Apocalypse!
Why Graham Hancock’s Use of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis in His Netflix Series Ancient Apocalypse Is All Wet
The “apocalypse” in Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse is a hypothetical global catastrophe of biblical floods and continent-wide conflagrations. It was supposedly triggered by the impact of tens of thousands of fragments of a broken comet that burst in the air like bombs or exploded when they slammed into the ground. No spoiler alert is necessary. Hancock serves up a not-so-subtle animated shower of descending comets that graces the opening title sequence of every episode. The story’s narrative arc puts it on a trajectory that makes an impact hypothesis inevitable, even though Hancock avoids the word “comet” until the final episode teaser.
The supposed cataclysm’s timing coincides with the beginning of the Younger Dryas, an interval of cold climate at the end of the last ice age in much of the northern hemisphere that lasted about 1,200 years. Its year of onset is not the same everywhere, but its beginning is best discerned from an abrupt drop in temperature recorded in isotope data from Greenland ice cores in an annual layer that fell as snow about 12,920 years ago. The Younger Dryas is the latest in a series of 26 similar cold periods that took place over the last 120,000 years, called “Dansgaard-Oeschger events” (named after Willi Dansgaard and Hans Oeschger) that paleoclimatologists attribute to changes in ocean circulation caused by the influx of fresh water from melting ice sheets.1
In Episode 1, “Once There Was a Flood,” Hancock claims that there is evidence to support his notion that “the worldwide tradition of a global flood stops being just a myth and starts being a memory—an account of real events.” Puzzling over the ruins of Gunung Padang in Indonesia, for example, he concludes that such megalithic structures were built when sea levels were lower, during the last ice age:
I believe it has something to do with what happened around 12,800 years ago, when the Ice Age suddenly and quite dramatically shifted gears. Things had gradually been getting warmer for quite a long period of time. And then suddenly, two things happen at once. First, global temperatures plunge to the level that they were at the peak of the Ice Age, and they do so almost literally overnight. And secondly, there’s a sudden and inexplicable rise in sea level.
Throughout the series, Hancock incorrectly states that the Younger Dryas began 12,800 years ago, which is off by about 120 years. This is probably due to his confusion with geochronological terminology and inappropriate rounding. Ice core data reveal that the Younger Dryas began in Greenland at about 12,846 years BP, with the “Before Present” fixed at 1950 CE, or 73 years ago.2 Thus, the Younger Dryas began about 12,920 years ago, rounding to the nearest decade.
Global Flood Myths or Memories?
Hancock believes that the story of Noah in the Bible is based on fact, corroborated by other flood myths from around the world, and caused by the climate change that occurred at the onset of the Younger Dryas:
Now, normally, in an Ice Age, when you enter an episode of freezing, you do not expect to see a large amount of water dumped in the world ocean because that water has been turned into ice. What happened was a literal great flood. Between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago, the oceans of the world rose dramatically in a series of immense deluges one after another… This epoch of immense floods would have traumatized all of humanity. And indeed, there’s testimony that it did. Nearly every ancient culture preserved traditions of a great flood that swallowed up the Earth… From the Sumerians to the Babylonians, the ancient Greeks to the Chinese, all have similar versions of the same tale. The notion that all of this is just a coincidence, just invented independently by individual cultures doesn’t make sense…
Hancock makes a valid point here. Humans everywhere and at all times throughout our history tell stories of disasters they’ve experienced. Some are inspired to record them in their art or write poetry and music. The spiritual “Wasn’t That a Mighty Storm” appeared in Black churches shortly after the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. “Broken Levee Blues” was written and recorded by Lonnie Johnson after the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flood in the U.S. “Five Feet High and Rising” was written and recorded by Johnny Cash about the Ohio-Mississippi Flood of 1937, another of America’s worst disasters that left a deep impression on him as a child.
These catastrophic floods all took place within one small region of the world—the south-central U.S.—within a span of 40 years (much smaller than Hancock’s century-long timing error). These folk songs represent oral history of the time and are actual accounts of real events that were traumatizing. The floods were a significant factor in the Great Northward Migration of African Americans during the first half of the 20th century, and their social impact endures.
Read the full story on skeptic.com
Related Blog Posts
It’s Time to Retract the Sodom Airburst Paper
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Advocates of Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) “Independently” Evaluated Their Own Results
The Fringe Roots of the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis: Part 1
Related Videos
National Geographic/BBC animation of contact airburst (2006)
Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, NOVA (2009)
Modeling a Comet Airburst, NOVA (2009)
PubPeer
Several peer-reviewed papers on the YDIH and related subjects have been called into question on PubPeer. These criticisms have led to corrections and published comments. Here is a partial list.
Original YDIH paper: Firestone et al., 2007
YDIH Nanodiamonds in Greenland: Kurbatov et al., 2010
YDIH “independent” evaluation: LeCompte et al., 2012
Sodom & Gomorrah airburst paper: Bunch et al., 2021