Toba, North Sumatra

[burungkecil]

Anybody on the forum been to Toba recently? I'm off there next week and trying to find out about renting a car in Prapat or on Samosir.
Also, is the road to Tele still open and how dangerous is it?



http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2535/3724048247_29a9a72969_o.jpg

[b_santoso]

I have been to Toba and Samosir a long time ago. Sorry can't help.

[TheJester]

Don't know anything about Toba, but that picture looks awesome. I want a house there!

[ohmdafyd]

I have been to Toba and Samosir a long time ago. Sorry can't help.


That's useful for the OP to know then...:whistle:

[cozy70]

Toba lake is still beatiful place, actually, this week they have a Danau Toba Festival. To rent a car is better from Medan, there you can find many car rental. If you stay in a hotel, you just asked the information from the hotel. Car rental name is Adira, TRAC, etc.

Tele's road is still in good shape but if you would like to try, go to Bakara area where you can find the wellknown Sisingamaraja's king tomb. The place is nice and the street is better than Tele, as they just built the street for 2 cars.
Samosir is nice place to visit, as they have a water fall there and an ancient tomb of the Batak's tribe is located.
Have a nice trip....

[ohmdafyd]

Toba lake is still beatiful place, actually, this week they have a Danau Toba Festival. To rent a car is better from Medan, there you can find many car rental. If you stay in a hotel, you just asked the information from the hotel. Car rental name is Adira, TRAC, etc.

Tele's road is still in good shape but if you would like to try, go to Bakara area where you can find the wellknown Sisingamaraja's king tomb. The place is nice and the street is better than Tele, as they just built the street for 2 cars.
Samosir is nice place to visit, as they have a water fall there and an ancient tomb of the Batak's tribe is located.
Have a nice trip....


Thanks cozy70, that's what the OP wants to know, and me too, I've been wanting to visit Toba since 1980...

[Hombre de Maiz]

Notice how steep the sidewalls around the lake are. This intrigued geologists for a long time. Now we all know what happened roughly 75 million years ago...

[waarmstrong]

...I've been wanting to visit Toba since 1980...

Talk about procrastination, Om --- almost 30 years.

[ohmdafyd]

Talk about procrastination, Om --- almost 30 years.

Tell me about it, I had it all planned out in 1980, that and a trip to the Atlas Mountains on the way back from Europe...I'm still procrastinating, that's what a broken heart in London does to one... :love:

[ohmdafyd]

Notice how steep the sidewalls around the lake are. This intrigued geologists for a long time. Now we all know what happened roughly 75 million years ago...

Yes indeed we do...the biggest Volcanic eruption ever, at that time, I believe... :clap2:

[Hombre de Maiz]

Something like that. My current read, a Richard Dawkins book on the evolution of our world´s fauna, shows a slight blip around that age in the rate of species extinctions. The big bang, however, would come 10 million years later when a meteor struck the earth in what is now the Yucatan peninsula precipitating the Great Cretaceous Extinction. This paved the way for mammals to inherit the world. The rest is evolution and prehistory...

[ohmdafyd]

Something like that. My current read, a Richard Dawkins book on the evolution of our world´s fauna, shows a slight blip around that age in the rate of species extinctions. The big bang, however, would come 10 million years later when a meteor struck the earth in what is now the Yucatan peninsula precipitating the Great Cretaceous Extinction. This paved the way for mammals to inherit the world. The rest is evolution and prehistory...

Did you catch up with the news that they have found a fossilized early primate, earlier than Lucy. She has long arms and fingers etc for tree climbing ability but also walked upright when she needed or wanted to...

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/05/18/Fossil-find-may-be-monkey-human-ancestor/UPI-19881242660948/

[Hombre de Maiz]

Hmmm...Lucy lived rather recently, between three and four millions years ago, and was a hominid. She was probably more similar to us humans than she was to bonobos and chimps. That new find, placed at 47 million years ago, would have looked and moved something like more like a tarsier. Dawkins has us in the tarsier line, not the lemur line.

This is my current Dawkins read: http://www.amazon.com/Ancestors-Tale-Pilgrimage-Dawn-Evolution/dp/0618005838

[ohmdafyd]

Hmmm...Lucy lived rather recently, between three and four millions years ago, and was a hominid. She was probably more similar to us humans than she was to bonobos and chimps. That new find, placed at 47 million years ago, would have looked and moved something like more like a tarsier.

Dawkins has us in the tarsier line, not the lemur line.

