The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis won't go away: more evidence!

any kind of catastrophe is a shorefire winner as far as headlines go wherever in the world they occur but catastrophe also holds a Fascination wherever in

time it may happen and that holds true even for prehistory take the younger D climate event for

[Music] example about 12,800 years ago global temperatures plunged and the ensuing cool period lasted over a thousand years

years now much ink has been spilled over the years wrangling over the cause of this momentous event was as a sudden freshwater surge spilling out of a lake was it volcanoes was it a solar superf

flare or was it the one that appeals most to popular imagination an impact with a comet or asteroid well a new study gives weight to the latter idea

and finds new evidence that yes indeed there was a cosmic impact at the beginning of the younger dras event I'm Michael bot and I'm Rupert saskin we are

the prehistory guys and if you could take a moment do uh do like and subscribe and have a look at the rest of the channel see if you're like that too

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contribute to us getting to 100,000 that would be good too um yeah how cool will it be to have the YouTube Silver plark sitting on the bookshelf behind me i'

like that very much I'm sure we'd have to take turns I don't know if they send out to uh anyway uh that's the that's the next goal anyway sorry I digress a

little bit uh Rupert why are we talking about the younger d right now why are we talking about the younger d right now well it's exciting um because as many of

you probably know uh that the debates about as Mike's just mentioned in the intro you know the debates about what caused the younger dryers you know

they've raged for years and uh and there have been various pieces of research that have given geological evidence for

it being a a an asro uh well Cosmic uh event and uh and this team and the some many of the people involved in this uh

piece of research are people who've been working on the same project for a long long time hats off to them for plowing away um with all this stuff because what

what they've done now is they've come up they've actually found another source of geological evidence a very specific uh

geochemical uh aspect that adds yet more uh Credence or evidence for the fact that it was a cometary impact that cause the younger dryers uh and it's exciting

on so many levels because it gives uh it gives such a huge reason for why this was a global event because you know these guys are talking about uh cometary

evidence geological evidence in uh the United States uh but there's also evidence for it in 50 or so um uh places around the

world so it's it's huge really it's huge huge it's another case of you know what we're delivering to you what we're trying to convey to you is actually hidden in a lot of heck of a lot of

number crunching a heck of a lot of research a heck of a lot of um Metallurgy heck of you you name it geochemistry you it's just it's

mindboggling actually um yeah yeah the paper is 31 pages of uh of mindboggle we won't even attempt to convey the I'll

put the link uh to the the current paper that we're talking about in the description below but I don't think we could begin to try and convey the depth

of the research that's gone into this but as you mentioned rer this research has been going on for a long time and it's quite a you know substantial group

of people behind this the uh uh the uh Comet research group and we first touched upon it and I don't think you

know we uh you know were're quite aware of the of of how um you know profound this bit of um uh research is we first

touched about upon it I think talking about um the possible um results from Abu hrera yeah that you know the same Andrew

Andrew Moore was the lead author of The Abu hura paper which I think is what um not that long ago actually

and also on that team was Christopher Moore who's the lead author of this paper um so you know that's it's the

same kind of research now my question is uh I don't know what happened in the uh in the excavation of Abu huray that Drew

attention to this particular aspect whether um Andrew Mo was always had a fascination with the beginnings of the younger dras and comet impact and so on

and so forth and what to look for as far as proxies are concerned if an asteroid or Comet um Collision uh was at the root of that but

the fact is his original excavations at Abu hrera took place in 1972 1973 m in a kind of emergency rescue

excavation for the site of Abu hura it's a tail site in in Northern Syria before that was submerged under the newly

created um um Lake Assad is it Assad the resir reservoir yeah and the because they had

to excavate fast and peac meal they got a load of stuff out so much so that it took them decades to actually plow

through all the evidence you know not which was principally of course about the archaeology um of the settlement itself you know how people were living

what their lifeways were Etc and then particularly in relationship to the change over from um from H I'll use those words hunter gatherer to farming

and agriculture yeah uh in which you narrative Abu herera has a particular place but

also in those investigations it came about that Within those uh the the remains that they du dug up

were these proxies for uh what would be a comet uh a comet Collision uh or um you know Air Bursts above it the

microspheres the micro diamondy stuff and other is technical term yes if you got them handy to your in your mind there then do feel

free to help me out yeah um well I I I do actually have a a list here but I don't know that it helps to

be honest you me anybody else well the thing is you know one of the things that is uh that I find so exciting about this

is that going back over years so they they they um they did a paper back in 2007 and that was really looking at this

