At one level this was all good. For science to progress it is important that all ideas be tested in the fire of peer review. And while Zamora’s hypothesis had already been through that fire once in order to have appeared in Geomorphology at all, here were other scientists who disagreed.
Excellent! Bring it on, guys!
I was at Wilmington to learn, and such constructive disagreements would surely only help me gain a better understanding of what no scientist today can yet claim to understand fully—namely, the cause and true extent of the cataclysmic events that shook the earth at the onset of the Younger Dryas 12,800 years ago.
Because I’d gone into the meeting with the mind-set that we were all colleagues here trying to figure out a solution to one of the greatest mysteries of the past, I didn’t initially expect the level of antagonism, hostility, scorn, and downright unpleasantness with which Zamora’s impact hypothesis was received by LeCompte and Demitroff—who are themselves proponents of an impact hypothesis at the receiving end of a great deal of antagonism, hostility, scorn, and unpleasantness.
But that was naivete on my part. Over the following months I was to get a much clearer understanding of what was really going on.
“EXTREMELY REGRETTABLE …”
AFTER THE WILMINGTON MEETING, SANTHA and I flew to Little Rock, Arkansas, where I had a presentation to give at a conference before we returned to the United Kingdom. During my talk, which was filmed, I showed a photograph of myself with Chris Moore on a field trip to a Carolina Bay—Johns Bay—where platinum had been found. I outlined the platinum research and other YDIH research in my presentation and then moved on to a discussion of Antonio Zamora’s Glacier Ice Hypothesis. I did not connect his work to the work of the Comet Research Group and I did not suggest he was a member of the Comet Research Group or had anything to do with it.
The video was released on YouTube on January 26, 2018.30 A little over a month later I found myself embroiled in heated email correspondence with Malcolm LeCompte and Mark Demitroff.
The first salvo was fired on March 9, 2018, with an email from LeCompte to Zamora, cc’d to me, titled “Paper by Antonio Zamora: Geomorphology 282 (2017) 209–216.”
That email accused me of providing “extraordinary coverage” of Zamora’s “speculative theory” in my Little Rock presentation and of giving it exposure “in juxtaposition” with my “discussion of the YDB Impact Hypothesis.” Describing my alleged “association” of Zamora’s work with the work of the Comet Research Group as “extremely regrettable,” LeCompte added a postscript specifically addressed to me:
Graham, I find Antonio’s work to be unsupportable, not because impact proxies aren’t found in the bay rims, as you apparently have been told and are now saying, but for the variety of reasons listed in the attached letter, first and foremost of which: because there was no ice in Saginaw Bay or anywhere within 200 km of where Antonio believes his impact occurred.
My bad about the impact proxies!
I had indeed incorrectly stated in that hastily-put-together segment of my presentation that none were found in the Carolina Bay rims and that this was part of the long-established dismissal of any impact connection to the bays. I got that wrong. Platinum is an impact proxy, as I knew very well, and Chris Moore had found it in the Carolina Bays. Multiple other proxies, including “magnetic grains and microspherules, carbon spherules and glass-like carbon,” have also been found, as a 2010 study reports, “throughout the rims of 16 Carolina Bays.”31
What I don’t see, however, is how this helps LeCompte’s claim that impacts did not make the bays. On the contrary, it seems to me that the presence of the proxies there only strengthens the case that the bays are impact-related. I shall certainly speak of this in future presentations.
Much more significant is the second statement in the postscript, to the effect that 12,800 years ago there was no ice in Saginaw Bay or anywhere within 200 kilometers of the proposed impact site. LeCompte elaborates on this point in the longer letter attached to his mail, formally addressed to the Editor of Geomorphology, where he refers to “a large body of literature” providing evidence that Zamora’s proposed point of impact had been deglaciated for more than 1,000 years before the onset of the Younger Dryas and that not only Saginaw Bay but all of Lake Huron had been ice-free when the Younger Dryas began.
