13,000 Years Ago: How Bad Was the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent? 

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It's really good to know there's a lot of people interested in intelligent convo.

Another information packed video. Super content. Thanks Matt!

worst thing for the fertile crescent, would be that most of what would have been inhabited, prior, is now under hundreds of feet of ocean.

Great Video ... thought going back 4000 to 5000 years ago was old times but this video goes back far further...OMG at 73 it makes me feel young

I think the biggest influence of Younger Dryas temperatures is the collapse of the warm ocean current from the Gulf of Mexico to the Baltic Sea. Something triggered the collapse of the warm current, making it submerge and turn back south of Greenland. It could have been triggered by an asteroid, volcano, fresh water flood from the Lauentian ice shield, solar storm, or other. But once it started, it kept the whole Northern European area from Greenland to Siberia much colder. I expect the Gulf Stream collapse seriously dropped that region’s climate in just one season. Other regions would be affected differently. The global temperature must reach a temperature where heat radiating into space balances solar radiation heating the earth. The law of physics dictating how much heat is radiated is Heat radiated is proportional to the surface Temperature to the 4th power. Since one part of the earth was colder, this implies that region was radiating less heat into space, and therefor other regions were warmer to increase heat radiation. (Of course, if the surface is more ice covered, then additional heat is also reflected and not absorbed, thus making ice ages cooler over all). The climate of the Levant must also be influenced by what ever changed the Sahara from wet to desert (I.e. shifting trade wind latitude over thousands of years)

It is difficult to find the words to praise this channel sufficiently. Every new, fascinating and praiseworthy episode is quickly followed by another episode equal or better. Matt, you move from strength to strength at a dizzying pace! Near the beginning of this video I was looking at the standard climatological chart and thinking, I understand this, somewhat, from an undergraduate Earth Science course, but it may puzzle many people, and there have been major discoveries since the 1960's so it probably needs a more graphic explanation. Then, voilá, just that was provided. When I was in college, the ice cores were being planned or taken but the results had not been available. In terms of the human development, I had not heard of the Natufians or the Tepe sites. For people of my age, or nearly so, much of this contradicts what was commonly believed in our youth. The existence of an antediluvian civilization and the Deluge itself were core beliefs that many have refused to give up because science and critical thinking are alien to many of them. The explanatory data, photographs and clear explanations provided, regularly, on this channel are absolutely essential to educate the people interested in the past in the scientific data and the possible interpretations thereof. I have learned so much from this video and previous ones. Thank you Matt, sincerely, for your great and very important educational endeavors.

The exact dating of the events and time span are a distraction from the best measurement or historic marker: What people were doing. I think we need to keep in mind that a number of extreme events, may not have been considered catastrophic by some witnesses days, months, or even years after any of the events. The “ripple effects” of seismic, cosmic, and solar events would have affected different regions at different times, so the cultural memory and mythology of people around the world do not attest to a single, universal, instantaneous event. Rather, consistent themes are concurrent in different regions of the world. Plus, not every significant terrestrial event contributed to the settlement and cultural development of people in the same way. We are opportunistic, and what seems counter-intuitive to us now could have made sense to us at the time. I was a Craters of the Moon National Monument last summer and was amazed at the rapidity with which native people reclaimed the vast lava fields for their use., at the same time incorporating the volcanic event into their existing culture and lore. It’s all good data, but I think sometimes we get lost in the weeds with dates and lose track of why we care: We care because we know people were going through stuff and we want to pin it all down.

Excellent report as always. I’m sure that we would be surprised as to the amount of preparation each one episode takes.

The lot of questions that you have is the reason I'm stuck on your channel. Keep on your very good research, which makes us (your audience) better and better aware of past evolutions and transformations.

People likely migrated south from the North since the Younger Dryas caused Europe to be so cold. It also might not be a meteor at all. Many caves around the world at the time show "squatting man," which may not be a man at all. It looks an awful lot like what a plasma burst looks like. Maybe it was the sun scorching the earth. People ran into the caves... when it cooled off, they built settlements, likely over what was already there because that was what they knew? Just some thoughts.

