By Neil Hogan
Assuming there were more advanced civilisations around the equator 13,000 years ago, and that they were destroyed by a cometary impact, what evidence do we currently have to be able to begin this line of research?
History is constantly being rewritten. Everyday a new discovery sheds light on our forgotten or otherwise un(re)discovered past. But reading between the lines of recorded history, from Mesopotamian1, Kemetan2, Babylonian3, Bharatan4 and other ancient civilisations, there seems to be a correlation of myths regarding advanced cities or regions that had already disappeared before they were written about. One of these suggests a great flood that sunk a number of civilisations thousands of years ago. Assuming there was one, what could cause something so extreme? The most logical is the impact of a meteor. A single rock, striking the ocean would cause tsunamis and, if large enough, the resulting explosion would block out the sun for months, changing the weather patterns of the planet. However, I’d like to propose a comet. Much larger, but breaking up in space as it got closer to the sun, showering the Earth in a constant bombardment of meteorites for years, or even centuries. That would have a much more devasting impact on whatever civilisations existed at the time. Research by meteorists points to something like this happening about 13,000 years ago.
Of course, modern research suggests the world was in a pre-pottery Neolithic5 period 13 millennia ago, extrapolating the entire planet’s history based on extensive research of northern Europe. Also, with the planet going through an ice age, it is difficult to imagine, let alone finance research expeditions to investigate, the possibility of a thin line of advanced civilisations around the equator, where things were warmer.
Incidentally, the equator was in a different position 13,000 years ago6, thanks to the Milankovitch cycle. The Earth was close to its maximum tilt at the time. Think Egypt, India, Western Sahara, Mexico, Bahamas and others being more tropical. So, imagine a shift not only in the tilt of the Earth and the electromagnetic field of the planet, but also different climates in different locations. From orbit, the planet would look very different to how it looks today. Larger landmasses, more ice, and cities and ports located in many different places, not to mention less deserts.
What evidence do we have of advanced civilisations living in these areas at the time? This is where things get a bit murky. For some there are still questions regarding underwater areas that could be a natural formation, or could be something that had been built by humans and has since sunk.
An example of this is the Bimini Wall7, an underwater rock formation in the Bahamas near North Bimini island. It stretches for almost a kilometre and is made of limestone blocks, and is believed by many to be manmade. However, carbon dating, and uranium-thorium dating is inconclusive, and the age of the structure or formation could be anywhere between 3,500 and 15,000 years old8. One thing that can be said of the region is that, 15,000 years ago, the water level was much lower9, to the extent that this wall would have been on dry land at the time, if it had existed that far back. Logically, why would the wall have been built under water after the sea levels rose? It suggests an ancient civilisation lived in the area and built the wall, and may have even built it as a result of rising sea levels. Or, as some rocks can cleanly break under various conditions, looking like they had been cut by advanced tools, this could simply be a natural formation. More physical research is needed.
Another question is, how accurate is carbon dating when it comes to rocks? Using radiometric dating we can work out the age of a rock. The problem with that is we get the age of the rock itself, not the age the rock was when it was moved from one place to another. It means we can’t actually accurately date the pyramids of Giza, for example. Dating the surrounding area, the remains of cedar wood, and mummified animals will give an approximation of about 2,600 BCE. The problem with that is many of these artifacts can be introduced later. It’s possible the pyramids have been there a lot longer, according to recent weathering and flooding damage research10, setting their age to be more like 13,000 years old. If there had been an advanced civilisation there when Egypt was closer to the equator, and a cometary impact had wiped them out, conceivably it could have taken another 8000 or so years before civilisation was advanced enough again to go back to the area and inhabit it. Research is currently being undertaken to review all papers written on the pyramids and reinvestigate with more advanced equipment in the Egyptian Archaeological field11. We may even see a rewriting of the history of Egypt within our lifetimes.
A third consideration is that, for many old archaeological theories that modern ones may be built on, that there was the automatic assumption of humanity not really having done anything before 6000 years ago. This was due to a strong religious influence of new Earth creationist theory, counting from Genesis, that the Earth is 6000 years old, give or take a hundred years or so. This blinded many earlier archaeologists and I believe those records are still being held up today as a result. There are also still archaeologists that promote this thinking, and an example of this research is available at the Creation Museum12, which proposes, amongst other things, that dinosaurs and humans lived together 6000 years ago, and that all scientific dating techniques are wrong because the scientific standards of today are only based on physics that came into being 6000 years ago, and so ‘logically’ any calculation with any technique that suggests a time before that is erroneous! Of course, this influence has waned in recent years, but it means we should relook at many old peer reviewed records where subsequent reviewers and citers might have been influenced by this theory, incorrectly elevating erroneously biased research.
