00:00.00 kinkella Hello and welcome to the pseudo archeology podcast episode 117 and I am your host Dr Professor Andrew Kinkeella Esquire R P A archeology person and tonight we are delving deep. Into the younger dryas and the comet impact hypothesis. Okay, why pray tell am I doing this to myself. Well the younger dryas and the comet impact hypothesis is actually something that comes up all the time. In the pseudo archeology world I would almost say it's one of the top 5 stories that a huge portion of pseudo archeology stories use. Or they're based on it or they use it as like an ending or they use it as quote unquote proof to stuff they're saying so I approach this podcast with dread as I often do and that's because they're. 01:17.80 kinkella Are really a lot of twists and turns in this one you guys and I hope you can kind of stick with me and I hope I can stick with myself as I go through this because what we're going to find is that. When you're talking about something that is labeled the younger dryas and the comet impact hypothesis right? there. There's just a ton of stuff going On. You're like younger dryas. What's that and then okay, there's a comet in it and maybe there's Explosions. You know it's.. It's intrinsically kind of muddled and complicated and so I'm going to have to break this down and kind of parse it out and hopefully it'll ultimately make a bit of sense. So What we want to start with. Opening this total Pandora's box is what is the younger dryas right? We won't even bother with all the comet stuff. We'll do that Later. What is the younger dryas itself now. I'm being honest with you when I originally heard about all this I thought younger dryas was too scientists with the last name of younger and the last name of dryas but it's not the younger dryas. 02:43.18 kinkella Is a time in history. Okay, it's from about thirteen thousand years ago until about twelve thousand years ago so it's a thousand year block of time and it's called the younger dryas because. The driest is actually a type of flower. It's like a little flowering plant and scientists were a bit surprised when they saw that this plant existed at this certain time because this plant exists. In slightly colder temperatures so they found these and they're like wait. These aren't supposed to be around and they found this through doing ice cores right? They found pollen from this plant at from the 13000 to about the twelve thousand years ago timeframe what was the big deal. So what? So it. It's from colder conditions. Well what the younger dryas is is. It's a moment where we go into slightly colder conditions now to back up that told you this is going to be complicated. We want to put ourselves back in the ice age right? So if we're all sciencey about it. It's the pleistocene and that lasts for thousands and thousands and thousands of years right even millions of years but at about fifteen Thousand years ago 04:18.29 kinkella Colder temperatures were starting to warm up and what do I mean by colder I mean if we're doing fahrenheit you know ° colder than today ° colder than today. It's that kind of thing. It's not ° colder. We want to remember that where a little difference in climate goes a very long way. So. The ice age is finally ending at about fifteen Thousand years ago temperatures are moving up a few degrees and so from about 15000 to 13000. There are warming temperatures and at about 13000 we're getting right around. Normal modern temperatures. But then all of a sudden and it does happen pretty fast temperatures plunge back into glacial conditions into ice age conditions. So we're we're adding 5 to 10 degrees and then boom we drop off you know and lose. 5 to 10 degrees back into ice age conditions and that lasts 1000 years from 13000 to twelve thousand years ago and then at twelve thousand years ago the warming trend starts again and at the beginning of that warming trend. That's when we say the holocene starts. The holoscene is modern condition. So again, if we want to be SSciencey we go from the pleistocene the ice age to the holocene to modern conditions and that flip happens about twelve thousand years ago now to make things even crazier. 05:54.40 kinkella From twelve thousand years ago we go up to modern conditions and it actually at about Nine Thousand years ago Eight thousand years ago it actually gets even a tick hotter than it is today just by a little and that's called the althermal so in archeology we. Like getting good data about the environment and about ancient climate because obviously it tells us so much about ancient cultures and ancient societies. What they could do what they couldn't do. It gives us that background diorama to how human cultures existed now what we're talking about. For this podcast though is the younger dryas. It's that weird moment where it's like oh my god things got colder again for a second. So imagine this right? We have glaciers that have been there forever and then they're melting a bunch and then oh my god they're coming back again, right? It's this really weird. Scratch of the record player and back to these conditions now. Of course we want to know what caused it right? that's the that's the big question. Okay, it happened and now we have very good data for this that this. Drop back into glacial conditions did happen. But why now we're going to make it tougher on ourselves our current best guess is that as temperatures warmed. 