In North America there was a huge ice dam lake that when it turned loose it was a mega-tsunami. There may be someone that conflated that with catastrophic sea level rise of hundreds of feet over many years as a mega-tsunami, but I’ve never seen it. There are many riverbeds and ancient roads that can be seen on satellite pictures going into the ocean. You don’t get eroded riverbeds under water. There is a gravitational anomaly pointing a impactor in the northern hemisphere. There is another anomaly off the coast of India (maybe? The impact was off the east coast of a continent.). To dismiss an ancient catastrophe by ignoring erosion and deposition evidence is to have a prejudiced view. Wherever that impact was there was a mega-tsunami and no it wasn’t world wide. Please continue to objectively look at the evidence and watch out for prejudicial testimony arguing against that evidence. Since sea levels have risen several hundred feet, SOMETHING happened. Perhaps it is time to track down the way it happened and lay it out in an accurate description of population changes, human migrations and fauna changes like those seen at Gobekli Tepe.

As far as surviving a cosmic impact and almost immedeately resuming village life, remember, Turkey is also famous for its underground cities, and archaeologists have been finding more and more interconnecting tunnels from Neolithic and perhaps earlier times.

I don't know much about the topic so perhaps this is stupid, but I would think that the melting of ice sheets would redistribute water-weight around the world. How would all that weight pressing down in different places on the crust affect the earth? Would it be enough to cause volcanic eruptions? If true, then we should expect a temporary 'return to cold' after every significant melting. Or maybe it is negligible?

Thanks. These have been my thoughts for a while.

Brilliant presentation. Thank you for all the effort put into this. The amount of information available today reminds of the story my Aboriginal ancestor who's story of her people walking north to Australia and South to Tasmania, told 240 years back.

how do the massive timbers of redwood and sycamore trees in lebanon fit into this explanation? those species need to have water. egypt is known to import them deep into the new kingdom

You should have explained that the spieliotherm data was inverted. The graph looked odd. R

The Black Sea changed from a fresh water lake to a salt water sea approximately 7600 years ago. If you lived around the Black Sea when it was fresh water, you say there was catastrophic flood!! Thanks for the video.

Fascinating. It needs looked at globally. Things will not add up and be out of place. This is OK. It's all at another level when we can get the detail to a fine level encompassing so many more aspects than only a few years ago when a lot that is mainstream now was then only considered fringe. And there is so much still to decipher. Keep at it!

Just that graph... I mean really, with that ice core data alone - to attribute global climactic factors to humans is an astounding leap by the current 'experts'. Younger Dryas = Earth's pole shift cycle based on Solar Cycles, which are now becoming increasingly evident. The Adam and Eve story by Chan Thomas.

Weird seeing the medieval warm period and little ice age on the Greenland ice core graph as was under the impression that was just in the uk

I'd be careful with taking hard dates from the flowstone data, depositional rates are not static and whilst the dry cold turns off ground water flow and warming turns deposition back on, they are good for generally separating interstadials within ice ages but they don't have fine enough dating resolution to pin down absolute dates.

A very nice addition to my liked videos. Excellent vid

I found this video interesting as I'm interested in how other cultures/regions experienced the transition at the end of the iceage. A couple to remember but not mentioned in the video is that the Comet Impact Hypothesis doesnt go by Greenland ice core isotopes on their own for dating the YD. There are many other sources for this including the Black Mat Layer. Also this area wasn't covered in glaciers so they wouldn't have experienced the catastrophic floods caused by the sudden melting of the glaciers that North America and Europe did

Great job! One discrepancy I could see being an issue is the testing methods. Speleothems date with rings like dendrochronology, whereas ice cores I believe they are carbon dating something once living found in the core. Not only are these different testing methods but carbon dating has a few flaws. One big one is carbon-dating assumes the atmosphere was the same ratio of carbon as was in 1950. I guarantee the carbon wasn't as bad in the Younger Dryas as it was post-Industrial Revolution.

