Estimates of the decimation of the global human population from this event range as high as 50-60% (many people would have lived on sea shores due to the availability of fish stocks). Therefore, the decimation of the planet's human population from the 9500 BC cosmic object pass-by compounded with that of the 7640 BC. cometary impacts would have severely decreased the number of humans on Earth during the following four thousand years. This is a crucial matter to consider, for the reason that orthodox archaeologists have long been mystified by both the relative scarcity of human remains from the period of 7500 to 3500 BC and, even more important, by the apparently sudden appearance of the highly developed civilizations of Megalithic Europe and Dynastic Egypt around 3100 BC.
Something akin to a global scale combustion caused by perhaps a comet scraping our planet's atmosphere or a meteorite slamming into its surface, scorched the air, melted bedrock and altered the course of Earth's history. Exactly what it was is unclear, but this event jump- started what Kenneth Tankersley, an assistant professor of anthropology and geology at the University of Cincinnati, calls the last gasp of the last ice age. "Imagine living in a time when you look outside and there are elephants walking around in Cincinnati," Tankersley says. "But by the time you're at the end of your years, there are no more elephants. It happens within your lifetime."
Tankersley explains what he and a team of international researchers found may have caused this catastrophic event in Earth's history in their research, "Evidence for Deposition of 10 Million Tonnes of Impact Spherules Across Four Continents 12,800 Years Ago," which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
This research might indicate that it wasn't the cosmic collision that extinguished the mammoths and other species, Tankersley says, but the drastic change to their environment. "The climate changed rapidly and profoundly. And coinciding with this very rapid global climate change was mass extinctions." Tankersley is an archaeological geologist. He uses geological techniques, in the field and laboratory, to solve archaeological questions. He's found a treasure trove of answers to some of those questions in Sheriden Cave in Wyandot County, Ohio. It's in that spot, 100 feet below the surface, where Tankersley has been studying geological layers that date to the Younger Dryas time period, about 13,000 years ago. About 12,000 years before the Younger Dryas, Earth was at the Last Glacial Maximum - the peak of the Ice Age. Millennia passed, and the climate began to warm. Then something happened that caused temperatures to suddenly reverse course, bringing about a century's worth of near-glacial climate that marked the start of the geologically brief Younger Dryas.
There are only about 20 generally accepted archaeological sites in the world that date to this time period, and only 12 in the United States, including Sheriden Cave.
Map of Younger Dryas effect
"There aren't many places on the planet where you can actually put your finger on the end of the last ice age, and Sheriden Cave is one of those rare places where you can do that," Tankersley says. In studying this layer, Tankersley found ample evidence to support the theory that something came close enough to Earth to melt rock and produce other interesting geological phenomena. Foremost among the findings were carbon spherules. These tiny bits of carbon are formed when substances are burned at very high temperatures. The spherules exhibit characteristics that indicate their origin, whether that's from burning coal, lightning strikes, forest fires or something more extreme. Tankersley says the ones in his study could only have been formed from the combustion of rock.
The spherules also were found at 17 other sites across four continents, an estimated 10 million metric tons' worth, further supporting the idea that whatever changed Earth did so on a massive scale. It's unlikely that a wildfire or thunderstorm would leave a geological calling card that immense, covering about 50 million square kilometers. "We know something came close enough to Earth and it was hot enough that it melted rock, that's what these carbon spherules are. In order to create this type of evidence that we see around the world, it was big," Tankersley says, contrasting the effects of an event so massive with the 1883 volcanic explosion on Krakatoa in Indonesia. "When Krakatoa blew its stack, Cincinnati had no summer. Imagine winter all year round. That's just one little volcano blowing its top."
Other important findings include:
Micrometeorites - smaller pieces of meteorites or particles of cosmic dust that have made contact with Earth's surface.
Nano diamonds - microscopic diamonds formed when a carbon source is subjected to an extreme impact, often found in meteorite craters.
Lonsdaleite - a rare type of diamond, also called a hexagonal diamond, only found in non-terrestrial areas such as meteorite craters.
Tankersley says while the cosmic strike had an immediate and deadly effect, the long term side effects were far more devastating, similar to Krakatoa's aftermath but many times worse, thus making it unique in modern human history. In the cataclysm's wake, toxic gas poisoned the air and clouded the sky, causing temperatures to plummet. The roiling climate challenged the existence of plant and animal populations, and it produced what Tankersley has classified as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of the Younger Dryas. He says inhabitants of this time period had three choices: relocate to another environment where they could make a similar living; downsize or adjust their way of living to fit the current surroundings; or swiftly go extinct. ‘Winners’ chose one of the first two options, while ‘losers,’ such as the woolly mammoth, took the last.
Wooly mammoth
"Whatever this was, it did not cause the extinctions," Tankersley says. "Rather, this likely caused climate change. And climate change forced this scenario: You can move, downsize or you can go extinct."
