Good point. Humans became anatomically modern around 300,000 to 200,000 years ago, but intellectually modern around 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. Though this is disputed.There's a good summary on Wikipedia if you're interested.

There was a massive volcanic eruption around 74,000 years ago. It has been proposed that this caused a genetic bottleneck in the human population. Though this, too, has been disputed.