Global there was a global layer of essentially charcoal there was evidence for uh forest fires massive fires

everywhere all over the globe and uh and so the thing about that is that the the IDE the idea there is that the the Earth

went through the tale of a comet uh so with all the Deb and just stuff that that's in a tale that obviously is I say

Obviously um uh but the tale of Comet which is many many many times greater than the earth I think they said it

would be at least four times the radius of the Earth something like that really um uh so you've got the nucleus of a comet you obviously if a comet impacted with the Earth then depending on the

size of the Comet you'd have uh an Impact Zone which may or may not have Global ramifications but going through the taale of a comet when you know tals

can be millions of miles long um so that's why it would have been so catastrophic all around the world um now uh the fact that they found in 2007 so

they were looking at this evidence for Global fires uh what they've done in the subsequent papers because there was another paper in

2010 um there's been a lot um but each time there were three just from Abu hrera just okay I didn't know there were three from abura and the third was only

published in 2023 right right see I mean it just shows how data Rich uh this uh this research has

been and it just shows no matter how much we confer before we start recording we' always got

surprises yeah but I think for me I mean the mind-boggling thing about this kind of search is when they're looking at

microscopic whether it's glass beads where you know where silica has just melted in the Heat and uh uh these

things literally on a microscopic level they've recognized all these telltale signs of uh levels of heat that could not have been created by man so it's not

just a forest fire it's something uh something else is is going on and and the the elements as well that that give evidence to the fact that it was a

cosmic thing so Platinum the amount of platinum uh involved is uh and iridium apparently um so it's uh it's layer upon

layer of evidence really which is what makes this new paper so exciting I think I mean the the the paper to me

seems to regurgitate a lot of stuff that they've published before am I right in in that yeah yeah yeah you are it's uh

and really it's the help me out here Michael it's the the um is it a quart shattered shock fractured shock

fractured quartz that's the thing uh where uh quartz at such high uh impact

heat that the silica in the quartz melts so you've got these these fractures as I understand is it the other way yeah yeah

no the shock is found in South Carolina Maryland and New Jersey the minerals have microscopic cracks where quartz

morphed into melted silica through a significant impact event yeah okay so so excavations at um younger Dr period lay

at all three locations have revealed yeld significantly higher quantities of shock fractured quartz platinum and microspherules compared to soil strata

from earlier and later periods there we go yeah so that's the added bit of that's the that's the um yeah the magic Source that's added into this time just

to backrack a little you you know when you going through talking about this as the result of going through the tail of a comment rather than a sort of head-on collision with the uh the head head of

the Comet um that it's been one of the major criticisms all through the decades you know of this hypothesis having been put forward is people going where's the impact crater you know and what

surprised me doing a search on it is is the number of papers you know that come up that uh um uh refute um the

um the the younger D the the impact hypothesis at least uh ones inde titled a paper titled comprehensive rep

reputation of the younger Dryer's impact hypothesis um another one is called the younger drer impact hypothesis

orium that's a bit harsh people trying to keep trying to nail this coffin down but yes put the steak through the heart

keep com seem to be working um it's is interesting though isn't it one of the arguments against this saying that

there's no evidence for uh crators is that uh but if there's evidence um for the comet impact in the Greenland uh ey

sheets as well and one of the suggestions is that 12,800 years ago if you know so we we're still you

know it's at the end of the last ice age that if a it hit an ice sheet then well there wouldn't be a crater because the

ice sheet would long have melted and any evidence for that would have gone it's the uh it's the scattering of minerals

throughout the atmosphere remain but there would be no crater uh to uh to see from that it sounds plausible to me but

what do I know well it's a moot point anyway if we're talking about the debris of a com tail having caused all the um

disruption and yes it's uh just um just further possibilities isn't it it it does seem odd to me uh that there

has been so much resistance to uh to it being a cometry related uh event uh it it seems odd to me that there's been so much resistance to it when there is so

much geological evidence around the globe old people have been really really vocal really don't like it that it's I think um I I don't know enough I haven't