Author Barbara Hand Clow examines legendary cataclysms in her 2001 book Catastrophobia: The Truth Behind Earth Changes and shows how, contrary to many prophecies of doom, we are actually on the cusp of an era of incredible creative growth. The recent discovery of the remains of ancient villages buried beneath the Black Sea is the latest instance of mounting evidence that many of the ‘mythic’ catastrophes of history - such as the fall of Atlantis and the Biblical Flood - were actual events. She shows that a series of cataclysmic disasters, caused by a massive disturbance in the Earth’s crust 11,500 years ago, rocked the world and left humanity’s collective psyche deeply scarred. Her inspirations for writing this book were Allan and Delair, as well as the oral traditions taught to her from her Native Cherokee grandfather. From Hand Clow's perspective, we are a wounded species, and this unprocessed fear, passed from generation to generation, is responsible for our constant expectations of apocalypse, from Y2K to the famed end of the Mayan calendar in 2012.
In her expanded edition of Catastrophobia, entitled Awakening the Planetary Mind: Beyond the Trauma of the Past to a New Era of Creativity, she discusses further the mounting geological and archaeological evidence that many of these mythic catastrophes were actual events, and further reveals the existence of a highly advanced global maritime culture that disappeared amid great Earth changes and rising seas 14,000 to 11,500 years ago, nearly causing our species' extinction. It was first published in 2011.
In her own words she states, “a recent global scientific data convergence reveals that a great cataclysm occurred only 11,500 years ago; the Late Pleistocene extinctions, according to geology, and the Flood, according to theologians. This was followed by massive crustal adjustments and flooding for thousands of years as human cultures struggled for survival while they were deeply traumatized. As this story comes forth, it emerges in a damaged world in which many people believe that the end of the world is coming soon. “
And she continues, “crippled by unnamed fear that is carried in racial memory, our surface minds are filled with floating images of disaster, guilt, and suffering. To ease our inner minds, we project these painful thoughts onto outer moving screens, which could make a coming apocalypse into a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it already happened! Based on geological, biologica
l, paleontological, and archaeological knowledge from new dating techniques, ice-core drilling, ocean sediment cores, and computer-imaging technology, most scientists agree that a series of cataclysms occurred 14,000 to 11,500 years ago. We also know a lot about the follow-up Earth changes, such as the Black Sea Flood in 5600 BC, and the eruption of Thera on Santorini in 1600 BC. During those terrible times, our planet was afflicted with floods, erupting volcanoes, earthquakes, and massive waves of death, and we were reduced to bare survivalism. As a result of more data on cross cultural global mythology, settlement patterns, and geoarchaeology, we are achieving a global memory of our recent past. Archaeological sites come alive because we know what happened and when, and we even know a great deal about the background of the sites. Many people are afflicted with ‘catastrophobia,’ an intense fear of catastrophes. This new word is intended to name a psychological syndrome that causes individuals and societies to think an end is coming soon. Because they are always thinking something is coming, people are not caring for the Earth.”
“Now that the date and the magnitude of the cataclysms are verified by science, we can see that it is a miracle anything survived, including ourselves. But in a way, we didn’t survive, because our civilization and its cultures were obscenely obliterated. Until very recently it was thought that we have always been progressively advancing. Since this book was first published, new research, discussed in this revision, has emerged that verifies Plato’s date for the fall of Atlantis, and the historical record of the fall of a previously advanced world. Since the 1980s, many researchers, most notably Graham Hancock, have been analyzing the remnants of an advanced global maritime culture from more than 12,000 years ago that vanished almost without a trace. Any evidence of such a lost world is incredibly significant. Science says we use only around 10 to 15 percent of our DNA. “I wonder if the unused DNA is the coding for a mixture of the global maritime culture’s technological knowledge, psychic skills, and our emotional range that was shut down by the catastrophes. I think we must access this dormant DNA as quickly as possible, so that we can take back our role as Earth’s keepers.” (15)
Physicist Paul LaViolette wrote the compelling Earth Under Fire: Humanity's Survival of the Ice Age in 2005, which demonstrates how ancient myths and lore have preserved an accurate record of a missing era in human history, and are not simply the fantasies of cultures of the past. Compelled by his decryption of an ancient warning hidden in zodiac constellation lore, LaViolette worked with information from many scientific sources, including astronomical observations, polar ice core measurements, and other geological data, to confirm that our galaxy’s core exploded, unleashing a barrage of cosmic rays that arrived near the end of the last ice age. This barrage caused the solar system to become enveloped in a dense nebula, which led to periods of persistent darkness, frigid cold, severe solar storms, searing heat, and mountainous floods that plagued mankind for many generations. Linking his scientific findings to details preserved in ancient myths and monuments, he demonstrates how past civilizations accurately recorded the causes of these cataclysmic events, from his 1983 doctoral thesis about the Galactic Superwave.
