I've been reading (listening- audiobook) to Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization by Graham Hancock Its really good. Im about halfway through, and wanted to share an interesting idea hes presenting. Short version: The last Ice Age concealed the bulk of early human civilization beneath the sea. Between 17K and 11K years ago, the ocean was several hundred feet lower than it is now, with lots of water piled up at the poles in glaciers. Common understanding is that it gradually melted into the sea over thousands of years. New evidence (layed out in the book) suggests ice melt collected in place in vast lakes on the land, being held there by ice damns (at the edges of the melting glaciers) that formed as a result of the glaciers thawing from the inside out, due in part to their great size and spread capturing heat from the earth and warming them from the inside out, causing much of the melt to be released in 'waves' as the edges (ice damns) broke that would cause sea level raises of dozens of feet in days rather than years. This would mean that the continent sized (in total) coastal land that was flooded by ocean over these periods was flooded quite quickly. Any early human habitation located in these ancient coastal regions (where humans tend to habitate more densely) would not have had time to relocate, and thus, much of the earliest archeological record of past societies is buried not beneath the land were we look for it, but beneath the sea, where we generally arent looking. This would explain the 'great leap' in civilized society between the hunter gatherers (which isn't really a society), and the early but inexplicably advanced Sumerian, South American, Egyptian and Asian civilizations that currently appear to spring up out of nowhere. The civilizations that preceded (and led to) them are hidden under the sea. There are indeed numerous ruins that are beginning to be explored miles from shore in places like Japan, India and the Meditaranean, that make far more sense being there within the above described dynamic. I just think its really interesting, and thought you might as well. I also highly recomend the book (or at least the first half of it- not done reading it yet).
I followed a lot of this since the 70's, before there were computers. Back then you needed to go to a library, know what you were looking for, and hope they had it. Ironically in many places the only recorded history is buried in religious scripture, but you have to read between the lines. The established history, already had guidelines, you dared not cross over, lest you are blackballed. There is so much that needs to be re-examined, thinking "out of the box".
I didn't know about Graham Hancock until a year or two ago. My wife introduced me to his books & Youtube videos. Now, I'm an avid fan. Hancock has convinced me to re-examine human history outside the box of traditional historians, and I'm really enjoying what I'm finding there. It had never occurred to me that the end of the Ice Age could have ended advanced civilizations existing then. If the Ice Age had ended gradually, those civilizations would have survived & our history today would be significantly different. But Hancock stresses that the evidence supported a cataclysmic end to the Ice Age rather than a gradual one. Over time, Hancock concluded it must have resulted from the impact of a large meteor or comet. Beginning in 2007, geologists gradually collected mounting evidence of that impact & concluded it had been about 1 mile in diameter & hit the northern ice cap in the Arctic region. All the Megafauna (large Ice Age mammals) were killed off, seemingly overnight--including most humans living at the time. Hancock postulates that those most capable of surviving this global event were the more primitive hunter-gatherer tribes. The advanced humans were probably, like us today, not skilled in personal survival alone, but more dependent upon one another for specialty skills. Hancock also suggests that those advanced humans who survived, recognized their civilizations were facing extinction, and they may have gone to live with the hunter-gatherer tribes, hoping to teach them at least some of what their advanced societies had known. But over the span of several generations, that knowledge was forgotten & Mankind went into a dark age so long it makes the traditional "Dark Ages" look tiny by comparison. What we have been taught as the birth of civilization with the Sumerians, Assyrians, Egyptians, etc, roughly 6000 years ago, were actually a rebirth of human civilization--not the first. Hancock does a fine job of citing all the evidence supporting this new view of history, and he's very convincing.
Uhh, no. Mr. Hancock is a pseudoscience quack. His work has never been peer reviewed, nor has any of his work been published academically. ANd over and over again it has been proven to be completely wrong. And no, the amount of water held behind ice dams is insignificant to the volume of water in the oceans. Want an idea? There are roughly 326 million cubic miles of water in the oceans. One of the largest volume of fresh water on the planet at this time is Lake Michigan. If that was somehow entirely to drain itself into the ocean, that is only 1,108 cubic miles of water. When you are talking about a body that is 326,000,000 cubic miles in size, do you think that an additional 1,108 cubic miles would be anything more than inconsequential? And we know quite a lot about those prehistoric lakes. One of the largest to ever "break" is Lake Missoula. That was about 15,000 years ago, and covered a huge area in Montana. This ancient lake contained about 500 cubic miles of water, and when the ice dam collapsed it not only flattened much of Southern Idaho, it also created scablands that still exist in Washington State and carved Hell's Canyon. How much impact do you think 500 cubic miles of water made in a body of over 326,000,000 cubic miles? That is like saying adding 5 miles to a distance of 3,260,000 miles would be significant. In reality, it would barely be noticed. This is the kind of pseudo-scientific nonsense he peddles. It may look great at first viewing, but actual logic applied with an understanding of real history (and in this case geology) quickly proves it to be a joke.
Graham Hancock isn't wrong. You are. Hancock explains that the unexpected 1,200 year return to the coldest period of the last ice age that occurred suddenly about 12,800 years ago [the Younger Dryas] can be explained by a comet impact somewhere in N America about that time. When he first advanced that theory, there was no evidence to support it. But starting in 2007, professional geologists around the world have been finding increasing evidence that such an event actually happened. That evidence has been peer reviewed & published in the most prestigious scientific journals since 2007, & is now established fact. Hancock was right. Hancock never suggested that glacial lakes were the cause for global oceans rising & flooding existing human settlements/civilizations. It was the sudden melting of huge swaths of the continental glaciers by the impact of that comet that did it. Geologists are suggesting that impact possibly cause immediate, overnight rise of the oceans as much as 30 feet, which would have devastated all human settlements along coastlines world wide, and given birth to the many divergent myths of a disastrous flood far back in our pre-history. The ice chunk debris cast out of the impact site for thousands of miles fell to Earth from space or near space & killed everything in its path. Temperatures fell between 5 & 9 degrees C almost overnight, making the world a very cold, dark, challenging place to survive in. Plus, the heat from the incoming debris started forest & grassland fires everywhere they landed. Forest fires burned about 10% of the global forests almost immediately, causing even more hardship for every living creature. The largest American mega fauna were wiped out. You're right about the Great Lakes & Lake Missoula, except Hancock never suggested they were the cause of global oceans rising. Hancock is right. I suggest you look at some of the remarkable interviews of him on YouTube to get a better understanding of his message than you currently have.