OK I'll bite, without doing a search, what is a tarsier?...

[b_santoso]

Thanks cozy70, that's what the OP wants to know, and me too, I've been wanting to visit Toba since 1980...

For adventure, I went to Toba Lake by public bus from Medan through Deli Serdang, Pematang Siantar dan Parapat. Then went to Samosir (an island surrounded by Toba Lake) by ferry vice versa. At Samosir, I found Batak' king cemetery complex there. At Samosir, there are angdes (angkutan pedesaan - village transport car). I hear now tourists complain about the lake condition (dirty).

[Hombre de Maiz]

Tarsiers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsier

http://www.thegillis.net/gallery2/d/1913-2/tarsier1.jpg

Tarsiers and humans had a common ancestor about 58 million years ago. The new fossil find is either an ancestor to tarsiers, to humans (and many other species) or to neither.

[waarmstrong]

My current read, a Richard Dawkins book on the evolution of our world´s fauna, shows a slight blip around that age in the rate of species extinctions. ...

Are you reading, The Greatest Show on Earth, Hombre? Its on my list, but I still have a few volumes from my last Amazon order, so I will not be getting it for a month or so, unless... Did you purchase the book locally?

[Hombre de Maiz]

I am reading The Ancestor´s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. I bought it in Singapore during my last visa run...

[waarmstrong]

I'll put the Ancestor's Tale on my list, as well.

[cirebloke]

JC,

If you were ever to visit a small town in North East England called Sunderland, you would see pleanty of people who look just like this.



Tarsiers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarsier

http://www.thegillis.net/gallery2/d/1913-2/tarsier1.jpg

Tarsiers and humans had a common ancestor about 58 million years ago. The new fossil find is either an ancestor to tarsiers, to humans (and many other species) or to neither.

[atlantis]

Tarsius are a sure sight if one visits Taman Nasional Tangkoko, which is located in... SULAWESI UTARA! :horn:
It's about 1 hour far from Manado on the northern tip of northern Sulawesi.

[Hombre de Maiz]

Indeed. In fact, there is one or two species of Tarsiers found only in Sulawesi...

The distinguishing trait of Tarsiers is its eyes and vision. The thought is that after 58 million years, one branch stayed in the dark and developed big eyes (the ancestor of the tarsiers), and the other branch flourished in the light (the ancestors of the apes and humans). I´d be keen to measure the eye socket of that recently-unveiled fossil. The size of the eye-socket may provide clues as to whose ancestor it is.

Male tarsiers are all "color-blind", while some females are also "color-blind" and other females enjoy human-like color vision.

[edelweis]

* transportation :
toba lake is a one of international tourist destination, so don't worry about transportation going there, there are so many taxi, or public transportation like van from medan go to toba, approximately 2 hours and the cost is vary from Rp 50,000 - 200,000

* and for accomodation :
there are some villa ( traditional house ) or hotel / inn over there, whether owned by local company or local citizen, the cost also vary....

* getting around toba lake, by ferry / boat to samosir island...
there are some ferry / boat to samosir island every hour...so don't worry...

so...enjoy yourself...

[Captain]

If you go, that would be nice to post some feedback about your trip.

[Hombre de Maiz]

I'll put the Ancestor's Tale on my list, as well.

I passed through Singapore yesterday, and managed to find a book that I had been to get:

Forgotten Armies: The Fall of British Asia, 1941-1945
http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Armies-Fall-British-1941-1945/dp/067401748X
http://www.historynet.com/forgotten-armies-the-fall-of-british-asia-1941-1945-book-review.htm

It had been on my to-buy list for a couple of years because the former precedes one that I purchased in Singapore on an earlier trip:

Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forgotten-Wars-Britains-Empire-History/dp/0713997826
http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/arb/article.php?article=773

The latter is the sequel to the former.

[David Kessell]

There has been some great episodes on Nat Geo called 'Generals At War'. One was all about the Japanese General going through Malaya in WW2 to attack the British in Singapore, not sure if you have seen it. Apparently the Japanese came through the jungle mostly on bicycles and when they had to cross rivers the soldiers became the bridge supports, resting wood on their shoulders that the other troops walked over carrying supplies. Very interesting.

[Hombre de Maiz]

Yes, though I didn't have a tv at home, so I only catch on the road. I just started reading Forgotten Armies, and it begins by painting a very good picture of Singapore and the Raj on the eve of the Japanese invasion. Essentially, the Brits were caught with their pants down...