In this theory, LaViolette hypothesizes that galactic core outbursts are the most energetic phenomenon taking place in the universe. During the early 1960′s, astronomers began to realize that the massive object that forms the core of a spiral or giant elliptical galaxy periodically becomes active, spewing out a fierce barrage of cosmic rays with a total energy output equal to hundreds of thousands of supernova explosions. (16)
During the 1970′s, astronomers realized that the core of our own Galaxy (the Milky Way) has also had a history of recurrent outbursts, and that at periodic intervals it enters an active phase in which its rate of cosmic ray emission rises many orders of magnitude. (17) According to LaViolette, galactic core explosions actually occur about every 13,000 to 26,000 years for major outbursts and more frequently for lesser events. The emitted cosmic rays escape from the core virtually unimpeded. As they travel radially outward through the Galaxy, they form a spherical shell that advances at very close to the speed of light. The last major outburst, based on a study of astronomical and geological data, reveals that a super wave from our Galactic core impacted our solar system near the end of the last ice age, 11,000 to 16,000 years ago. (18) A more recent update suggests that the intense super waves probably occur every 12,900 years, which is half the 25,800-year cycle of the precession of the Earth’s axis.
Precession or 'wobble' of the Earth
There may be a link between precession and galactic super waves. When the combination of an electromagnetic pulse, a gravity wave, radiation, and dust enter a star system, the effects on stars and planets are intense. (19)
Another main premise of the book is that these super wave events have happened to our planet and our sun countless times before, and that the last one or more events have been recorded and at least partially understood as agents of destruction. The galactic center would light up like a big blue star, bright enough to be visible even in daytime, and could have led to names like the Blue Star Kachina of the Hopi or the Eye of Ra in Egypt. Civilizations are devastated, the climate changes, magnetic poles shift, a crustal displacement or rotational pole shift may also occur, and many species die off (probably including Neanderthal man one precessional cycle, or two super waves back). Myths are created to explain all the cosmic and terrestrial phenomena observed, often as a wandering or wounded sun god, and as battles among gods who cast lightning bolts and bring down floods
Dr. Robert Schoch, professor at Boston University in the United States authored the book Forgotten Civilization: The Role of Solar Outbursts in Our Past and Future, published in 2012, where he briefly recaps his two decades of work on the Great Sphinx of Egypt. More importantly, he presents his latest research centered on the magnificent Göbekli Tepe complex in Turkey, which confirms his thesis that ancient civilization goes back thousands of years earlier than mainstream historians generally care to acknowledge. Also presented is a new discovery: a re-interpretation of the mysterious rongorongo texts of Easter Island, as the glyphs connect to the work of a prominent plasma physicist. He discusses how solar outbursts and plasma discharges brought about the rapid end of the last ice age and the demise of the early civilizations of that remote period. And in terms of timeframe, Schoch believes that the last ice age ended abruptly in 9700 BC, as in 11,700 years ago, due to coronal mass ejections from the sun.
Dr. Robert Schoch in Turkey
What Allan and Delair, Hand Clow, LaViolette, and Schoch all have in common, aside from describing a major catastrophic event that happened in the past, is their placement of when this occurred, around 11,500 to 12,000 years ago. If they had differing dates, separated by thousands of years, then we would not be looking at a cohesive theory, but we are.
Whether it was a meteor or other celestial body striking the Earth, a close pass by a comet, or an energy eruption from galactic center or the sun, the result would have been devastating. Perhaps the most obvious result of this cataclysmic event, which has been well documented, is the so called Holocene extinction of large animals, especially in North America, which occurred beginning around 12,000 years ago.
These extinctions are sometimes referred to as the Quaternary extinction event, and are perhaps best known for the die off of the wooly mammoth and other mega fauna. During the last 50,000 years, including the end of the last glacial period, approximately 33 genera of large mammals have become extinct in North America. Of these, 15 genera extinctions can be reliably attributed to a brief interval of 11,500 to 10,000 radiocarbon years before present, shortly following the arrival of the Clovis people in North America. Most other extinctions are poorly constrained in time, though some definitely occurred outside of this narrow interval. (20)
Previous North American extinction pulses had occurred at the end of glaciations, but not with such an imbalance between large mammals and small ones. Moreover, previous extinction pulses w
ere not comparable to the Quaternary extinction event; they involved primarily species replacements within ecological niches, while the latter event resulted in many ecological niches being left unoccupied.
The culture that has been connected with the wave of extinctions in North America is the Paleo-Indian culture associated with the Clovis people, who were thought to use spear throwers to kill large animals. The chief criticism of the ‘prehistoric overkill hypothesis’ has been that the human population at the time was too small and or not sufficiently widespread geographically to have been capable of such ecologically significant impacts. This criticism does not mean that climate change scenarios explaining the extinction are automatically to be preferred by default, however. Some form of a combination of both factors could be plausible, and overkill would be a lot easier to achieve large-scale extinction with an already dying population due to climate change.
Drawing of what some mega fauna looked like
At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, when scientists first realized that there had been glacial and interglacial ages, and that they were somehow associated with the prevalence or disappearance of certain animals, they surmised that the Pleistocene ice age termination might be an explanation for the extinctions.
Critics object that since there were multiple glacial advances and withdrawals in the evolutionary history of many of the mega fauna, it is rather implausible that only after the last glacial event would there be such extinctions. However, this criticism is rejected by a recent study indicating that terminal Pleistocene mega faunal community composition may have differed markedly from faunas present during earlier interglacial periods, particularly with respect to the great abundance and geographic extent of Pleistocene bison at the end of the epoch. (21)
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