential atmospheric and environmental effects on both planets. On Earth, felsic supereruptions recur on average about every 100–200,000 years and our present knowledge of the 73.5 ka Toba eruption implies that such events can have the potential to be catastrophic to human civilization. A future eruption of this type may require an unprecedented response from humankind to assure the continuation of civilization as we know it. Mafic supereruptions have resulted in atmospheric injection of volcanic gases (especially SO 2 ) and may have played a part in punctuating the history of life on Earth. The contrast between the more sustained effects of flood basalt eruptions (decades to centuries) and the near-instantaneous effects of large impacts (months to years) is worthy of more detailed study than has been completed to date. Products of mafic supereruptions, significantly larger than known from the geologic record on Earth, are well preserved on Mars. The volatile emissions from these eruptions most likely had global dispersal, but the effects may not have been outside what Mars endures even in the absence of volcanic eruptions. This is testament to the extreme variability of the current Martian atmosphere: situations that would be considered catastrophic on Earth are the norm on Mars.