This seemed to be a fatal criticism of the Glacier Ice Impact Theory—but Zamora gave an immediate response to LeCompte:
In your note to the editor of Geomorphology you say “Dyke (2004), and Larson and Schaetzl (2001), provide graphical depictions of the retreat of the Laurentide Ice Sheet with sufficiently high spatial and temporal resolution to make clear that not only Saginaw Bay, but all of Lake Huron was ice-free at the time of the Younger Dryas onset.”
Let us say that no evidence can be found for glaciers at the point where the axial projections of the bays converge. Geologists usually determine the extent of glacier coverage by examining glacial striations on the terrain and by identifying deposits of erratic boulders. Would you expect the site of an extraterrestrial impact to retain these markers? Wouldn’t the impact of a 3 km asteroid obliterate striations and erratic boulders? The subsequent melting of the glaciers would then flood the impact point and wash away the last traces of the crater. The Carolina Bays do exist, and because they are conic sections, it is very likely that they originated as conical impact cavities. … The Nebraska Rainwater Basins are now intimately related to the Carolina Bays through their geometry. Any modern publication about the Carolina Bays that ignores the Nebraska basins is incomplete and inadequate. … In my paper, I mentioned that an ET impact on hard ground would have sent rocky ejecta only one third as far as an impact on ice. Moreover, an impact on land, rather than on ice, would have left a typical ET crater. My bet is that there was an ice sheet wherever the meteorite hit, otherwise someone would already have found the crater.
Frankly, I thought that Zamora had returned Malcolm’s hardball quite well, and soon afterward he followed through by sending me a paper I hadn’t come across before, published in Quaternary Science Reviews in 1986, titled “Correlation of Glacial Deposits of the Huron, Lake Michigan and Green Bay Lobes in Michigan and Wisconsin.”32 The paper, by Donald Eschman and David Mickelson, concludes that following an earlier retreat there was a re-advance of the ice sheet during the so-called Port Huron stade around 13,000 years ago and that at this time both Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron were indeed covered with ice.33
Once again, therefore, as so often in science, statements touted as facts turn out to be opinions contradicted by other opinions that are also touted as facts. The truth of the matter is that there remains great uncertainty and confusion around exactly what happened in North America—and across the whole world—at the onset of the Younger Dryas. While that uncertainty persists, alleged “certainties” of almost any kind are inappropriate and it is wise to keep an open mind to all possibilities.
Beyond the issue of the absence (or presence?) of an ice sheet at the proposed point of impact, LeCompte’s dismissal of the Glacier Ice Impact Theory is of course supported by other evidence and reasoning, but my purpose here is not to get into these minutiae. I concede the possibility that LeCompte may be right while remaining open to the possibility that he may be wrong. Either way, the real importance of Zamora’s contribution has been to raise new questions around the matter of the Younger Dryas impacts. Only time and further research will tell whether his theory really solves the mystery of the Carolina Bays and the Nebraska Rainwater Basins, but he has undoubtedly done scholarship a service by exploring the ballistics and dynamics of explosive cosmic impacts on the North American ice cap, and by looking into the potentially disastrous consequences in terms of the subsequent storm of icy ejecta.
“YOU WERE REPEATEDLY WARNED …”
THE STORM OF EJECTA FROM the Wilmington meeting was far from over. My exchange of emails with Malcolm LeCompte continued, Mark Demitroff joined the conversation as well, and b
oth of them were clearly very annoyed with me! Chris Moore was cc’d but did not comment. What became clear from all this was that LeCompte’s objection to the video was not that I had misrepresented the Comet Research Group in any way, or that I had misrepresented Chris Moore’s recent research, but simply that right after what I had to say about the Comet Research Group, ending up with the visit I’d just made with Chris Moore to Johns Bay, I had gone on to talk about Zamora’s Glacier Ice Impact Theory.
