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Comment by pmayrgundter | Hacker News Reader

Seems that Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis might fit these observations too.

"We obtained radiocarbon dates on 172 specimens from seven extinct and one extant species... spanning 15.6 to 10.0 thousand calendar years before present (ka)."

YDIH event is estimated at 12900 BP and includes vast wildfires in its scenario, including in North America.

Contrast that with the idea that humans have been in Sapiens form for 200kya+, using fire for longer even than we have been Sapiens and have probably been in the Americas far before 13kya. Is the idea that despite the capability, we only at this specific time started the extinction program? At just the moment when there's sign of a globally catastrophic impact?

YDIH seems more parsimonious, yet the paper doesn't mention it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Younger_Dryas_impact_hypo...

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Humans could have lived nicely in harmony for hundreds of thousands of years in times of abundance, and when sudden cataclysms caused great famines or suffering they could have resorted to more drastic measures that caused large scale fires.

Doesn’t mean this is what I think happened, but sounds just as plausible as comets causing havoc to me.

In the end IMO this field has been greatly disserviced by Hancock. The yDIH just as well might have been the correct explanation but this guy won’t stop yapping about aliens alongside the same. So the “establishment” academics seem to be very wary of this hypothesis and being associated with him. Now it’s clear that’s dumb of the academics as well, they should be logical and choose the correct hypothesis no matter what flavor it associates them with. Sad that one of the likely most important times of human history has become so contentious due to human emotion and ego coming in the way of scientific rigor.

I agree with most of this. I would say Graham Hancock has some crazy ideas, but the Younger Dryas isn't crazy and his impact on the theory is minimal. If anything the fact that Joe Rogan had him and Randal Carlson as guests on JRE at the same time probably had more impact.

My current thoughts are that the true history of human civilization does go much further back than current narratives and "Experts" claim. Our current civilization has progressed and innovated so much in such a short amount time, it is not unreasonable to expect that humans have built and lost similar civilizations through catastrophes such as the YDB.

It may not have been aliens but I think it is probable that right around the time we started going into space, ancient human made satellites were discovered and brought back to earth. It could also be that Area 51 and other places were created not for Alien space craft crashes but ancient human satellites that were intentionally crashed.

I can only imagine how alien a TESLA found in space by the next civilization might seem!

Considering the way our government leaders and wealthy have historically conducted themselves, it's not hard to believe if they survived a cataclysm, they would be quite willing to be thought of as gods and horde any knowledge they have to themselves.

Fun subject to ponder in anycase!

Just for the record, Hancock has never promoted aliens. He's dead wrong a great deal, but not that wrong. His crime, though, is to have been annoyingly right too many times, for all the wrong reasons. YDIH is just one such case.

Hancock's great strength is that he actually goes to all the places he writes about, and his wife takes great pictures. I forgive all his maundering in exchange for the pics.

https://youtube.com/shorts/AtI1snsk2M0?feature=share This is the same person correct?

He is saying modern reports of aliens are equivalent to previous reports of fairies. It is not common to believe in fairies, even among loonies.

A little more reading..

"All extinct mammals dated in this study have last occurrence dates older than 13.00 ka, with a modeled extirpation time estimate across all taxa of 13.07 to 12.89 ka [using the Gaussian-Resampled Inverse-Weighted McInerney (GRIMW) extinction estimator"

Even tighter bound than my comment and still a tight fit around 12900. Figure 1 in their paper shows this as well.

In other news, there was recently a "comprehensive refutation" of YDIH (pre-print) that a fave of my, Martin Sweatman, takes a good look at.

A lot of this debate comes down to careful dating, error bars, etc.

https://martinsweatman.blogspot.com/2023/08/debunking-hollid...

What’s more intriguing to me beyond the YDIH is that clearly something wild happened during the Younger Dryas period, impact or not.

Regardless of what caused the dramatic fluctuations in temperature, wildfires, ocean levels (floods) and megafauna, the fluctuations did occur, and mark the beginning of human civilization as we know it, even though we also know Homo Sapiens existed long before this period.

To imagine a period potentially as short as 100 years where the world went from unbearably cold at its warmest to the perpetual summer world we live in now and mega predators simply vanished… if I lived through that period I’d also tell my children to amass resources urgently (and tell stories of the hell world we came from). Who knows how long this insanely human friendly world might last!

The idea that our species oldest stories might be about catastrophic climate change is absolutely humbling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_and_the_Falling_Sky

Edit: Hrrmph.That was not exactly what I remembered. What I do remember are several references to "The Sky is falling!" in the preceeding comics. Which I later found to be actual reference to some Gauls saying that to Roman elites, when asked about their greatest fear. As written down in some classical latin texts, which I don't remember right now.