Really appreciate you using a graph with the data, and not one of those silly ones with projection models tacked on the end, Matt. Good stuff as always! I've never really been one to buy into the catastrophism theories about the end of the Younger Dryas, but I do find it fascinating that before those few thousand years, there's extremely steady flow of ice ages and much colder temperatures, and then afterwards it's remarkably stable and quite a bit warmer. As far as I know, there isn't a reasonable explanation for this.. YET!

One needs to remember that during the YD there were regions where the climate likely improved.

Wow 😳 absolutely spectacular video! I feel like I'm in college! I am going to have to watch it again and take notes! Thank you so so much for your hard work and dedication you are teaching so many people

As expected, am excellent and informative overview, and it shows the Younger Dryas was even more gradual process that I suspected. The fact that different regions suffered different levels of environmental changes, at different rates over different times, surely must pose a question to those that believe in the global disaster model. Neither an impact nor a large solar event can explain the changes that are evident. I look forward to part 2

I think there is enough evidence to show some kind of cosmic impact event. The extent of it, and its correlation to the YD is still up in the air. I am interested in the Abu Hureyra "anomaly"; geological evidence of an event, but no anthropological evidence. I compare this to the quantum mechanics vs general relativity problem in physics: we know both work, just not with each other.

Keep it up! I'd really like to see your take when it comes to the Sumerians, where could they have come from? They have many stories and apparently there are very important projects to decode their tablets with the help of AI. From what I understand only a small fraction of the know tablets have been catalogued and translated so far. The AI is helping with translation and grouping in terms of theme and authorship. Pretty fascinating stuff going on atm. I'd love to see your perspective on it. Great video, thanks.

Beautiful report mate. Legend.

Simply fascinating & intriguing can’t have enough. Thank you for what you do.

Only 2 minutes in and you're already referencing an excellent graphic!!! Best channels ever

Another great video, but I'm afraid I have to disagree with your conclusions concerning the YD not matching the Greenland Ice Data. The beginning of the decline to YD in Isreal is precisely the same as GID. However, only in the north did the climate return to Ice Age. Israel would remain temperate and experience gradual climate change. Otherwise, great work.

If there was no single event that caused the onset of the YD, what process caused the platinum anomaly?

Doesn't it seem like the moment the climate settled down agriculture started? Almost like it was waiting for the right conditions?

Thanks, I don't come here to confirm what I would like to believe. I know you put a lot of effort into these and it's a valuable resource for reliable info

another great video matt. thanks mate.

Afternoon Matt✌🏼

Excellent information as usual.

Thank you for posting this analysis. It is very interesting that different parts of the world had varying climate during the YD.

Great piece of work as always.Working methodically through the scientific facts.

I'm no adherent to religious dogma, but the flood story is found in many independent writings across the world.

It seems to me that scientists seem to neglect the fact that meteorites or comets will have landed in the oceans as well as on land. The catastrophic results on land may still have been horrific, but without some of the geological evidence you wold expect.

Great work all around. You have some interesting insights. (the "hot tub hypothesis is a potentially groundbreaking observation) And as vivid, as the image of an Ice age impact is the deeper details make it look unlikely. Yet one odd thing I have yet to have explained is the heaps of frozen mastodons in Siberia that were a major part of the ivory industry at end of the 19th century. That seems to be potential impact evidence I have not heard discussed.

Looking at this data, such sites as Gobekli Tepe actually make a lot more sense, in that hunter/gather clans could survive the changing conditions far better as a much broader clan with a central location. Thank you for your diligent work!

Oh jolly, jolly, jolly Matt! Always information packed. Now I have the B52s song Mesopotamia on my mind!

good show, Matt! different areas being affected differently by the same event only makes sense. the world is rather big, after all. however, an asteroid or comet collision drastic enough to cause the temperature plunge seen in the evidence, would have affected the whole planet, like the asteroid that ended the dinosaur era. some other, non-explosive event, (perhaps a solar flare?) could be the culprit. perhaps, just plain old vulcanism darkening the skies. more research and discoveries are needed for the whole truth to be realized. Next? that Habu Aryar (sp) place looks like a fascinating dive, Matt! see you then!

