The Younger Dryas began nearly 13,000 years ago and brought with it absolutely brutal conditions for the human race
So far in this series we've talked plenty about modern science in part one and extinction events in part two, the latter of which happened long before humanity was even a thought.
Today, after plenty of anticipation (I'm sorry it's taken so long; I promise the next part of this series won't take nearly as long to come out), it's finally time to get to one of the most critical, yet forgotten times in humanity's history: the Younger Dryas period.
The Younger Dryas was an era of strife that began around 12,900 years ago and lasted for roughly 1200 years.
During this tumultuous period, many megafauna (large animals) went extinct in a very short amount of time, particularly in North America, where over 75% of megafauna were lost forever.
The period saw an abrupt change in the then-warming climate which saw a rapid return to glacial conditions in much of the world, followed by another sudden reversal which returned the planet to the warming conditions that preceeded it.
Those warming conditions continue to this day in the current Holocene epoch, which has lasted for the last 11,700 years, making the Younger Dryas an anamalous blip in Earth's timeline.
Though most people wouldn't think of humans as "megafauna", we are indeed large animals, and while humanity obviously did not perish like many of the megafauna of that time, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that human populations suffered significant losses at the onset of the Younger Dryas.
The cause of the drastic environmental shifts of this time are hotly debated, but all sides agree that rapid declines in temperatures in most of the Northern Hemisphere resulted in glaciation and brutally cold conditions, along with drastic climate change around the world.
Interestingly, the onset of the Younger Dryas appears to have also coincided with a series of massive wildfires that covered as much as 10% of the planet at once.
The advent of the Younger Dryas is a cause for contention amongst scientists given there is not yet a clear answer as to what caused it, but the Younger Dryas Impact Theory has gained a lot of traction in recent years for good reason, including being able to explain how such rapid changes in the climate could have occurred.
With increased deposits of rare elements like platinum found in the earth from that time period (if you haven't read part two of this series or are in need of a refresher, now would be the perfect time to look back and remember why this is important) as well as the afforementioned massive simultaneous wildfires, a meteor impact (or multiple impacts) is a very likely candidate for what kicked off such sudden changes to the Earth.
Interestingly, the most "academically accepted" theory as to how the rapid cooling of the Younger Dryas occurred involved a massive flood of meltwater - this theory suggests a "pulse" of glacial freshwater poured into the Atlantic and Arctic oceans, likely caused by the breaking of a natural ice dam.
This influx of freshwater would have diluted the circulation of saltwater in the North Atlantic, disrupting the ocean's so-called "conveyer belt" that cycles warm water up to the Arctic, where it cools and sinks and travels back to the south.
With less warm seawater traveling to the North, temperatures would plunge and the deluge of on-land glacial waters being dumped into the oceans led to the sudden increase in sea level that marked the Younger Dryas period.
Ironically, these two theories are effectively two sides of the same coin - if a sufficiently large meteor struck a glacier rather than land, it could easily cause a massive release of meltwater, whether by breaking an ice dam or simply from the heat caused by the explosive impact.
Given the size of the glaciers this water is believed to have come from (in what is now Canada), it wouldn't have left a detectable impact crater on the ground far below, unlike say the Chicxulub impactor which struck land.
In fact, such an effect wouldn't have even required a meteor to make it all the way down to the glacier itself - a sufficently large airburst, such as the Tunguska airburst we discussed in part two, could have easily generated enough force to demolish an ice dam.
It's also not a stretch to believe that other fragments of this impactor (or other, smaller asteroids from the same asteroid belt which passed by the Earth at the time) would have impacted in other areas or resulted in airbursts.
Such a cosmic assault would perfectly explain the mass forrest fires that coincided with the start of the Younger Dryas, as well as explain the increased presence of platinum and other rare elements in the ground, without requiring a massive impact site given the much smaller scale (compared to the dinosaur killer at least).
A Clean Slate
The significance of the Younger Dryas time period and what it means for our understanding of history is absolutely massive.
Gigantic, biblical floods occurred in North America and many other areas of the world during this time period that would have consumed any civilizations caught in their path, wiping away virtually all traces of their existence.
We're talking about massive walls of water hundreds of feet high sweeping across what is now North America, scraping the earth down to its bedrock and sending everything in its path to a watery grave.
The drastic rise in sealevels that followed would also have likely taken out many settlements to say the least - throughout recorded history, humans have always settled predominantly on coastlines.
