Explosive hypothesis about humans' lack of genetic diversity

The hypothesis is neither explosive, nor new.

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic...

I think by "explosive" they were talking about the volcano, not that the theory was that sensational. Granted the choice of the natural pun was probably not the best... :-)

If the Indonesian volcano reduced the human population to 1000-10000 breeding pairs, would it not also have reduced the chimpanzee population similarly?

It's an interesting hypothesis, but similar to the idea that the Yacutan asteroid wiped out the dinosaur population. If that were the case, how did other species survive?

Look at figure 3 in this PDF:

http://napobo3.lk.net/dna/Behar_2010.pdf

If true, it's remarkable that we exist today at all.