really looked hard enough but I've got hints of you know people getting quite nasty about this and there have been hints or suggestions of impropriety on

the part of the um um Comet research group and and things like that so it's got a bit feisty out there as far as this subject is concerned but like I say

not really going to go there cuz I don't know enough um but I have to say if you read any of these papers wow they are so

comprehensive you know it's um it's not just plucking stuff um out of out of the air the the amount of work that's gone on is uh fantastic yeah and if you if

you do download the paper and go through all the photographs that they've included uh in it of uh you all the photographs from scanning

microscope uh results it's just uh they have been thorough to say the very least I don't think there's anything fund more fundamental that we can say about this

except you know go go and have a look yourselves and and and make your own uh mind up it is fascinating that the younger Dr is so fascinating and what

caused it is so fascinating and occupies our minds so much you just wonder what why not much we can do about it now or is there a learning thing in there or

just do we like catastroph we do though don't we and one of the interesting things about uh about this commentary thing so there's a group

of uh they're not really asteroids but there's a group of uh Cosmic bodies so there small asteroids if you like called

Cals and uh and they calculate that their is the likelihood of uh impact from a a significantly sized uh one of

these Cals uh between every 20 and 60,000 years and and again that's just you know they're picking figures and that means

well we got a few thousand years to go before the next one if this one is correct um but uh but it it's I think the reason it's most significant for us

is when you're you're looking at this period of transition between and we don't like the term but between hunter gatherer and farmer and you can see a situation where well if you had just

this Global catastrophe where uh where suddenly you have this uh you know this Global Winter that lasts however long uh that you're not going to have all the

Lush verdant Fields every year that you were having before and that would explain why suddenly people have been cult cultivating crops like wild Rye

which is more resistant to cold and and inhospitable conditions um so it it is this exciting thing of transition into

why suddenly you need to create crops that are going to uh withstand uh bad weather yeah well so we

cycle back to Abu Herrera because that is one of the most important things to come out of that site the evidence for the transition to Ry yeah um yeah harvesting um and that so the

implication being of course whatever caused the younger D event it was the younger Dr event that caused you know a certain revolution in the way that food

stuffs were you know people um P um yeah subsisted um and that is fundamental in

the Levant and the Fertile Crescent because I think for not So Much from the climate point of view but from the vegetation point of view that was there was a drastic change

what had been quite verdant and you know Woodland Etc retreated towards the Mediterranean leaving a sort of step and and and desert area where people had

been you know living happily that's what caused the fundamental change otherwise you know and we wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for the younger D for goodness sakes yeah that change probably wouldn't

have occurred or you know if it was any other time it would have occurred in a in a in another way we could go off and

on into you know quite a lot in terms of um in in the Americas for example I mean it was it was the end of the mega forer

lost all the mega former end of end of Clovis as you just said yeah yeah it's it's a huge Global event yeah yes we could spend a lot of time um discussing

the impact of the impact we could talking of the impact um rer here's a quiz question for you why is it called the younger dous uh you know I did know that and I don't off the top of my head

remember why cuz there was an older Dr and I can't remember when that was not only was there an older Dr there was an oldest

D but that was a long time ago wasn't it yeah is um yes I I I would I don't know what the dates of those are but so we know that you know there's a oldest old

and younger what about the driest bit yeah go on tell everybody the younger Dres just so you know I'm reading this I this doesn't come you know I didn't wasn't General in

my general knowledge uh compartment I looked it up about 10 years ago I looked it up because I thought why is it called that anyway and I looked it up and I read it and I don't remember it at all

so yeah says the younger D is named after an indicator genus the Alo Alpine Tundra wildf flower drus octop petler

thank you very much I wonder how many petals that flower has as its leaves are occasionally abundant in late glacial often

minerogenic rich sediments such as the lake sediments of Scandinavia which is where a lot the proxies for the temperature change have been taken from

so therefore uh younger dras dras is a flower Alpine sort of flower with petals okay oh for better

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bigger boat thanks for your help all right with that I think it's time to say goodbye until the next time thank you folks you Mr saskin yes we'll

see you again soon take good care see you bye-bye oh uh who would have who would have known that they knew so much it'll

be gone gone in the next day or two everything I ever knew yeah off into the Wilderness I know it must be in there somewhere