A Comet Strike 13,000 Years Ago May Have Sparked Key Shift in Human Civilization

Asteroid Planet Atmosphere

There is evidence that a comet struck Earth around 13,000 years ago.

A cluster of comet fragments believed to have hit Earth nearly 13,000 years ago may have shaped the origins of human civilization, research suggests.

Possibly the most devastating cosmic impact since the extinction of the dinosaurs, it appears to coincide with major shifts in how human societies organized themselves, researchers say.

Their analysis backs up claims that an impact occurred prior to start of the Neolithic period in the so-called Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia.

During that time, humans in the region — which spans parts of modern-day countries such as Egypt, Iraq, and Lebanon — switched from hunter-gatherer lifestyles to ones centered on agriculture and the creation of permanent settlements.

It is thought that the comet strike — known as the Younger Dryas impact — also wiped out many large animal species and ushered in a mini ice age that lasted more than 1,000 years.

Impact Debris Archaeological Site in Arizona

Archaeological site in Arizona, U.S., with a distinctive black layer, indicating substantial environmental changes beginning about 10,800 BC, with impact debris at its base. Credit: Comet Research Group

Since it was proposed in 2007, the theory about the catastrophic comet strike has been the subject of heated debate and much academic research. Now, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have reviewed evidence assessing the likelihood that an impact took place, and how the event may have unfolded.

The team says a large body of evidence supports the theory that a comet struck around 13,000 years ago. Researchers analyzed geological data from four continents, particularly North America and Greenland, where the largest fragments are thought to have struck.

Their analysis highlights excess levels of platinum, signs of materials melted at extremely high temperatures, and the detection of nanodiamonds known to exist inside comets and form during high-energy explosions. All of this evidence strongly supports the impact theory, researchers say.

The team says further research is needed to shed more light on how it may have affected global climate and associated changes in human populations or animal extinctions.

The research is published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews.

Dr. Martin Sweatman, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering, who led the study, said: “This major cosmic catastrophe seems to have been memorialized on the giant stone pillars of Göbekli Tepe, possibly the ‘World’s first temple’, which is linked with the origin of civilization in the Fertile Crescent of southwest Asia. Did civilization, therefore, begin with a bang?”

Reference: “The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: Review of the impact evidence” by Martin B. Sweatman, 19 May 2021, Earth-Science Reviews.
DOI: 10.1016/j.earscirev.2021.103677

42 Comments on "A Comet Strike 13,000 Years Ago May Have Sparked Key Shift in Human Civilization"

  1. Steven Jeffs | July 5, 2021 at 6:06 pm | Reply

    It is impossible to look at a specific geo-point, such as the ‘distinctive black layer’ at Arizona, and make any worthy conclusions as to how it was formed.

    Geological features can be thousands of kilometres across, so, the study of the entire formation is essential, before any logical, intelligent, assessment can be given.

    Not the superstitious, made up, myth and fairy explanations they have composed here.

    Cheers Steve.

  2. Sf. Ramon Careaga, founder EPEMC | July 5, 2021 at 7:32 pm | Reply

    In my paper I proved and predictedthe failure of the Michigan ice impact. Then they switch to Greenland. Fact is that comets cannot do the selective extintion needed for the megafauna.
    Impactors were only a portion of the event. Perattian thunderbolts are the only vector that can solve all riddles. The author should reach out to me and discuss my research paper.

  3. An engineer professor ( a theorical physicist) talking about Gobekli Tepe and speculating about a possibility of an event changing the course of the neolithic?

    Ok. I expected more from this site…

  4. Thaddeus Gutierrez | July 5, 2021 at 10:50 pm | Reply

    Sampling error at sites also saturated during the Younger Dryas – hence black mat layers (wetlands under reduced sunlight with peat development). The YD layer, where found, is merely correlated to perched wetland formation due to rapid silting under impulsive meltwater-derived discharge. CG lightning activity increases during climate change events – especially in association with wetlands, springs, and faults. All YD evidence overlaps known lightning hotspots along major prevailing wind corridors. The same spherules, amorphous carbon objects,reduced glassy ensembles, and carbon allotropes are readily generated by lightning strikes. A weak magnetosphere due to a rapidly weakening solar cycle also influences increased cloud formation and cosmic ray or solar particle ground enhancements.

