Welcome to toba's lake

Source : Photo by irfnrdh on Unsplash

Lake Toba is a popular lake in North Sumatra with its natural scenery that is absolutely non-negotiable. The expanse of green hills around it, as well as a blue lake with Samosir Island in the middle is a picture of the beauty of this place.

Being the largest lake in Southeast Asia, in the middle of Lake Toba there are volcanic islands, namely Samosir Island. In the middle of Samosir Island, there are still two beautiful lakes named Sidihoni Lake and Aek Natonang Lake. There are also other islands in the middle of Lake Toba, namely Sibandang Island, Tao Island, Tolping Island, and Tulas Island. But behind all the charm of beauty, there are some facts about Lake Toba that not many people know.

1. Lake Toba is a mountain
   Lake Toba turned out to be a mountain. Van Bemmelen, a Dutch geologist who in 1939 for the first time suggested that Toba is a volcano. The location where Lake Toba was formed, was once a large ancient mountain called Mount Toba which then erupted violently.

2. History of ancient eruptions
   Lake Toba was formed by the massive eruption of Mount Toba which erupted about 74,000 years ago. CA Chesner, a geologist from Eastern Illiois University, said Toba ejected 2,800 cubic kilometers of magma. This eruption is a scale of 8 in the Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI), the strongest in the last two million years. The hot clouds from the Toba eruption reached an area of ​​20,000 sq km. The hot clouds covered almost the entire mainland of Sumatra, from the Indian Ocean in the west to the Malacca Strait in the east with an average thickness of 100 meters of material and in some areas up to 400 meters.

3. Folklore circulating
   Folklore circulating, Lake Toba comes from the story of a man named Toba who was looking for fish in the river. Once, the young man's hook caught on a goldfish, which suddenly turned into a beautiful woman. The young man also married the woman. On the condition that he cannot reveal his wife's origins to anyone. Until one day, when the young man already had a child, one time he was angry with his son. So annoyed, he accidentally said "You little fish!" Immediately the earth shook. Earthquake hit. Water bursts from the cracked ground. It rained heavily. Toba realized and regretted. His swearing opened a secret about his wife's origins that should have been kept tightly closed. However, it was too late. The disappointed mother turned back into a fish. He jumped into the puddle that had turned into a huge lake. Later, the lake was named Tao Toba. The child, on the advice of his mother, survived by climbing a high hill in the middle of the lake, which was later known as Samosir Island.

4. Island upon island, and lake upon lake
   Another uniqueness of Lake Toba is that it has an island on an island and a lake above a lake. Samosir Island which is above the island of Sumatra, as well as Lake Sidihoni and Lake Aek Natonang which are above Lake Toba.

5. Samosir Island in Lake Toba is a raised lakebed
   Samosir Island is an expert as an elevated lakebed. This can be seen from the discovery of algae fossils in many places on the mainland of Samosir Island. When the explosion was great, and the lake began to form, slowly green algae also began to grow at the bottom of the lake. The magma chamber below, after being drained profusely during the eruption, filled up again and slowly pushed the aid that blocked it until Samosir Island slowly formed from the bottom of the rising lake.

6. Believed to change the world
   The eruption of the Toba supervolcano has a global impact. This eruption changed the course of modern humans (Homo sapiens). When Toba erupted, Homo sapiens, the ancestor of modern humans, became extinct. Migration stopped and they stopped somewhere in Africa, as recorded in modern human tracks around the world. This is the so-called period of population congestion that experts have questioned for decades, which often occurs with the eruption of Mount Toba.

7. The largest volcanic lake in the world
   Toba is a supervolcano and the largest volcanic lake in the world. The lake is surrounded by cliffs with an average height of 1,200 meters with the deepest point filled with air reaching 500 meters. Samosir Island in the middle is a popular tourist spot. With a lake length of about 100 kilometers and a width of 30 km. Lake Toba is a giant that has a beautiful charm.

8. Dozens of waterfalls around Lake Toba
   North Sumatra is famous for the land of a million waterfalls, there is no Lake Toba, around the lake there are also dozens of waterfalls such as Sipiso-piso, Gibeon, Sigura-gura, Lae Pandaroh, etc.