I appreciate your research and insight.

During the time of the Younger Dryas, temperatures around the world rose for a period around 15h000 years ago. A rapid drop in temperatures in the Greenland around 13000 is matched by a rise in Antarctica around the same time. If an advanced civilization developed during that time it could have migrated to Antarctica during that period. The migration required to overcome a drastic change in temperature from one hemisphere to the other would have resulted in survivors that became skilled at navigation and astronomy. During this time a seafaring civilization would have had easy access to South America and Africa. A long trip across the Atlantic or Pacific would not have been needed. Thus the period from 15000 to 12000, 3000 years, relatively stable climate could have fostered an advanced civilization. This civilization would have been mostly wiped out by the catastrophic events and climate changes during the end of the Younger Dryas. This theory would connect the dots.

Great work. Thanks for this.

Your assertion that, people wouldn't recolonize an area after it was flash burned by meteors is false on its face. Even in modern times when we know a flood plain exists, people rebuild on that flood plain nearly immediately. Los Angeles sits on a fault line and is subjected to massive burns most years. There's also no natural water there. Then there's the crime. Crime ridden neighborhoods exist everywhere and law abiding citizens live amongst them. People buy homes in hurricane territory. The truth is that people don't care about black swan events at all. Most would rebuild if their home was destroyed by some cause or another. If those who experienced something bad move away from an area (or were destroyed), within a very short time, a colony of people would move in because there would be no memory at all of a catastrophe. The truth is when humans witness a fertile and inviting territory that might have been burned to cinders a year prior, those humans will move right in. Any who are worried about the prior catastrophe will still move in to that fertile territory if their children need to eat and the land is the only fertile area available. Food and clean water in the present moment is vastly more important than a catastrophe which may or may not occur again in a year -- or never at all. Humans, without exception, have always chosen denial when immediate survival is in conflict with future survival. You don't live in the future if you don't eat in the present. A bird in the hand is better than 2 in the bush. These decisions aren't even cognitive -- they're at the emotional level. Humans only evolved their ability to plan for the future (anti-hedonism) based on their environments. Their emotional systems evolved alongside the cognitive so that the drive to make plans and actuate them compels their behavior. Humans evolved amid an ever changing environment -- some utterly destroyed by catastrophes of many kinds. The humans were too risk averse didn't acquire resources and so died out. The humans that took too many risks also died out. The only humans left standing today are those which could perform very quick risk assessments given various stimuli in the environment. The risk of starving or having no stable territory is an immediate problem which requires an immediate solution. This is why humanity's most extreme behaviors are always about resource acquisition -- whether it be jealousy, envy, anger, greed, or any of the rest. Human groups compete with other human groups. The immediate danger of having no land and no food is vastly more deadly than a catastrophe which happened even a few months ago. In Pompeii, people now live just as close to that volcano as those who were buried by it. I wonder how quickly after that eruption it was recolonized. Certainly those who moved in would've been aware of what happened through neighboring accounts. Stop making assertions of human nature which are easily disproven by human nature today and through recorded history. We're the same species with the same brains as humans 100K years ago -- especially our system of instincts which are older still. I didn't even have to consult any literature to know this phenomena of humans because I've witnessed it decade after decade. Masses of people live in Tornado Alley in the US -- guaranteed to be a regular catastrophe. Their emotional systems understand that the benefit of that land is much greater than the potential cost. I'm not sure, but I'll bet if you go research Mt. St. Helens there are homes squatting right in the original area that was buried by that eruption. Everyone knows that it's likely to happen again. But the span of time since the last eruption is now out of the memory of those who are looking for new homes. It's only a story in a book or on some old video. 15 years after that eruption it was out of the memory of young people looking for a new home. "Continuous" human habitation is absolutely no measure for a catastrophe. A region can be utterly depopulated by an airburst and within 15 years, no new humans to the area would even know it occurred. They probably wouldn't even recognize clear evidence -- like Tunguska's bare patch at the epicenter.