  5. Sr. Arthur Doyle | July 6, 2021 at 12:43 am | Reply

    Imagine that , look at all the stuck up jackasses on here trying to defend their dogma… There is so much evidence and so much research shows it yet “scientist” still want to argue about wether or not it happened…jeez

  6. India is proving its civilization of 14000 years at least and this writer is speculating nonsense in middle east. No wonder some pseudo left is writing these kind of articles to prove something that didnt occure and have no proof of.

  7. The 10th Man | July 6, 2021 at 7:13 am | Reply

    I am having lots of laughs at you eggheads whining cause someone else got your grants. Just come out and say it. Its about the money. Its OK eggheads. The rest of us think that way too. But…we don’t sound like little kids squabbling and slapping each other. Get a life. Go to Africa and dig some wells or build and outfit a clinic. Freaking baby losers.

  8. The God crested the earth billions of years ago and it had everything except humans.

    13000 years ago HE decided to create Adam and Eve and sent them here. As part of HIS plan HE probably let the fruit tree event happen in the heaven (another universe) as a lesson for disobedience. Before the kind God sent them on earth
    HE made it easily habitable for humans, so HE sent comets to make it fertile, so humans could farm here and grow their own food.

    Only God knows the unknown. I found “the Quran” has many clues in details about God’s creationism. It is an amazing book to read and to understand HIS plan.

  9. Think before you speak | July 6, 2021 at 8:26 am | Reply

    Maybe you guys above should do some research before speaking out of turn. Kk thanks 😊😘

  10. You guys need some Randall Carlson in your lives

  11. The hate and misinformation of the 3 previous posters is amazing. I strongly suggest all of them contact the Comet Research Group and talk to them for more than the 10 microseconds they put into reacting to the subject.

  12. The hate and misinformation of previous posters is amazing. I strongly suggest all of them contact the Comet Research Group and talk to the 100+ scientists there for more than the 10 microseconds they put into reacting to the subject.

  13. Lord God created humanity.

  14. A retired Engineer | July 6, 2021 at 11:08 am | Reply

    Alvarez was laughed at in 1980 for his K-Pg boundary iridium theory. When his evidence was correlated with the Chicxulub crater evidence it became accepted as the factual explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

    This scenario WILL be repeated with Younger Dryas comet impact theory, and the critics will be eating a healthy helping of crow in the future. The evidence is overwhelming now, and only the gravy trains of climate change funding, and egos of the misanthropes supporting mass slaughter of the mega fauna stand in the way of full acceptance.

  15. I agree Rick. A little Robert Schock(sp) Suspicious 0bservers, The Diehold Foundation and Thunderbolts.info, will put it all together for them.

  16. Richard Turner | July 6, 2021 at 11:43 am | Reply

    Steve, this has been studied for over 15 years and the same results show at every site on 5 continents. The evidence is VERY compelling, except to those closed minded academics with a stake in other explainations !!! Get your head out of the sand !!!!!

  17. One commenter somehow equates this theory to leftists? Or psuedo leftist? So now we are bringing politics into geological theory? Seriously? Stop watching hour upon hour of brainwash media. Go troll you tube. Everyone is beyond sick of this garbage.

  18. Randall Carlson,geologist, proposed this with Graham Hancock many years ago

  19. scott corrigan | July 6, 2021 at 5:48 pm | Reply

    Modern academic societies are far behind independent researchers.. and I’m talking decades.. human and other hominin civilizations have been reset many times.. tool marks are all over the planet.. it’s incredibly tricky to remove the human thought process… and understand everything that was made previous to our epoch.. I know others came to the conclusion of what the Great Pyramid was creating before me… I remember reading it and not even understanding what they’re were making a statement about.. honestly yes it was metallic hydrogen.. human civilization didn’t begin during the Younger Dryas Impacts.. it restarted once again it is cyclic.. most recently we have enjoyed a moment of growth and reduced cosmic impact stresses..minus a few events.. for example the Great Chicago Fire go read the witness accounts… I myself only hunt for the truth.. no psychological belief systems are in my way I hunt the truth… and the truth is stunning..
    I am very careful with my comprehension.. for example the Tic Tac video entanglement is part of it I won’t give away the rest..
    Scott