Nicely put!

Not directly related but I recall watching a "documentary" on Discovery where this guy claimed that several monuments across the globe all matched up star patterns and similar astrological events from around 12k years ago IIRC.

What I recall best was some pyramids ligning up with how the stars would have been back around that time, but they've since drifted apart. He also talked about Angkor Wat and some in South Americas.

My memory is very fuzzy as this was a casual watch over a decade ago, so I don't recall the name of the guy or if the speculation had a name. I assumed it was pretty out there, though of course as presented it sounded compelling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orion_correlation_theory

Thanks, that must be the guy. His 10500 BC lines up with 12k years ago, but yeah...

This sounds a lot like Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix, but that was released in 2022

These days you can find information supporting any theory so take this link with a grain of salt but I found this and believe it relates to your recollection.

https://coolinterestingstuff.com/mysterious-alignment-of-anc...

Are you maybe thinking of Ancient Aliens?

I remember an episode like that, IIRC it also had some crazier claims like pyramid complexes resembling calculator circuit boards.

Can't recall, though from what I recall it wasn't that out there.

What I do recall was that the main point was that these monuments were linked to something astrological, be it stars, equinoxes or similar, "that the same time" some 12k years ago.

That's why I thought of it in this context. If it were true, and the timing lining up with these big animals going away, did something big happen 12k years ago?

Of course, not taking some random guy on Discovery's word for it. But fun coincidence to think about.

Absolutely something big happened 12800 years ago: a massive comet strike that melted much of the North American ice sheet and started continent-wide wildfires. The record is seen unambiguously in a spike of massively elevated platinum dust, and sulfur from fires, frozen into a layer of polar ice.

30+ genera of, mostly, big mammals went extinct suddenly, along with the Clovis culture.

The big remaining mystery is what happened 1200 years later to end the Younger Dryas cold spell.

> If it were true, and the timing lining up with these big animals going away, did something big happen 12k years ago?

An ice age ended, and humans invented agriculture. Combined, these are very big things for the world. Magic/aliens not required.

Yeah wasn't suggesting aliens by any means.

Antonio Zamora has done some research in the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis and the Carolina Bays of North America. He's worth the gander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npXY8mu2hhU&list=PLmd4S3n7Pl...

The Carolina Bays cannot have been formed less than 30kya. Suspicion is on a meteor strike in Michigan back before then, thus distinct from the YD impact.

YDIH is based on false assumptions imo. Check out Robert Schoch's 'solar induced dark age' theory. Schoch deconstructs a lot of YDIH's claims.

Robert Schoch is often wrong. And, he cannot account for the layer of platinum dust and wildfire smoke in the Antarctic and Greenland ice cores.

In addition to seed vaults, we need "carbon vaults" but in a soil core style and we can comm with futures on the states of our environ, not just seeds.

Also, and catagorically -- we need the EVERYTHING of seed vaults to be open and public.

How were these chosen, put in there, harvesting, maintaining, climates, history -- there are PBs of data that need be included in these things.

I would suggest reading the high-ranked Google Scholar results rather than a highly fraught and questionably influenced Wikipedia talk page or a blog by a highly opinionated author.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=younger+dryas+impact+hyp...

Just a jump-off point for anyone not acquainted. It's a sprawling topic, as the 20k results of your search show!

I'd also recommend Sweatman's research review:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLftb0lOpSe9PvJhFKSueZ...

24 videos, 30-60m each, stepping thru over 120 papers. It's the most comprehensive synthesis I've found that actually deals with the debate. Sweatman is an advocate for the hypothesis, but he does an admirable job of focusing on the ideas and there's a lot to learn from him.

Younger Dryas Impact Theory has always been somewhat controversial but it has basically become political due to being JRE listener coded now.

I prefer Robert Schoch's theory that it was a solar outburst (aka micro-nova) rather than a comet that dramatically warmed the entire Earth.

(he was also on Joe Rogan)

His theory on the aurora borealis that would have covered the planet and been more intense is very interesting. Esp the drawings of a human shaped figure with the balls near the armpits across the world. Which was later shown to be the result of some plasma interference or something or another that would have been seen around the world and drawn.

A solar outburst would not have deposited a layer of platinum dust.

Do you mean iridium? I hadn’t heard of the platinum dust later previously

The K-T bolide scattered iridium dust. The YD bolide scattered platinum dust.

> extant

Surviving. I learnt a new word.

impacts were an effect, not the cause

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