jonathaneunice
7 months ago
Zero expertise in any of the related disciplines to interpret or judge any of this, but I can say with confidence that the related Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_hypothesi... is a wild read and outright flamethrower at everything about Younger Dryas and seemingly, everyone involved.
alberth
7 months ago
For those that don't have the context ...
The Younger Dryas theory supporters is controversial across multiple disciplines because it challenges the idea that human progress has always been linear (gets better over time).
Some believe that ~13,000 years ago, humans were highly advanced, but a massive flood (Younger Dryas) wiped out & reset civilization.
Supporters of this theory often point to two things: nearly all major religions reference a great flood, and there’s a current lack of understanding how ancient megalithic sites were built with tools thought to be available at the time (primitive bronze tools, etc).
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Unfortunately, it seems like folks from both sides of the topic talk-past each other ... and at least I haven't seen a balanced debate on the subject. If someone has seen a balanced assessment, please share.
tbrownaw
7 months ago
> Some believe that ~13,000 years ago, humans were highly advanced, but a massive flood (Younger Dryas) wiped out & reset civilization.
What kind of "highly advanced"? Iron-age equivalent, industrial revolution, sci-fi with antigravity, ...?
goku12
7 months ago
Depending on who you ask, it can be anything on your list. You can expect such claims (of an advanced ancient civilization) to be highly speculative and probably supporting their version of the history. And it's proposed by everyone from young earth creationists to alien colonization theorists.
goku12
7 months ago
I can't speak anything about the scientific validity of the theories. But it's true that many modern religions have similar stories about a flood catastrophe. But has anybody considered that this may be because many of the biggest religions today originated at the same place?
cedilla
7 months ago
Flood myths are much more common than that. But the easy reason is that floods are extremely common, and flood plains are among the best places to build a city.
andrewflnr
7 months ago
A flood? I thought it was at least an impact winter or something. The linked wiki article agrees. A global flood is truly unfeasible.
farceSpherule
7 months ago
The Younger Dryas debate spans climatology, archaeology, geology, and astrophysics, creating tension across multiple disciplines.
There is scientific evidence that the Younger Dryas event occurred, however, no universally accepted scientific study that conclusively proves WHAT caused it.
cluckindan
7 months ago
The Younger Dryas was not an ”event”, it was a period in Earth's geologic history that occurred circa 12,900 to 11,700 years Before Present (BP).
FrustratedMonky
7 months ago
Kind of pedantic?
I think everyone knows the debate is around the 'event', which caused a 'period' of geologic history which is referred to as "Younger Dryas". I guess once the 'event' is known, it can be named something, like "The Younger Dryas Event".
What I'd like to know, is why just one event. There is this paper, and also the crater found in Greenland a couple years ago. Maybe there was a more general bombardment, not just a one-off smoking gone.
salynchnew
7 months ago
There are several papers arguing that there is no "one event" a la https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282522... and others.
MangoToupe
7 months ago
The crater in Greenland has been dated to about 60 million years ago
protocolture
7 months ago
There doesnt have to be an event.
The current accepted theory is (from the gps wiki article)
"is an alternative to the long-standing and widely accepted explanation that the Younger Dryas was caused by a significant reduction in, or shutdown of the North Atlantic Conveyor due to a sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America."
adastra22
7 months ago
I'm not sure what definition of "event" you are using. What you quoted is an event. Really anything that shows up as a spike in a chart on ANY timescale, is an "event." The word has broad meaning in the sciences.
protocolture
7 months ago
The person I am replying to is using event in the terms of "Something that caused" not "Thing that happened" and then goes on to further assume more airbursting asteroids.
Yes a thing happened. But theres no need for a smoking space gun.
FrustratedMonky
7 months ago
I literally said "why just one event".
I don't know if it was asteroid or not, that is why there is controversy.
How is "sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America" not an event?
As to the derision on asteroids, not sure why, considering we find evidence of them everywhere. Why not consider it as an option.
Sorry if my memory is like everyone else's. When the Greenland Crater was found, there were 100's of articles linking it to Younger Dryas. It was dated later and discounted as being too old, that did NOT get 100's of articles, so was not widely known. I didn't realize it till this exchange.
cluckindan
7 months ago
The ”event” you mention might sound like it happened instantly or at least within a day or two, but it likely took many hundreds of years. So, not an ”event” in the sense an asteroid impact is an ”event”.
”Process” or ”period” would make more sense when things are happening at those time scales.
FrustratedMonky
7 months ago
100 years out of 10,000, is it an event?
I understand the point.
Just have had enough conversations with engineers about "is a micro second fast enough", "nothing is really happening, a whole second is plenty".
Time scales can make a lot of things look long or instant.
cluckindan
7 months ago
Everything depends on context, yes. But in the geohistorical context, ”events” are commonly understood as asteroid impacts, such as the Tunguska event and the Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, so the choice of word carries a heavy implication in this context.
FrustratedMonky
7 months ago
Isn't part of the issue in this discussion, and maybe the controversy. Is that the knock on effects can take decades/100s of years to develop. An asteroid is 1 day, but the fallout and seasons changing can take years.
So by the time you look in geologic record, it is 10-100 of years of 'evidence'. And finding a single point event is difficult.adastra22
7 months ago
Yes, it can take hundreds to thousands of years or more for the impulse of cosmic event to reach a new steady state in global climate. The KT extinction wasn’t “fast” either.
cluckindan
7 months ago
”In the geologic record, the K–Pg event is marked by a thin layer of sediment called the K–Pg boundary or K–T boundary, which can be found throughout the world in marine and terrestrial rocks. The boundary clay shows unusually high levels of the metal iridium”
A similar layer is suspiciously missing for the purported YD impact.
xeromal
7 months ago
Is the 0 point for Before Present a different year than the Jesus year? I've never heard it used before.
Neekerer
7 months ago
It's actually 1950 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present?hl=en-US
IncreasePosts
7 months ago
That's right around the time the "modern" era ended and "post-modern" began. Funny we've been making these errors since basically the beginning of time. Looking at you, New Bridge, the oldest bridge in Paris!
AlotOfReading
7 months ago
Ish. It's technically correct for BP and radioisotope dating specifically, but other dating methods don't use the same scale like TL. You'll commonly see kiloanni (ka) used instead and that may or may not be referenced to 1950 depending on the whims of the author.
xeromal
7 months ago
Thank you!
Shadowmist
7 months ago
It’s approximately 370 to 408 billion seconds before the Unix epoch.
user
7 months ago
an0malous
7 months ago
There’s a lot more dogma on Wikipedia than academics would like you to believe
shiftpgdn
7 months ago
There is a lot of dogma in academia too!!