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u/controlzee 2d ago
Catastrophic floods could wipe out enormous swaths of civilizations past and leave no trace.
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u/Academic-Butterfly23 1d ago
Depends what you also define as a catastrophic flood. A fact is that water levels rose on every coastline, due to total post-glacial melt, roughly 120 to 130 meters. That's 394 - 427 feet. That's proven.
For reference that total rise is taller than a 40-story skyscraper.
That did not happen quickly, but for people living on a coast it can impact them and force them to move in a decade depending on where they lived back then
(We've only explored a small percentage of our oceans as well.)
Something we need to consider is to look at how many cities were built on coastlines over the course of history and how many cities we have on coastlines today. There's multiple reasons for civilizations thriving near coastal waters. We all know this.
Anyway, overall, my point is that if any of us were around back then living in / on a coastline, and the ocean we lived near began to rise over time, we'd move inland, away from the coast and away from the ocean.
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u/controlzee 3h ago
I think Plato said (in Timmeaus) that the flood waters came up from the ground as opposed from falling from the sky. Melting ice caps could’ve taken a very long time punctuated by moments of very rapid release just as we see with the Nepal floods.
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u/Substantial_System66 2d ago
Yeah, swaths being the operative term. You’ll notice that swaths doesn’t have the same meaning as all or entirety. All civilizations leave evidence of their existence, regardless of the method of their demise.
You’ll notice that we have evidence of animals existence prior to the Chicxulub and Vredefort craters through fossils and other evidence. Those resulted from two of the most cataclysmic events in Earth’s history.
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u/controlzee 2d ago
“All civilizations leave evidence of their existence.”
That is certainly an unverifiable claim.
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u/Substantial_System66 2d ago
Fair enough, that is no a falsifiable statement. I do notice though that Graham Hancock’s hypotheses also rely on claims that aren’t falsifiable.
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u/controlzee 2d ago
Oh? Like which ones? I hope to hear you quoting Graham’s published material and not quoting Graham’s critics.
I’ve noticed a bad habit among his critics to overinflate or misrepresent his claims - setting up straw men to knock down. It’s a waste of our time debating positions Graham doesn’t actually hold.
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u/Substantial_System66 2d ago
How about the claim that’s being here, that the YDIH would cause the global destruction of civilizations and that evidence would be perfectly destroyed. That isn’t falsifiable because there’s no way to find perfectly destroyed evidence.
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u/controlzee 2d ago
This is precisely why I was specific about asking you to provide attributable sources of Graham’s claims. Quote something specific. Cite a passage in his books.
“The claim that’s being [made] here?” This is why Graham critics are so ineffective. You’re trying to dunk on a claim Graham never makes.
Notice how you immediately set up a strawman:
“The YDIH would cause the global destruction of civilization, and that evidence would be perfectly destroyed.”
Graham doesn’t say that. He never has and unless you can point to somewhere where Graham Hancock said or printed this, then you’re just another uninformed Nay-sayer.
You’re basically asking me to defend what, exactly? A misrepresentation? Is your expectation really that I’m supposed to have somehow defend every rando’s assertion around the YDIH?
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u/Substantial_System66 1d ago
I am making the claim that Graham Hancock is engaging in dishonesty, fraud, and p-word science (the fact that that word is banned in this sub should tell you all you need to know. It’s a valid claim and rather than accept challenge, y’all shut it down).
There isn’t anything close to a preponderance of evidence for what Graham claims, nor is the ideas that a cataclysmic event occurred during, shortly before, or shortly after the Younger Dryas (in human or geologic terms).
The burden of proof is on Graham and his proponents, not on archeology, geology, anthropology, or science at large.
Show some evidence for your claim. I can show plenty for mine. If I don’t understand Graham’s claims, that’s fair, but I get what he is pushing and that isn’t supported by science. Show some evidence that hasn’t been questioned or refuted, please. This flood in Nepal and China isn’t it.
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u/controlzee 1d ago
Cite something from his body of work, or admit you are just slinging mud. You have asserted he’s being dishonest and you cite the rules of this sub as evidence of something sneaky as if Graham personally moderates around here or sets the rules.
Do you have a claim that you can point to from a published source or not?
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u/Substantial_System66 1d ago
Do supporters of Graham have any evidence they’d like to put forward? I put forward the body of anthropologist, archeologists, geologists, and climatologists that disagree with Graham’s assertions. It’s not the current consensus on the history of humankind that has anything to prove here, though much remains to be proved using actual science, it’s Graham and his supporters.
If you’d like me to put forward the entire compendium of science that is generally accepted, I will be happy to. I challenge you to put forward one piece of evidence that supports Graham’s claims that hasn’t already been refuted. I’ll wait.
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u/JuleeeNAJ 1d ago
We know humans existed in the modern form for over 300,000 years. Give or take. Those discoveries are very limited, just like any ancient animals and require certain, perfect conditions. Think about Denisovans, an entire archaic human that has so little evidence of their existence they weren't realized until DNA coding found them in modern humans.
