Evidence of a 12,800-year-old shallow airburst depression in Louisiana

For those that don't have the context ...

The Younger Dryas theory supporters is controversial across multiple disciplines because it challenges the idea that human progress has always been linear (gets better over time).

Some believe that ~13,000 years ago, humans were highly advanced, but a massive flood (Younger Dryas) wiped out & reset civilization.

Supporters of this theory often point to two things: nearly all major religions reference a great flood, and there’s a current lack of understanding how ancient megalithic sites were built with tools thought to be available at the time (primitive bronze tools, etc).

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Unfortunately, it seems like folks from both sides of the topic talk-past each other ... and at least I haven't seen a balanced debate on the subject. If someone has seen a balanced assessment, please share.

There’s a lot more dogma on Wikipedia than academics would like you to believe

The Younger Dryas debate spans climatology, archaeology, geology, and astrophysics, creating tension across multiple disciplines.

There is scientific evidence that the Younger Dryas event occurred, however, no universally accepted scientific study that conclusively proves WHAT caused it.

The evidence for multiple strikes around 12,800BP has been piling up for quite a few years now. There are other theories of course. A few papers :

Alaska - https://dx.doi.org/10.1086/695703

South Carolina - www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-51552-8 (plus Article: https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-that-an-extraterres... )

Chile - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-38089-y

South Africa - https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.06.017

Syria - https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-60867-w

California, Channel Islands - https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.09.006

If you actually click on the link, it mentions this both in the abstract, and a detailed comparison of evidence in a whole table.

I hadn't heard of this, but it says:

>The hypothesis is widely rejected by relevant experts.[2][1][3][4] It is influenced by creationism [...] It is an alternative to the long-standing and widely accepted explanation that the Younger Dryas was caused by a significant reduction in, or shutdown of the North Atlantic Conveyor due to a sudden influx of freshwater from Lake Agassiz and deglaciation in North America. [...] Authors have not yet responded to requests for clarification and have never made their raw data available

Is there a reason why the widely accepted explanation isn't satisfactory?

???

There's no link to anything religion wise with the Younger Dryas AFAIK.

My only experience studying it has come from the geological / astrophysics sides though.

So you're going to ignore the possibility of events that happened thousands of years before the young earth creationists say the Earth was even formed because of a possibility of association with young earth creationists?

I don't know about the sniff test. The paper here does a little bit of the amateur scientist thing where they belabor details that real experts tend to take for granted. That doesn't make it wrong, but it increases the skepticism warranted.

I do agree the religious link is weird. The mere presence of a 12800 year timeline contradicts YEC. Then again, that kind of logic doesn't always stop pseudoscience people, especially the more conspiracy-flavored ones.

I'm guessing that like everything south of a certain point in Louisiana, it'll start out as a larger landscape feature and then gets filled in by sediment.

Yes. If it exploded in the air, then there is no crater.

Drunk? New user, huge burst of random comments, none of which make sense?

You okay, buddy?