And so, due to some underwater formations that look like they were built by humans equally being able to be natural formations, being unable to properly date stone, and the influence of religious views on research, it’s possible there are a lot more ancient places in the world that have been incorrectly dated and must be researched more thoroughly for an exact date. I propose that, rather than spend billions of dollars and lifetimes investigating these areas to prove or disprove their ages more accurately, a much quicker way would be to investigate meteoric and cometary impacts that can be accurately dated, and see if there is a correlation with the existence and ends of civilisations in the areas at the time.
For argument sake, let’s say a comet did begin peppering the planet with meteorite shots 13,000 years ago. Is there any evidence in space? Yes! The Perseids meteorites every August comes from the comet Swift-Tuttle of which we have records of its appearance stretching back to 69 BCE14. We can also predict its reappearance every 120-140 years ago fairly accurately until 4479 AD15. This suggests it has been there for many millennia. Could it have been Swift-Tuttle’s arrival, 13,000 years ago that destroyed a previous rise of human civilisation? Swift-Tuttle is predicted to make another close pass in about 2,400 years’ time, and while not actually colliding with Earth, will bring enough debris with it to cause a lot of problems for the civilisations of 4479.
Of course, it doesn’t have to be Swift-Tuttle. It could be the Temple-Tuttle comet responsible for the Leonid meteorite showers in November16. That one comes close to us every 33 years and meteorites increase ten-fold. We’re due for another light show in November 2022, with thousands of tiny particles lighting up the night sky.
However, I’m more likely to consider the comet Encke. It is responsible for the annual meteor shower called the Taurids, and an article in the Royal Astronomical Society suggests it’s been breaking up for at least 20,000 years. It’s also made of harder rocks than the other comets. In fact there are two orbiting pieces that affect Earth. The main part of Encke mostly affects the southern part of the planet while an asteroid believed to be another part of Encke affects the north. Another piece of information that points to the Taurid meteor showers is the recently translated block from a 9,000 year old astronomy site called Gobekli Tepe listing the Taurid meteor showers as of interest to the ancient civilisation that built it. Interestingly, the block also lists multiple impact events causing death and destruction around 13,000 years ago. But, I’ll get back to Gobekli Tepe later.
What kind of evidence do meteorites and bits of comet leave on the Earth? We know of fused silica caused by sudden intense heat, much like the kind of reactions caused by nuclear bombs. If we could locate a stream of impacts along the older equator and associate those with the ends of civilisations, we could build an argument that our advanced forebears were wiped out by space impacts.
Since 2019, I’ve been gathering research evidence of meteorite impacts to propose the hypothesis that advanced civilisations were destroyed 13,000 years ago, so it came as some surprise that a team of researchers at the University of Edinburgh published a paper in 2021 covering much of the evidence as I was going to list here, though their research focused on the impact hypothesis that resulted in the Younger Dryas climate shift and the evidence in Greenland(?) and North America, rather than the end of civilisations along the older equator. Even so, their compelling research pinpoints a global effect that can be seen in the geological record as having happened approximately 12,857 years ago17. My hypothesis considers not one impact but many over a number of years, much like the Taurids have been showering the Earth for thousands of years, beginning about 13,000 years ago and petering out about 12,800 years ago, with more random impacts from the same comet through time as we approach the present.
A piece of comet is believed to have exploded above the Atacama Desert, approximately 12,300 years ago. Dark glassy rocks are strewn across a swath of desert and have been found to contain comet particles. No crater has been found which suggests the meteor exploded in an airburst before hitting the sand. Analysis indicates the existence of troilite which is usually found in meteorites, and other minerals that suggest a piece of comet.
Rajasthan, India has been the poster city for Ancient Aliens theorists who suggest a nuclear war took place in the far past that could even have been caused by aliens. My explanation is much more mundane. Evidence of glassy rocks and fused stone, as well as high levels of radiation can also easily be caused by an exploding piece of comet. The fact that the explosion has been dated to being over 12,000 years old is conclusive, however due to the high level of radiation, not much excavation has been done in the area. Interestingly, this city was also closer to the old equator, and its destruction was described in the Mahabharata, a poem that had finally been written down in the 6th century BCE after thousands of years of oral tradition. Perhaps the story is 13,000 years old.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, which describes the biblical flood, and could have been an oral tradition for thousands of years before being written down, too, does suggest a long memory of the destruction of a civilisation. The flood appears in other records around the world, too. Multiple comet fragments damaging the planet could result in tsunamis and typhoons, bringing flooding to new places.
The ancient city of Sodom. Recent excavations of a site believed to be the ancient city have found evidence of a massive explosion having occurred just above it around 3,650 years ago. So, not part of the 12,800 years ago destruction, but evidence that it has happened in more recent times helps to reinforce the idea that it’s happened many times before.