On March 21, 2018, therefore, because I sensed there was something going on here that was worthy of reporting, and wanted no one involved to be in any doubt that I intended to report it, I began a new thread of emails under the subject line FOR THE RECORD:
I speak about the work of many scientists [in the video]. The fact that what I have to say about the work of one scientist follows what I have to say about the work of another scientist does not mean I am connecting the two—unless I specifically do so, which I don’t do here. I am therefore really perplexed as to why this video has caused offence.
I have no hesitation in sharing the bulk of LeCompte’s reply because of the light it sheds on a growing problem within science in general—the problem of enforced conformity.
The passages that I have placed in bold type were not in bold in the original but I choose to emphasize them in the extracts below because of the insights they provide into the ways this problem can manifest and the states of mind it engenders.
MALCOLM LECOMPTE TO GRAHAM HANCOCK, MARCH 23, 2018:
You were … repeatedly warned that any association of Carolina Bay genesis linked to a discussion of the YDB impact event would likely be harmful to the progress of the YDIH research and to the reputations of its investigators.
You may not be aware of the time and energy spent to largely neutralize the distracting effects and hostility created by the early Carolina Bay related assertions made in the non-peer reviewed book: Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes. [This is a book coauthored by Richard Firestone and Allen West, the original formulators of the YDIH, and published in 2006, a year before the first formal paper appeared in PNAS.] The association of bay impact genesis with the YDIH created an early perception in some scientific communities that the YDB impact research was both unprofessional and bordering on pseudoscientific. Those original, naive Bay genesis claims still haunt the research and contribute to hobbling its acceptance as a legitimate research activity for a new generation of scientists. We have few, relatively younger and seasoned tigers like Chris Moore willing to disregard the real and perceived risks to their careers and reputations, and even fewer younger, newly-trained scientists following in his footsteps to adopt what is still considered a somewhat controversial line of research. His participation in this research is noticed and monitored by his many colleagues.
Nevertheless, only a week after our meeting, where Mark [Demitroff], with Chris’ endorsement, had presented an evidence-based alternative to Zamora’s proposed Bay impact genesis, you gave a video presentation that juxtaposed YDIH research with Zamora’s very controversial claim of Bay impact genesis. …
Less than a month [later] … Chris Moore, probably the most important current and hopefully future investigator of the YDB event, received a call from a colleague who had seen your You Tube video and posted it on his anti-pseudoscience website that is apparently visited by some of Chris’ peers. Your presentation juxtaposing YDIH research with Zamora’s claims certainly endowed them with some unwarranted credibility but also contaminated the YDIH by the association. Chris achieved some unwanted negative-celebrity among his colleagues. He was challenged about the wisdom of hosting you and suffered the indignity of wondering about the effect the … video might have on his career and reputation.
It is obvious to me that distribution of your video presentation has put Chris’s reputation, career and participation in the YDIH research in potential jeopardy … the resulting harm … has yet to be completely comprehended. Fortunately Chris made the brave decision to continue the YDIH research, despite that video’s presence on you tube for the foreseeable future.
Wow! All this stress, drama, and defensiveness over a video of a presentation I gave at a conference! I have to confess, I was taken aback by the vehemence of LeCompte’s reply and the suggestion that I might have harmed the career of that very likable and diligent scientist Chris Moore.
But at a deeper level what this whole exchange revealed to me was something disturbing about the way science works. I hadn’t quite grasped the role of fear before. But I could see it in action everywhere here: fear of being “noticed and monitored by colleagues,” fear of unwanted negative celebrity, fear of indignity, fear of loss of reputation, fear of loss of career—and not for committing some terrible crime but simply for exploring unorthodox possibilities and undertaking “somewhat controversial research” into what everyone agrees were extraordinary events 12,800 years ago.
Worse still, this pervasive state of fear has somehow ingrained itself so deeply into the fabric of science that those who have embraced unorthodox possibilities themselves are often among the least willing to consider unorthodox possibilities embraced by others—lest by doing so they “contaminate” their own preferred unorthdoxy.
How will it ever be possible to discover the truth about the past when so much fear gets in the way?