  20. Obviously the black layer is from the Millennium Falcon landing and taking off, no need to over think it.

  21. I appreciate everyone’s comments engineers and scientists alike. A healthy debate is always stimulating. It’s just nice to know that they are smart people who are paying attention to our planet as much as Mars and the Moon. Cheers!

  22. @Akki *occur you can’t blame auto correct for that.

  23. Paul Ballotta | July 6, 2021 at 10:28 pm | Reply

    The 106th chapter of the Ethiopian Book of Enoch describes the birth of Noah as a portant whose color was whiter than snow and redder than a rose and hair whiter than wool. When he opened his eyes they were like the rays of the sun.
    Could this be a description of pieces of a comet descending to earth and becoming bright upon impact? We see similar accounts of heavenly beings in the Bible.

  24. Human civilisation is finally being rewritten, we are at the dawn of a new age – academics with REAL evidence and vision, not those who are attempting to uphold a false timeline, purely egotistical for the fact that they have worked their whole lives on fiction and lies. I could only imagine the anger in elements scientific/ historical/ archeology world once Globeki Tepli was found, single handedly destroying the timeline, like a comet. The truth is in plain site.
    Now academics who cannot accept it – go get a job. Excellent article.

    The mass extinction of mammoths and other mammals practically overnight disappearance of humanity, underground cities being found, the oldest and largest granite structures in Egypt having sorch marks showing showing some kind of catastrophic explosion, also proving they are 13000 years old, cap stones gone from pyramids – blamed on religion, however salt deposits from the sea prove they where once underwater,instant sea level rise shown around the world. The sahara desert, clearly sand forced in from the Atlantic ocean via an impact event (check satellite imagery) Cities and giant megaliths purposely buried (to protect them). The rewrite has only just begun.

  25. Randal Carlson ripoff.

  26. *Joe Rogan cumming in his pants*

  27. My first though when I saw the headline was, “didn’t graham Hancock write this in book form like ten years ago? And didn’t Randall Carlson give him a guided tour of some spectacular geological features with coherent explanations of both the mainstream interpretation and his own interpretation? And didn’t his wife take a whole bunch of gorgeous pictures? And didn’t they end up on JRE to talk about it several times?”

  28. Earthnwaters | July 7, 2021 at 1:21 pm | Reply

    If you go to earthnwaters on YouTube you can see footage of an comet flying threw space passing earth caught on my camera and real UFO activity

  29. Maybe it was an alien specie injecting the earth with DNA and poof there you go life!! Lol. Just like we do to other species in our world!! Think about it..

  30. Most of the explanation that scientists has theorized throughout our history is ignorant y’all need to open y’all eyes up to what’s being revealed today!

  31. CEO/Founder LLC | July 7, 2021 at 2:38 pm | Reply

    The earth has a way of repairing itself. Human civilizations have rose and fell many times. The devastation from a comet would not leave behind recognizable/enough for anyone to draw a conclusive analysis from. Go to Genesis 1:1 its a great place to start. The rest will come easy enough. Wouldn’t you say the laws if physics being debunked be enough to suggest your scientific theories have no Merritt?

  32. Maybe you should ask Kryon. What better source than an eye witness who can give you a logical answer that actually makes sense.
    Love and Light to you all.

  33. We know as a fact that humans have been astronomical observers capable of predict predicting the orbits of comets. Studying apparent survivals preparations closely may very well be the most fruitful crumb on the cookie crumb path to studying the nature of pre-impact hunter-gatherer-craftsman-tradesman civilizations. Gathering-festival-partying sites such Gobleki Teki were certainly the glue to perhaps a network of, while not fitting the classical definition of civilization, may indeed be a vast, interconnected civilization, possibly global as well. I also would like to hear scholars ditch the term pre-diluvian. Obviously, the cosmic impact caused the deluge or flood the incomplete narrative twisting religious texts refer to.

