How a Comet Impact 13,000 Years Ago May Have Reset Ancient Civilizations

Some 13,000 years ago, a massive comet impacted Earth, changing a planet in more ways than one. In fact, the catastrophic collisions as so powerful, it is likely to have triggered a mass extinction on the planet, resetting along the way, a number of ancient cultures that may have already been relatively well-developed at the time.

Around 13,000 years ago (12,800 to be precise) Earth cooled of rapidly.

Scientists have found that in the span of just a few years, the average temperate on Earth dropped abruptly resulting in a climate as low as -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) in some regions of the planet’s Northern Hemisphere.

It was an extreme change, and scientists have found evidence that this cooler period lasted for up to 1,400 years, thanks to layers of ice that were found in Greenland.

This abrupt change in Earth’s climate is defined by the so-called Younger Dryas theory, which marked the start of an abrupt decline in ice-age megafauna, leading to the extinction of around 35 different genera of animals in Northern America alone.

During the Younger Dryas, not only animals went extinct. It is believed that this period of time also marked the abrupt decline among different cultures around the globe, including the Clovis culture in America. The catastrophic collision 12,800 years ago is now seen and widely accepted as leaving a profound imprint in many developing cultures, starting a kind of global reset.

Although many authors and scientists have theorized that such an event took place around 13,000 years ago, the evidence was scarce, albeit there.

Geologic wisdom blames the Younger Dryas on the failure of glacial ice dams keeping back huge lakes in central North America and the sudden, extensive blast of freshwater they discharged into the North Atlantic. This freshwater influx is believed to have eventually slowed down ocean circulation and ended up cooling the climate.

The Younger Dryas event gets its name from a wildflower called Dryas octopetala which is able to tolerate extremely cold conditions, which became common in many parts of Europe around 12,800 years ago.

Cumulative evidence points towards the sky, and the so-called impact hypothesis which states that the fragment of a comet, or asteroid impacted our planet around 13,000 years ago, causing catastrophic climate changes. Not only did this collision completely disrupt the glacial ice sheets, but it also caused the oceans current to come to a halt.

It is also believed that this cosmic collision triggered a massive set of wildfires across the planet, which eventually blocked the sunlight due to an extensive amount of smoke. Scientists have calculated that as much as ten percent of global forests and grasslands most likely burned following the extraterrestrial impact.

The scientific study of ocean, lake, terrestrial, as well as ice core records, shows huge peaks in particles that are directly associated with burning: charcoal and soot. The most curious thing is, the evidence perfectly fits into the time of the Younger Dryas. Read the free article.