[Hombre de Maiz]

One reason that the Ancestor´s Tale is so enjoyable is that it frequently takes tangeants to illuminate on other areas of human activity and organization. One of the these tangeants is a discussion of how molecular geneticists view the discussions about "race" among humans. One of the conclusions is that humans, all humans, are uniformly of one singel species, possessing a high degree of uniformity at the genome level. In other words, the concept of "race" is not borned out if one looks at the most fundamental, presumably the deepest, level; the human genome. Yes, we are all really all alike, superficial, skin-deep differences notwithstanding.

One reason that humans are exceedingly uniform genetically is, scientists have proposed, due to the fact that humans went through a genetic bottleneck around 70,000 years ago. That is, around that time, human population contradcted to roughly 15,000 individuals or 1,000 breeding pairs. In other words, due to a some external ecological factor, humans came close to extinction, but managed to pull through in the end due to the survival of these 15,000 individuals. All human beings now in existence are descended from that small group of survivors. Ergo our shared genetic uniformity. Incidentally humans are not the only creatures who have undergone a population bottleneck. Cheetahs also show an exceending high genetic uniformity.

What does this all have to do with Toba? Until recently, it was assumed that the global winter precipitated by Toba was responsible for the bottleneck. Recent studies, however, have cast doubt on whether Toba was responsible for THE bottleneck, still allowing for Toba being responsible for A local bottleneck. Fascinating, ain´t it?

[cirebloke]

Fascinating indeed.
I just read The Greatest Show on Earth. A little repetative for my taste but an OK read. But a bit repetative.
About the cheetahs, I now realise why they all look the same to me.

[Hombre de Maiz]

...About the cheetahs, I now realise why they all look the same to me.

Related to why, to humans, all cheetahs, pangolins and komodo dragons all look the same, Dawkins theorizes that humans did not evolve (why would they?) the ability to distinguish and resolve the differences among, say, individual cheetahs, pangolins and komodo dragons. But, there is evidence to suggest that, whereas we might not be able to distiguish among individual animals, animals themselve might be able to do so. Indeed, there would a natural pressure and benefit to being to do so.

My apologies to Tantori for the cerebral bend of this thread, and to Beebop for the evolutionary implications of this discussion.

[ohmdafyd]

One reason that the Ancestor´s Tale is so enjoyable is that it frequently takes tangeants to illuminate on other areas of human activity and organization. One of the these tangeants is a discussion of how molecular geneticists view the discussions about "race" among humans. One of the conclusions is that humans, all humans, are uniformly of one singel species, possessing a high degree of uniformity at the genome level. In other words, the concept of "race" is not borned out if one looks at the most fundamental, presumably the deepest, level; the human genome. Yes, we are all really all alike, superficial, skin-deep differences notwithstanding.

One reason that humans are exceedingly uniform genetically is, scientists have proposed, due to the fact that humans went through a genetic bottleneck around 70,000 years ago. That is, around that time, human population contradcted to roughly 15,000 individuals or 1,000 breeding pairs. In other words, due to a some external ecological factor, humans came close to extinction, but managed to pull through in the end due to the survival of these 15,000 individuals. All human beings now in existence are descended from that small group of survivors. Ergo our shared genetic uniformity. Incidentally humans are not the only creatures who have undergone a population bottleneck. Cheetahs also show an exceending high genetic uniformity.

What does this all have to do with Toba? Until recently, it was assumed that the global winter precipitated by Toba was responsible for the bottleneck. Recent studies, however, have cast doubt on whether Toba was responsible for THE bottleneck, still allowing for Toba being responsible for A local bottleneck. Fascinating, ain´t it?

As you only recently replaced your TV I assume you missed this hombre...fascinating and enlightening...

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/human-family-tree-3706-interactive

[Hombre de Maiz]

I did catch that. I think I caught it back when I was still in Jakarta. Good stuff.

The Dawkins book is even better because it deals with all of the living world, and because it is text. He takes his time to develop points, bring to bear different arguements and evidence, etc., the sort of thing that would take ages on TV and would only leave most viewers lost or bored.

[90DegreesEast]

I was there last March and the roads were fine - although alot can happen in 10 months! :-)

Such a beautiful place. Here are a fw of my pics:

http://i614.photobucket.com/albums/tt221/matthewshaw1/toba4.jpg

http://i614.photobucket.com/albums/tt221/matthewshaw1/toba1.jpg

http://i614.photobucket.com/albums/tt221/matthewshaw1/sumatra2.jpg