May be it was due to the Milankovich Cycles. I remember evidence suggestion Saudi Arabia being a wet land with thousands of lakes hippos, elephants etc. 80k years ago. And there is the talk about Sahara being a wet land similarly.

It's like 2 huge punctuation marks were instigated in a geological eye blink.

How come you aren't covering what is happening to the sites in Turkey? The Earthquake zone in around there.

You do good work. I have enjoyed and have learned from your videos.

To keep things in perspective - There is a 4-10 degree average temperature differential between northern New Brunswick and SW Ontario Canada . . . 350 miles N-S longitude difference . . . most days of the year. Means shorter summers and long winters or put another way, short vs long ski season, otherwise we wouldn't notice interprovincial cooling period we are living in today.

You definitely make some valid points. I think of areas hit by wild fires and how they look afterwards. And they are not as hot as the heat stated in the papers. It takes the uses of modern equipment to move the debris left behind from the devastation of the fire. And even with that help it takes years to reclaim the land. And they aren't having to hunt for food or plant crops. I tend I tend to agree

Boom! Thank you as usual!

I must disagree with your opening statement. It wasn't the "emergence" of "civilization," but the re-emergence after the catastrophe that devastated the globe and caused the loss of megafauna, Neanderthal and a significant number of homo sapiens.

Very interesting, great work as usual.

Are you saying that 500 years is considered "almost immediate" archaeology-wise? I think that the periodic changes is habitation and possible impact events could have been due to earth's passing through meteor showers on a regular basis in pre-history. That would explain the underground habitation as well.

Hi Matt, I know you have that space and planets channel and wanted to see if you can do an episode on a few journal articles that have come out in past 10 year or so regarding Supernova and earth temperatures. There is a few, one of them is titled "Supernova and Nova Explosion’s Space Weather: Correlated Megafauna Extinctions, Antarctica Ice Melts and Biosphere Mega-disturbances"

It is important for a large picture view of this time period. There is tool much misinformation available right now and some people are taking advantage of the general lack of knowledge. Thanks for getting us an easy to digest data set.

The cosmic impact wasn’t necessarily in the Levent. So saying Society was not affected therefore no impact seems simplistic.

VERY INTERESTING 🤔, well thought out.

Be cool if we could get information like this from a number of spots globally. One question, when your mention sea level, are you referencing sea level today or the sea level back then? It was a few hundred feet lower in those days.

You have raised some very interesting questions about the interpretation of Abu Herera that I suspect our technology is yet too primitive to understand.

You definitely make some valid points. I think of areas hit by wild fires and how they look afterwards. And they are not as hot as the heat stated in the papers. It takes the uses of modern equipment to move the debris left behind from the devastation of the fire. And even with that help it takes years to reclaim the land. And they aren't having to hunt for food or plant crops. I tend I tend to agree with your statement about what the heat would do to the people as well as the land.

If the glacial maximum was at 100,000 years then focusing on the younger dryas Window would be the smallest melt water event. The homo sapian having a 250,000 year window. The younger dryas would have been just kicking humanity while it was down. The 15,000 year window relative to a larger melt water event closer to 100,000 years.

This is a fantastic video that sheds much light on what happened during the Younger Dryas. If only there were similar detailed studies available for North America. If there are I haven't seen any. A big question there is what happened to the Clovis people at the start of the Younger Dryas? As for Abu Hureyra, I don't see that an impact would have necessarily caused a significant interruption in habitation, but as you say more study is needed. There are so many unanswered questions. Keep up the good work.

nice summary....~ perhaps map depicting an ancient shorline that would somewhat represent a shorline with water levels over 400m lower, that would be an interesting visual layer...

There are a number of different dating sources/techniques being used, each with a margin of error. For example how accurate is dating from an ice core vs dating from cave samples? Some of the discrepancies raised could be a result of this dating uncertainty; for example, if meteorite was a bit earlier and the settlement periods a bit later then a period of non occupation could be a result of the meteorite hit.