Even to this day, the largest population centers are almost always focused on the coasts; if an event such as the Younger Dryas were to occur today, many of humanity's most populous cities would be plunged underwater and swallowed by the sea, from New York City to Shanghai to Amsterdam.
Such a catastrophic event, as well as the incredible hardships that the following millenia's cold snap brought with it, would have effectively served as a "reset" for human civilizations.
With large settlements destroyed or rendered unmaintainable in such an environment, the struggle to survive would supercede any previous advancements in culture and technology; if such a cataclysmic event were to happen today, we'd say it "plunged us back to the dark ages" or something to that effect, with much of our modern technology being lost or destroyed over time as survival became the focal point of our existence, rather than how much different the new iPhone is compared to last year's model.
Another point often lost by people is that despite the prevalence of electronics and other modern technologies, there still exists populations of "hunter-gatherers" in the world today, groups that continue to live off the land very similarly to those that have been doing so for untold thousands of years.
If a cataclysmic event today were to wipe out a sizeable part of the human population and plunged the planet into a far less habitable condition, those "hunter-gatherers" that we today look at as primitive would be better suited for survival than the vast majority of the human population.
Think about it - in an apocalyptic scenario where humans are forced to fend for themselves, gathering their own resources and with much of the technology we take for granted broken or in short supply, who would be most likely to survive - those accustomed to our modern way of life, or "primitive" tribes such as those that exist today in Africa, who are already extremely well-versed in survival without the need for any advanced technology?
This would have been no different nearly 13,000 years ago, yet for as long as we have looked back at ancient peoples, we have thought of them as extremely limited up until "advanced" civilization began with the Sumerians.
These views on our ancient ancestors are by all indications extremely outdated and misinformed.
The ancient site of Gobekli Tepe in modern-day Turkey, which dates to at least 11,000 years ago (shortly after the end of the Younger Dryas) has effectively demolished modern archaeological theories regarding human advancements and agriculture.
It has long been accepted that agriculture led to the creation of large monuments and impressive buildings by ancient peoples, providing such societies more time in order to focus on other tasks not directly related to their survival, unlike traditional "hunter-gatherer" societies.
Gobekli Tepe (and its sister site Karahan Tepe) bears no evidence of any agriculture and plenty of evidence the inhabitants of the area were classical "hunter-gatherers", yet many thousands of years before the Sumerians existed they created a massive, sprawling complex with intricate 3D stone reliefs adorning its walls and hundreds of obelisks.
What's peculiar in what little we've seen from those sites (currently, only about 5% of Gobekli Tepe has been excavated, with little sign that more will be uncovered anytime soon) is the abundance of snake depictions.
Stone snakes are everywhere at Gobekli Tepe, and while no discernable language has been found at the site, like any other piece of art found throughout human history, the depictions of animals appear to be telling some sort of story.
The fact that snakes have long been associated with comets and meteors or "shooting stars" by various ancient cultures, and the fact that snakes dominate the oldest monuments humans have yet discovered, which just so happens to have been built either during or immediately after the Younger Dryas, could simply be a coincidence - or it may indicate that the culture that created Gobekli Tepe created these monuments to pass on their story of survival, much like countless "origin" myths that have been passed on throughout human civilizations.
Throughout "origin" and "flood" myths, a similar motif can be found - the culture which shares these stories does so in order not only to preserve the history of their ancestors and culture, but as a warning to future generations about how devastating mother nature (or substitute "mother nature" with their chosen gods) can be.
Survivors of such an apocalyptic time would of course feel compelled to share their experiences to try and prepare others for such an event or somehow prevent it.
This behaviour is seen throughout recorded history and continues to this day in many forms, from Holocaust survivors sharing their stories in order to prevent future atrocities (which unfortunately have largely fallen on deaf ears if the last few years have taught us anything) to childhood tales like Little Red Riding Hood which instill in children the dangers of trusting strangers.
Mythologies have been passed down for millenia amongst many cultures - yet even suggesting that certain shared myths, found across so many civilizations around the world, many of which had no discernable means of contact with one another when these stories were first recorded, may indeed be referring to a period nearly 13,000 years ago, is akin to blasphemy in "academia" and modern archeology.
Before written language (at least any written language which has survived in order for us to find it) existed, ancient peoples clearly were capable of communicating and sharing their experiences.
Even today in tribes and cultures that don't use (or scarcely use) writing to record their histories and culture, stories and mythologies and passed on through generations purely in verbal form.
