Graham Hancock presents a case for a lost civilization being wiped out by a global cataclysm, referencing Plato's story of Atlantis. He discusses the "Younger Dryas" period, 12,800 to 11,600 years ago, where a comet impact caused a dramatic cooling of the Earth, followed by a sudden warming and sea-level rise. Hancock suggests that this event may be connected to the destruction of Atlantis.
He also explores the discovery of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, a 11,600-year-old megalithic site that challenges traditional views of human history. Hancock proposes that the site may be evidence of a transfer of technology from a lost civilization.
Additionally, Hancock discusses the possible older age of the Great Sphinx of Giza, citing erosion patterns that suggest it may have been built during a period of heavy rainfall, which last occurred during the Younger Dryas period.
Hancock concludes that the current understanding of human history may be incorrect, and that new evidence suggests a more complex and potentially catastrophic past.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Plato is the earliest surviving source of the story of Atlantis.
2. According to Plato, Atlantis was a beautiful and generous culture that became arrogant, cruel, and materialistic.
3. Plato described Atlantis as having advanced architecture, agriculture, shipbuilding technology, and social and political organization.
4. The universe punished Atlantis for its hubris, and it was destroyed in a single dreadful day and night of fire, earthquakes, and flood.
5. The remains of Atlantis were swallowed up by the sea and vanished.
6. Mankind had to begin again like children, with no memory of what went before.
7. Historians and archaeologists believe that Plato made up the story of Atlantis.
8. Anyone who takes Atlantis seriously can expect to be accused of archaeological fantasy or worse, of a fraud.
9. Archaeologists have constructed timelines to show slow, steady evolutionary progress, leaving no room for an advanced prehistoric civilization like Atlantis.
10. New science suggests that an extinction-level global cataclysm occurred very recently, between 20,800 and 11,600 years ago.
11. This cataclysm may be connected to the cataclysm that Plato described as destroying Atlantis.
12. The Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary (KT Boundary) marks the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
13. The KT Boundary is filled with iridium, carbon microsphere yolks, nano diamonds, melt glass, and other minerals subjected to huge temperatures.
14. These are the characteristic chemical signatures of a colossal cosmic impact.
15. Luis and Walter Alvarez were the father-son team who revealed the true nature of the KT event.
16. The team that studied the Younger Dryas impact event consisted of more than 30 highly credentialed scientists.
17. The Younger Dryas impact event occurred 12,800 years ago, causing a global cataclysm.
18. The impact event was caused by multiple fragments of a giant disintegrating comet that hit the Earth.
19. The primary impacts were on the North American ice cap, then still more than two kilometers deep.
20. The impacts caused floods of icy melt water to flow off the North American ice cap and into the Atlantic Ocean, interrupting the Gulf Stream.
21. The interruption of the Gulf Stream caused a sudden and dramatic cooling of global temperatures.
22. The Younger Dryas period ended 11,600 years ago, with a dramatic rise in temperatures.
23. The end of the Younger Dryas period is linked to a comet impact in an ocean, causing a greenhouse effect.
24. Astronomers calculated that the comet that caused the Younger Dryas impact event originally entered the inner solar system about 20,000 years ago.
25. The comet began to break up into multiple fragments, spreading out along its orbit to form a torus of lethal debris.
26. The debris stream interacted catastrophically with human history on more than one occasion in the past 13,000 years.
27. Plato's date for the destruction of Atlantis is 9,000 years ago, which corresponds to 9,600 BC in our calendar, or 11,600 years ago.
28. The date of 11,600 years ago is the same date that modern geological science puts on Meltwater pulse 1B and a sudden global rise in sea level.
29. Archaeologists have dated the foundation of Göbekli Tepe to 11,600 years ago.
30. Göbekli Tepe is the oldest megalithic site on Earth, and it was deliberately and meticulously buried beneath an artificial hill of earth and rubble.
31. The site was last above water more than 9,000 years ago.
32. The German Archaeological Institute suspects that Göbekli Tepe functioned as a center of innovation from which knowledge of agriculture was distributed to a population of nomadic hunter-gatherers.
33. The Sphinx of Giza in Egypt may be much older than its accepted date of 4,500 years ago, with some researchers arguing that it dates back to the Younger Dryas period.
34. The Younger Dryas period was a time of climatic disturbances, with heavy rainfall and flooding in Egypt.
35. The excavation of Göbekli Tepe has provided a context for understanding other megalithic sites, including the Sphinx of Giza.