Given the evidence for fluvial erosion in Northern Africa around 13ka, why do say there was no flooding in the fertile crescent? 🤔

Great info!

Excellent episode

I would love to here you and Randall talk about your findings.

Despite all efforts there is still so much to learn about this planet . This moment a lot of scientific work is in progress to understands the effects of the HongaTonga eruption from last year , to understand the past one must have fully knowledge of the present , right . Besides that I remarked something pecular at 10.58 in this vid , somewhat right above at the end of the red timeline , some wafflestructure near the bedding in or up the ground ?? Btw , this is an awesome vid about the timelapse of the younger dryas.

Appears this proves, science is never "settled"

Speleothem - That's getting added to the lexicon.

Never thought I would unsub from this channel. Bye.

I'd like to see you snd Randall Carlson have a conversation snd see what type of common ground you can find or if it just doesn't mesh at all.

I don't necessarily think its an either/or scenario. A sequence of events associated with climate, asteroid/meteor impacts, volcanic events and earthquakes. Maybe these events were interconnected like a domino effect. certainly our worldwide legends/mythology indicate a variety of localized calamities that amounted to something that affected much of the world within a geologically short time period. i love your balanced and open minded approach AA, keep up the fantastic work!

Nice video. I like your work. However, when you mention "true cradle of civilisation" - please get over the Anglo-European-judeo-Christian prejudice and look at the Indus valley culture for instance that pre-dates any Sumerians.

It's incredible to think that the event that caused the Younger Dryas could've led to or accelerated our farming technology. It makes sense in light of these findings that our move toward sedentism explains why these 12,000-year-old settlements In and around Gobekli Tepe didn't show much signs of farming near these regions at their height. It further makes sense that these changes occurred over a millennium as the climate would have taken a long period to settle into what it would become necessitating lots of primitive innovation to adapt and survive.

Excellent. Thanks

Funny how the pseudoarcheologists went from ancient aliens and the Aztec calendar/planet x bandwagon to younger dryas impact and Atlantis bandwagon.

Great info as usual. Question. How do you explain global nano diamond distribution patterns as well as the Carolina bay impact structures in the bedrock if it wasn't an impact event that started the younger dryas cooling ?

It’s interesting how intentional you’ve been about disproving your more successful RU-vidrs on this topic. But now this video is just sad. You think dating methods that have been around a couple decades are perfect on assessing things 10,000 years ago and that the younger dryas isn’t globally simultaneous because human dating methods don’t perfectly lineup, and are off by less than 10%? This is getting weird…

Speleothem dating his highly inaccurate and the dates given from them could be completely wrong.

Excellent - you had better do a follow up because now I have bunches of questions - thank you

It must have affected this area since they found black mat level dating back 13000 years

Earth has cycles

dont forget that the equator was 40 degrees off, north side of the himalaya was the north pole

A native American tribe tell of their legend of a disastrous flood that appeared as a wall of onrushing water that was higher than most mountains. The Great Pyramids before they lost their outer covering to an earthquake, had a flood water mark more than halfway up their sides. The Egyptians, and not just in Plato's account, have records of a great flood, from which their 'Gods' left their destroyed Island homeland and resettled in Egypt, founding its civilization (this was scribed into a temple wall). The Flood of Noah's time and fame was a separate flood, and apparently took place around 4,000 BC, leaving its mark in what would later become Sumerian, as a flood that consisted as a series of pulses. As another commenter stated as well, the Black Sea civilizations submerged somewhere around 7,000 BC, also the time the Sahara apparently started to dry up. I wounder if Zacheria Sitchen is right about Nibriru and every so often, the close passage of that heavenly body caused cataclysms .

The bread basket moved north along with herds. Then it got cold and it moved south before moving back north. What about the dry lake beds? You can see the karst wells just like in Egypt under the pyramids. Piecing together the climate explains a lot.

Awesome!

If no cataclysm and it wasn’t that bad, wtf was the species doing for 6000 years until the Sumerians just popped up?