Tell Abu Hureyra in northern Syria is an archaeological site with two levels of civilisations. In between the paleolithic village and the farming town built on its ruins is a layer of destruction that can only have been formed by an airburst from a cometary fragment. Dated to 12,800 years ago, the airburst was as strong as a nuclear blast and destroyed everything for almost a hundred kilometres around. The village was instantly incinerated, leaving meltglass and other evidence.
The evidence of destroyed towns serves to strengthen the idea that humanity had already begun to advance when this was cut short by cometary debris. The fact that tiny villages could be affected suggests a much larger field of strikes across the planet for there to be this high enough chance. There must be many more cities buried or vaporised yet to be discovered, but the evidence does suggest humanity was almost wiped out by multiple airbursts from cometary fragments thousands of years ago.
I assumed that the previous tilt of the Earth would shift civilisation to the old equator, but it’s more likely they went further to climate areas that were more moderate. It’s possible, like today, the equator is just too hot for comfortable human civilisation. This would put most ancient civilisations around the Tropic of Cancer or near the new equator position at the time.
So, what about cities that don’t yet have evidence of comet fragment strikes? Are there any that can be dated as being lost about 12,000 to 13,000 years ago?
The Ancient Sunken City of Dwarka. Findings brought up from the Gulf of Cambay suggest the city must be between 9,000 and 15,000 years old. Nearby is another underwater city in the Bay of Cambay, dated to around the same time.
The Derinkuyu underground city in Turkey has been dated to between 3000 and 4000 years old. However, in the history records, there is no reason why a hand-dug city, seven levels deep, with other levels yet to be discovered, even had to exist. Originally the city was aged at about 1,200 years old, then 2,700 now over 4,000. It’s my belief as more research is done on this city that it may even have been started 13,000 years ago, to escape the annual bombardments from the sky.
Gobekli Tepe is a buried construction that has been confirmed as an astronomical research and study area. Pillars with animal depictions have been found, and the site has been dated to over 9,000 years old, though further dating tests will be needed in the future as the archaeologists dig deeper. Some scholars have suggested it was deliberately buried for future generations. My hypothesis is that, due to the successive impacts of meteorites raining tonnes of dust down on the planet, the local civilisation left, it was forgotten, then buried in dirt and dust over millennia, a victim of the meteoric impacts. This is considered an advanced site due to the science recorded and, as mentioned before, the record of multiple cometary impacts on the planet coming from what is now known as the Taurids is compelling in itself.
This gives a taste of what is out there. There are many more. Though, whether we’ll eventually find the ruins of Atlantis, and evidence of comet fragments having wiped it out, remains to be seen. Researchers are pointing to the Bimini road as evidence of Atlantis, but with so much out of reach of divers, a more robust, high tech investigation will need to be mounted that can go to greater depths and get the answers.
Now, what other evidence do we have of a myriad of comet strikes across the planet 12,000 to 13,000 years ago? Firestone in 2007 originally proposed the idea of a single comet strike starting the Younger Dryas period, a 1,300 year period of intense cooling that wiped out much of the larger fauna across the planet. However, a single impact crater to confirm this has yet to be found.
Many papers say that there is no ‘smoking gun’ and no proof that the Younger Dryas was caused by a comet. My response to that is that the Younger Dryas itself is the smoking gun. There is no reason for the Earth to have gone through that level of change in its cycle in such a short time. It was an extinction level event akin to the comet killing off the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Civilisations perished. Glaciers changed, woolly mammoths and other larger animals died out. Its existence in the fossil record is enough to prove to me that multiple impacts from space caused a change in the weather. Millions of small ones over hundreds of years that destroyed everything in their path but didn’t leave any craters would have a worse effect than one big one once. Billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide would have been released into the atmosphere as most of the world burned, making the Earth almost uninhabitable.
But, without the craters, and only a number of places where fused silica have been found dated to that time, how can that be proved?
Thanks to researchers in Africa, a layer of platinum has been found in Wonderkrater dating to 12,800 years ago. This might not be much in itself, but platinum has been found at that date layer in the northern hemisphere. Until it was found in the southern, the idea that the globe had been affected was still conjecture. As more archaeologists are finding evidence of platinum at the 12,800 year layer around the world, it does suggest hundreds of thousands of airbursts, perhaps even millions, covered the Earth and destroyed everything. Platinum is abundant in meteorites and comets, and to have an actual layer at that age confirms this theory for me.
Initially I started this essay attempting to prove the destruction of advanced civilisations about 13,000 years ago. Instead I’ve found evidence of the destruction of the entire planet over a period of centuries, thanks to bombardment from space. It’s a cliché but, obviously, more work needs to be done in this area to prove the end of a previous rise in humanity, but with evidence of the destruction of cities and explosions in deserts as well as platinum found at the 12,800 year layer across the planet, it is conclusive that Earth suffered from continuous bombardment from space for a long time.