  34. I found reinforcement as I scrolled back up the article. A link to an article about the surprise finding that comets have heavy metal vapors. Platinum layer…duh

  35. William crake | July 9, 2021 at 1:59 pm | Reply

    This is not a statement, but a question. Why does Elon musk and Bezos wants to get out of earth as soon as possible? Do they know something that rest of the common population do not know? Are you guys paid by their foundations to place an urgent idea that we need to get out of Earth? 🤔🤔🤔🤔

  36. I am always amazed how those who chose science as a vocation, constantly get so caught up in their beliefs that they ridicule anything that doesn’t conform. The next big study on confirmation bias should be done exclusively on scientist. One of the most respected astronomers of our life time ridiculed the notion that the moon was made up of earth material. Mr Sagan you missed that one.
    Thearguement over where Lucy fit into the human family tree was absolutely brutal, and neither side had the conclusive evidence they claimed to have. The debate over the iridium layer ended with a huge whimper as those naysayers went back to their labs silently. The very people one would expect to be the most open minded are in fact often no different than the cavemen arguing over which God is bigger.

  37. I wish this planet would just blow up and wipe us all out. This human society is a f*cken disgrace and a joke.

  38. scott corrigan | July 12, 2021 at 5:44 am | Reply

    Modern academic Society is years behind independent researchers..
    the history that’s has been uncovered has revealed apast civilizations that were highly advanced
    Scott….

  39. For there to be a cooling of the planet that would freeze the poles, it has to come within since the atmosphere works as a greenhouse. A comet strike around 6420BC that created the Mariana Trench, would cause tectonic plates to be pushed into Earths molten core. This would result in drastically cooling of the outer surface of the planet. Also the atmosphere would be saturated with moisture and debris blocking out the sun and creating disastrous storms worldwide. Once the polar caps were covered they would reflect the sunlight and take around 8,000-10,000 years to melt as the core returned back to its original temperature. The magnetism from the center of the planet would be divided with the north and south being stronger and the equator having a weak magnetism. The civilizations knew the impact was coming a few hundred years maybe less before it happened. They built the pyramids so they could withstand the impact and save a few hundred thousand people. The air vents in the Gisa pyramid are so they could the comet as it came toward the planet, which came from the heavens near Sirius. How do people think so many artifacts are buried under sand and mud 8-10 ft deep?

  40. How does anyone explain the fact that all of these ancient civilizations are buried under many feet of dirt and sand? The passage of time isn’t depositing mud on top of them. I mean how is sand created? By the constant motion of water. This means the middle east and North Africa were covered by ocean at some point. The Mediterranean sea has been proven to have been fresh water at one point in time. The Dead sea is the deepest part of where the ocean once covered. Theres a reason Adam, Moses and Jesus were called the “Gardener.” They are references to comet strikes and the planet being buried and having to grow again. Kometes from the Greek meaning a head with long hair. Who else had long hair? Revelations in the bible is the telling of a comet striking the planet. Not a future event but a past event that the survivors witnessed.

  41. Anthropologically speaking, I thought this whole thing was solved years ago; the meteorite broke up into 5 major pieces? The last piece landed somewhere in Chile? But, the piece that started the debate supposedly landed on a small village, hence the nearby cannibals made good fortune from the tourists who came to see what happened; as slaves they built the sacrificial semi Temple, hence its name, and the movie, “hunger games”, and the tourists eaten, but then, apparently, at sometime in the past, the human remains were removed, and viola; civilization is created, but the cannibalism was then hidden from view, but persists to this very day. Some houses of worship even symbolically eat and drink the flesh of a human, all because of a rock that made a big. But, maybe no? Never happened? Like a lot of other things in the past never happened either; unless, of course, you’re in on the secret truth.
    So much science is composed of false narratives and hidden agendas.

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