People today still use this regularly without even realizing it - think about how much information you know about your own family for instance - how much of that information is actually written down in a thorough manner? Even in a time where recording information is freely available and can be done by virtually anyone at anytime, we still retain plenty of information without bothering to write it down, and pass it on to others only through verbal communication.
It may be on a "smaller" scale, but it is very much the same way humans have been communicating for as long as societies have existed.
For some reason, thinking that this method of passing on information (when such a method would logically be much more important than it is today) is somehow incapable of passing on stories, especially ones considered so important to entire cultures, for thousands of years is "unrealistic".
Many still believe the abundance of flood myths (and in particular, flood myths which tie into a culture's origins) are mere coincidence, or a natural response to more localized floods - after all, devastating floods have occurred throughout history and do to this day.
A victim of a severe local flood would certainly not be unreasonable for describing such an event as a near-mythical force of nature after all.
Yet these cultures have all been through other natural disasters that could certainly be just as devastating and just as easily be embellished - from earthquakes to forest fires to tornados.
Weirdly, you won't find a bunch of strikingly similar origin stories across the ancient world about survivors of epically massive forest fires, freakishly ferocious tornados, and world-shattering earthquakes escaping death and sharing their knowledge with other cultures.
From the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh to stories from countless Aboriginal tribes to the biblical tale of Noah's Ark, nearly every ancient culture we have found has their own version of a great flood "myth", often describing the culture it comes from as survivors of this flood or at least coming into contact with those survivors.
It has become increasingly clear as time goes on that "myths" are regularly inspired by real events - biblical events, such as the parting of the Red Sea, have been shown to be scientifically possible and have even been documented to have occurred in recent times in different areas; the city of Troy and the Trojan War, featured in many classical texts including Homer's Iliad, was one of the most important events in Greek "mythology" and was regarded as purely fiction for centuries, until of course the city itself was found in modern-day Turkey, showing that even though many parts of the story were likely embellished, it at least had its roots in reality.
These flood myths however are all quite clear in the scope of the devastation, and typically these cultures have documented other regional floods which are not spoken of in the same regard - ie., they've dealt with local floods before and don't go on to describe them as apocalyptic events.
These myths come from cultures spread out across millenia and entire continents; given the verbal passing on of information and how difficult and rare it is for written documents from ancient times to survive in order to be documented today, it becomes impossible to accurately say when and where these tales were first spoken, or when any events they tell of exactly occurred.
Adding together the information we have however, it seems the most reasonable conclusion would be a shared experience - an event or series of events that were felt around the world, or at least across enough areas that such stories could then disperse amongst unaffected cultures over time.
The flooding that occurred during the Younger Dryas, which affected much of the globe, certainly fits not only the description of the scale of destruction, but would also explain why all these diverse cultures carry such similar apocalyptic tales and place such emphasis on their importance.
Perhaps one of the most intriguing "coincidences" when it comes to these flood myths is the tale of Atlantis.
The "mythical" tale of Atlantis as told to us by Plato, which we will explore more in-depth in a future piece, was, according to Plato and seemingly backed by similar mythology found in Egypt's Temple of Edfu, was actually an historical account from the Egyptians.
Plato describes these events in detail and puts a Greek spin on the story, but keeps the core details (at least in terms of what he believes) rooted in history - the legendary tale saw the ancient, highly advanced city of Atlantis wiped out in a single day, swallowed by the ocean.
When did Plato say this event occurred?
Roughly 9000 years before the time of Solon (another influential philosopher and historian), which was around 600 BC.
Egyptian priests and scholars did keep long-running histories of their civilization, and similar accounts (such as the Egyptian Kings list, which is used to this day to provide an accurate timeline of Egyptian history, yet also goes back far longer (tens of thousands of years) in time which is explained away as purely "mythical" despite using the more recent entries as fact) found in Egyptian ruins have been corroborated and are believed to be very accurate.
Today, that would put the end of Atlantis, according to Plato, at roughly...11,600 years ago, right at the tail end of the Younger Dryas.
What's also particularly interesting about many of these flood myths is that they often speak of mysterious survivors of the flood that spread their knowledge and technology with a culture, leading again for many to speculate as to how advanced some of the pre-Younger Dryas civilizations may have been.
We are constantly seeing new archeological sites spring up out of nowhere that are throwing long-held beliefs about our ancient ancestors out the window and there is no indication that this is slowing down.