07:28.31 kinkella From 15000 to about 13000? you're going to have a ton of melting glaciers right? You're going to have a ton of water that was in the ice that's now melting into the ocean and sea level is rising and that combination of new water kind of new fresh water. Flowing into the oceans at that time messed up the atlantic conveyor system. That's that ah system in the Atlantic where warm water from the equator moves up. Towards the northern reaches right? and it sort of cycles back around that kind of thing so you basically have this huge cycle of warm water going up making temperatures more temperate right? and we still have versions of that today you know you're like man Europe is pretty high up. In terms of its latitude. Why is it not that cold. It's because of things like this. So our idea is that these this new glacial melt messed up that conveyor belt. So. You have these plunging conditions especially in the north right? back to ice age conditions now 1 thing that we'll see happens as I talk about this is the earth is a big place. So these conditions are almost never global. 08:55.28 kinkella Meaning if you lived at the equator you wouldn't notice this nearly as much as in this case, especially in the north more Northern Polar regions right? That's super important to keep in mind what happens in 1 area of the earth doesn't necessarily affect. The whole earth or at least not nearly to the degree where it's happening at other places so that's our best guess and I think that makes a ton of sense right? It's like oh yeah, okay, you got you introduced this new water and sea level rise. And of course it's going to mess up ah ocean currents and that will have big consequences now. There are other theories to explain why the younger dryas happened. There's ones. Have to do with atmospheric changes again. That's kind of like how Europe is warm right? Sort of gulf stream kind of things. Um, we have the idea that maybe there were a series of volcanic eruptions. Maybe a solar flare and then finally we have the. Comet impact hypothesis now when you look at this list the what I would call the atlantic conveyor model that is by far the one that makes the best sense right? and but then you have these other ones. It's like the atmosphere. 10:30.33 kinkella Maybe But you could see how that might even just be related to the Ocean. Um, the volcanic eruption thing. There's not really super duper great evidence for that. So That's what I find gets thrown in a lot when we're unsure of things could be volcanoes. Yeah, but. Ah, don't really see it. The solar flare thing I'm like ah you know again, you just don't really, it's not really any super duper great evidence for that and then the comet there actually is some evidence for the comet that we'll talk about later. But. 11:09.25 kinkella It's way overplayed and of course it is. It's a comet. Don't you want the comment story. Oh Hell Yeah I Want the comet story because that sounds awesome is like this comet hits the Earth do and then it changes The. Climate overnight and it plunges us back into the ice age right? Script writes itself. It's awesome. But if we want to be all cold and scientific about it. Well, it just isn't. Nearly as good and satisfying as the atlantic conveyor model but it's much more satisfying in terms of Story. And of course the Pseudo archeology crowd has jumped all over that sucker more on that later. So now that we understand what the younger dryas was we want to understand what we're really asking and there's. A lot more than just like did it happen or not So. First off we can say with very good evidence that this younger dry this younger dryas ah cooling event did happen. But here's what we're asking. Okay was there a younger dryas. Yes. 12:30.12 kinkella And but then how did it matter. What was the ripple effect right? We need to answer that then we're gonna talk about was there a comet as we'll see looks pretty good, but what was its effect then right and in terms of effect. We have a bunch of other things that people ask about this too. Because the mega fauna in North America are going to die off at this time so we're asking did this event impact the megafauna and by megafauna I mean things like woolly mammoths dire wolves giant sloth. You guys know these that large ice age mammals. Ah. Did this affect clovis culture. These are the early indigenous people in the new world because clovis culture dates to about this time too. So this list of stuff. These are all the questions we really have to answer. And when we come back, we'll start doing that.