Solar Catastrophe Did An Outburst End the Last Ice Age and Destroy a Forgotten Civilization?

Visit Atlantis Rising Research Group at https://www.atlantisrising.com/

By Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D.
The conventional status quo view is that true civilization and high culture dates back to the period of approximately 3500 BC to 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Indus region. In the early 1990s, my work on the Great Sphinx of Egypt broke this barrier when I demonstrated, using geological data, that the great statue’s origins go back thousands of years earlier than previously believed. Egyptologists had dated the Sphinx to the Fourth Dynasty, circa 2500 BC. Initially I “conservatively” (although not so conservative according to my critics) suggested that the core body of the Sphinx dates back to 5000 BC or a bit earlier. Over the years, as I continued my studies and collected more data, I slowly revised my estimate, considering progressively earlier possible dates for the statue. I am now more comfortable considering the notion that possibly the Sphinx’s earliest origins go back 10,000 years or more, perhaps even to the period of circa 10,000 BC to 9,000 BC; that is, the end of the last Ice Age.

For many years one of the harshest criticisms of the re-dating of the Great Sphinx was that it apparently stood in grand isolation at such a remote period in time. The people who carved it must have been extremely sophisticated culturally and technologically. They were civilized. But where was corroborative evidence of such sophistication, of true civilization, at such an early time? Recently such evidence has been found not in Egypt, but in southeastern Turkey at a site known as Göbekli Tepe. Here immense finely carved, T-shaped, limestone pillars, many in the range of two to five and one-half meters tall and weighing up to an estimated ten to fifteen tons, form Stonehenge-like circles. Various pillars at Göbekli Tepe are decorated with bas-reliefs of animals, including foxes, boars, snakes, aurochs (wild cattle), birds, and arthropods (a scorpion, ants, and/or spiders). The level of sophistication seen at Göbekli Tepe clearly, in my opinion, indicates that a true civilization existed here. What is really amazing, and confirms my work on the re-dating of the Great Sphinx, is the age of Göbekli Tepe. Based on radiocarbon techniques and geological studies, the site dates back an astounding 12,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Four of the circles at Göbekli Tepe were aligned to the region of the sky containing Orion, Taurus, and the Pleiades on the morning of the Vernal Equinox. Due to precession of the equinoxes, such orientations change over time, with the entire cycle taking close to 26,000 years. The builders of Göbekli Tepe took such changes into account, reorienting their structures between the years 10,000 BC to 8000 BC, indicative of an added level of sophistication: a scientific orientation. Then suddenly circa 8000 BC, the people of Göbekli Tepe disappeared, but first they intentionally buried the site! Why? Were they attempting to protect the site, either so that they might some day return, or so that it would be preserved for future generations?

With my re-dating of the Great Sphinx and the early date of Göbekli Tepe, we now have clear evidence of sophisticated culture and civilization circa 10,000 BC to 8000 BC. But then this forgotten civilization disappears! There is a decline and hiatus for thousands of years, until the rise once again of civilization in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and elsewhere circa 3500 BC to 3000 BC.

What happened?

In order to explain the demise of this forgotten civilization, represented by the original Sphinx and Göbekli Tepe, we need to turn to geology. The early forgotten civilization collapsed during the end of the last Ice Age when Earth experienced dramatic cataclysmic changes. Something very sudden and very unusual took place, unlike anything we have experienced since. The peoples and cultures of that remote time were utterly devastated. Knowledge was lost, order devolved to chaos, and a dark age lasting thousands of years ensued.

The end of the last Ice Age was not simply a matter of the climate warming and glaciers melting. Earth experienced a series of climatic fluctuations. It had been extremely cold, with continental glaciers extending much further than they do today, but the climate started to warm. However, temperatures reverted back, and there was a short cold spell, known as the Younger Dryas, before the final warming and the official end of the last Ice Age. Studying Greenland ice core data, scientists have determined that the Younger Dryas began and ended very abruptly. Its start dates to circa 10,900 BC, and its ending (the final warming) began circa 9700 BC and may have occurred within an incredible three years; given our inability to resolve the finest details of something that happened so long ago, it may have literally happened overnight.