From the astounding cities in the Amazon rainforest that have been hidden in plain sight to the recovery of wooden structures believed to have been built by a different hominid species nearly 500,000 years ago (or, if it was Homo Sapiens, it would indicate that modern humans date back far longer than the roughly 300,000 years the fossil record we have currently dates back to).
This finding shows that hominids were using stone tools to create notches in wood to form right angles for platforms - if hominids were indeed building wooden structures nearly half a million years ago, how come our current understanding of human history believes that humans had extremely primitive technology for almost our entire history, yet somehow, roughly 6000 years ago, all of a sudden advancements were made and around the world civilizations began to take shape and thrive even across continents despite no way for that knowledge to be spread across the oceans?
How did the ancient Mayans develop such an advanced understanding of astronomy, mathematics, and architecture not long after the ancient Sumerians and Egyptians did on the other side of the world, with no viable means of any form of communication to those other civilizations?
Either disparate groups of humans just magically decided to dramatically "evolve" in a short period of time around the world when they hadn't shown such leaps ever before in our 300,000+ years of roaming the Earth, or we're missing a big part of human history.
Another recent finding of an ancient, 130,000 year old mastodon that appears to have been butchered and had its bones split open with stone tools may have also completely destroyed the timeline of human movement.
A mastodon being butchered by humans or other hominids 130,000 years ago doesn't seem like a surprising finding, but the fact this mastodon was found in North America is.
Archaelogists have long claimed that hominids only traversed to North America when an ancient land bridge between Asia and North America was uncovered during the last glacial maximum, with this bridge being exposed some 35,000 years ago and once again being submerged roughly 12,000 years ago. For any hominid to have somehow been in North America 130,000 years ago, let alone leave evidence that we were lucky enough to find today, absolutely changes our entire understanding of history.
This also brings up the odd findings that indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon, as well as various other places in South America, share distant relatives with Austrialian and Melanesian peoples, yet those same genetic markers are not found in North America - indicating that ancient peoples migrated to South America independently of the Northern land bridge.
The Loss of History
With the monumental floods hitting North America the hardest during the Younger Dryas, just how much evidence of our ancient ancestors was washed away?
If what we currently know about our ancient ancestors could fill a book, what we don't know could fill enough books to overflow the shelves of the world's largest library.
Even looking at what we know about "recorded" history, which began just 5000 years ago, there is still so much that has been lost to time, natural disasters, wars, and other means, and so much we simply don't know - and that's not even addressing how much there is still out there to find which we simply haven't yet.
Last week, on my Instagram we explored the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; the original wonders were written just over 2000 years ago, and rank amongst the most coveted and well-maintained sites in recorded history, at least at the time of the Greeks.
These Wonders, unlike the modern list which is inspired by its Greek progenitor, were even constrained to the areas of the world known to the Greeks, with monuments found in other regions and continents obviously not being known to them and thus not included.
Yet despite the scope of that list being limited to one region of the planet, only one of those original Seven Wonders remains today - and that lone survivor happens to exist in a desert which has some of the most favourable conditions on the planet in regards to preserving history.
From Olympia's majestic Statue of Zeus to the Lighthouse of Alexandria, all but one of those wonders has been lost to time.
Outside of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the most incredible works seen by humans in the Greek world just two thousand years ago have been destroyed in natural disasters, war, or of unknown causes; of those six fallen Wonders, only two (the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis) are even still around today in the form of ruins or rubble, with the rest having their remains either salvaged or destroyed by humans (or in the case of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the site has not been definitively found).
If even such revered and massive monuments, mostly made of metal and stone, can't survive for a few thousand years, what makes people think that what little we've found of what came before that offers a comprehensive look at human history and what they were capable of?
Despite the relative abundance of ruins and ancient archeological sites we have compared to older periods, we still have only recovered a small portion of the true extent of human history from the last few thousand years, with countless important historical relics and sites we know existed or likely existed already being lost to history - the amount we don't know of, of course, vastly exceeds what we know we have lost.
We are still constantly uncovering more sites that change our understanding of relatively "recent" human history, including the existence of far more advanced civilizations than we thought possible such as in the Amazon rainforest, and all of this came from a time after the devastating Younger Dryas era.
The belief that humans have been around at least 300,000 years, yet have only been capable of forming more "advanced" civilizations for the past 6000 years or so, is quite simply an antiquated and ignorant view of human history that raises more questions than it provides answers.
In the next chapter of this series (which will not take a year to come out, I promise), we will be taking a closer look at stone - at what ancient technologies we appear to be missing, and at just how accurate some of our "understandings" of recorded history really are.
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