HUNTER-GATHERERS AND THE LOST CIVILIZATION
UTTERLY HORRIFIC, TROUBLING, AND CONFUSING events took place at the onset of the Younger Dryas, and more than a decade under the scientific spotlight has repeatedly confirmed that the best explanation of all the evidence is that the earth underwent a series of interactions with the remnants of the disintegrating giant comet that spawned the Taurid meteor stream. These encounters are thought to have reached a peak 12,822 years ago but were sustained over a span of 21 years beginning 12,836 years ago and ending 12,815 years ago. There were other episodes of bombardment around the time of the Younger Dryas onset, but this was the worst.
Perhaps it was not a comet after all. Perhaps in the next decade some other even more compelling theory with even more evidence to back it up will be advanced—or perhaps some decisive new discovery will be made that vindicates one of the existing nonimpact theories. Until that time, however, the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis continues to make complete sense to me and to a great many scientists, and its 21-year window of maximum devastation, peaking around 12,822 years ago, deserves special attention.
Archaeological evidence from this period is scarce in North America, but what there is suggests that widely scattered populations of Native American hunter-gatherers were badly mauled at the Younger Dryas onset. Amid indications of sudden population collapses, many previously inhabited areas were abandoned entirely, as we saw in chapter 26, with no return for hundreds of years. Clovis ceased to exist—an entire vibrant, widely distributed culture obliterated—but other humans survived and bounced back, something our species has a talent for. I’d stayed in touch with Al Goodyear since Topper and he confirmed that in his view, while there was evidence for a “possible demographic crash/depression,” there had been no “extermination post Clovis.”1
We shouldn’t be surprised.
Hunter-gatherers are hard to exterminate!
They roll with the punches and they bounce back.
In the technology-dominated twenty-first century, the majority of humans live in cities fed by intensive agriculture, but in the world today there still exists a tiny minority of hunter-gatherers. Many of the urbanites enjoy great wealth and abundance while the hunter-gatherers possess very little. If a cataclysm on the scale of the Younger Dryas impacts were to strike in our lifetimes, however, I predict it would be these few remaining groups of hunter-gatherers—in the Kalahari desert, for example, or in the Amazon rainforest—who would have the best chance of surviving the devastating consequences, and it would be their descendants, not ours, who would carry the human story forward. Unlike most city dwellers who have no idea how to live off the land, hunter-gathere
rs are masters of survival, they know how to deal with environmental setbacks, and no matter how tough things get they can usually improvise a workaround. By contrast the masses in the cities, suddenly discovering that technology can’t fix everything, would be psychologically traumatized and largely helpless.
Almost the opposite of our twenty-first-century world, the world as I imagine it 12,800 years ago is one in which the vast majority of humans are hunter-gatherers while a minority have taken another, more complex, path. The hunter-gatherers form populations recognized by modern archaeologists, and their stone tools, weapons, and ornaments speak of an effective but fairly rudimentary technology. The minority who have taken a different path are not recognized and I contend that this is primarily because the destruction of their civilization was near-total, and because the few, faint, tantalizing clues to their technology that have reached us across the ages hint at a level of science far in advance of anything believed by scholars to have been possible at such a remote period of prehistory.
It is for this reason that ancient maps incorporating scientifically accurate latitudes and longitudes and depicting the world as it looked during the lowered sea levels of the last Ice Age have been dismissed by the mainstream as mere curiosities with no bearing on our understanding of the origins of civilization.
I looked into the mystery of these maps in Fingerprints of the Gods (1995) and again in Underworld in 2002, and refer the reader to appendix 2 for details. Contrary to the mainstream, my broad conclusion is that an advanced global seafaring civilization existed during the Ice Age, that it mapped the earth as it looked then with stunning accuracy, and that it had solved the problem of longitude, which our own civilization failed to do until the invention of Harrison’s marine chronometer in the late eighteenth century. As masters of celestial navigation, as explorers, as geographers, and as cartographers, therefore, this lost civilization of 12,800 years ago was not outstripped by Western science until less than 300 years ago at the peak of the Age of Discovery.
America Before Page 42