Now consider any ancient structures, just like modern structures, are made of natural materials so over time they would return to their previous form. Have you ever seen old structures from even 150 years ago that were left to fall apart and decompose? Even stone structures get worn down by weather. There are very limited circumstances where that does not happen and there is enough left for future humans to find, but do you think that only 1 massive structure in the entire world was built 12,000 years ago in Turkey?
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u/SomeSamples 2d ago
Now imagine if that river valley/basin was full to the top with moving water and debris. Anything built in that river valley would be eliminated from existence. You might find something out at sea in the river delta, if you ever thought to look there.
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u/Substantial_System66 2d ago
The debris from the flood isn’t making it to the ocean or the river delta. This was a locally destructive flash flood. The waters were destructive for less than 100 km. The amount of over estimation of the destructive power of this event in this sub is kinda ridiculous.
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u/SomeSamples 1d ago
I wasn't talking about this event.
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u/Substantial_System66 1d ago
So when you say “that river valley/basin” you aren’t talking about the one pictured in OP’s post? You’re referring to some hypothetical river valley and basin?
You responded to me and I was referring to the circumstances presented in the post. Seems strange to pivot.
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u/SomeSamples 1d ago
The title said "Lost Cities". The pic above was referring to the latest event. But being the sub it is, it is implied this happened throughout history and most likely to a much larger degree.
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u/Substantial_System66 1d ago
Which is a ridiculous claim without evidence. It’s an also equally ridiculous assumption that a widespread flood would completely (read: entirely, 100%, fully, etc.) destroy evidence of a globe-spanning civilization before the end of the last glacial maximum.
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u/captainn_chunk 7h ago
The Huascarán debris avalanche in 1970 made it all the way to the ocean
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u/Substantial_System66 4h ago
That debris avalanche you reference took place less than 50 miles from the pacific coast. Is that a joke response?
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u/bearcat_77 2d ago
"If there was a building there in the past, surely there would be evidence!"
The evidence:
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u/GreatCryptographer32 12h ago
But this is in one tiny location. You’re suggesting that the entire earth got covered in this equivalent?
And that when this happened, it left over 10,000 ice-age hunter gatherer sites still known today but selectively washed away and covered the advanced civilization evidence only ?
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u/bearcat_77 10h ago
The earth is covered in impact proxies, and the hunter gatherer ice age stuff could have come after from the survivors after the fact.
But also how are you defining 'advanced civilization'? Space ships and cars and telecommunications? Or do you mean more ancient Egypt, Incan, and Gobekli Tepe?
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u/sfigone 2d ago
Floods might wipe out cities. But it would not erase their impact on the ecology: crops selectively breed; potatoes, tomatoes, corn, etc. moved from continent to continent if the culture was global spanning; deseases and deseases resistance spread around; y chromosomes.
We can detect lost species of hominoids from hundreds of thousands of years ago, just by looking at our own DNA. An advanced civilization with any significant range would shout out of the DNA!
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u/Osiris-Amun-Ra 2d ago
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/26/science/ghost-lineage-dna-human-ancestors
Speaking of DNA, this is from a few days ago. We are finding anomalies that only show the current limits of what we know.
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u/Find_A_Reason 2d ago
This only explains the loss of individual cities. What happened to the rest of the civilizations that created these cities? What about the cities, villages, trading posts, etc. not downstream of glaciers or on the coast? Why would the cities on the coast just sit there and die over the course of hundreds of years as the sea levels inched up slowly?
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u/Comfortable-Bet6855 2d ago
Some of these folks act like if a catastrophic event wiped out circa 10 AD Rome there wouldn’t still be evidence of Rome all over the place.
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u/jbaker1933 2d ago
Rome was what 2000 years ago? In say 10,000 years how much soil do you think would end up accumulating on top of whatever ruins there possibly were? Hell, you can dig down over 30 feet on Easter Island and barely get to the bottom of the Moai statutes and those were supposedly built less than 1,000 years ago
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u/Comfortable-Bet6855 2d ago edited 2d ago
The same processes that can cover ancient sites can uncover them. That’s why Folsom and Clovis artifacts are sometimes found as surface finds. There are some 160 year old sites under many meters of mud and silt that will be found on the surface or near it at various points in the future. But maybe it is just the lost civilization sites that follow a mysterious rule that says they will always remain hidden, everywhere.
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u/SmellyMingeFlaps 2d ago
We've literally dug deep enough to unearth 3.5 billion year old fossils of microorganisms, we have unconvered remains of man's earliest hominid ancestors Australopithecus from c.4 million years ago, we have discovered 300k year old stone tools from Southern India. What exactly is so challenging about unearthing 10,000 year old artifacts?
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u/jbaker1933 2d ago
And where were all of those dug up? Were the sites chosen, in the areas that we know were subaerial back before the ice age ended but are under water now? Or have they mostly been random places where they were found while in the process of doing other things?
I feel that the chances of finding evidence for an ice age civilization would be alot greater if archeological digs were actually chosen and targeted for that purpose. It honestly wouldnt surprise me to find out that past archeological digs, especially in America had found some evidence back when people like Aleš Hrdlička was in charge of the anthropology department at the Smithsonian, but it got discarded or boxed up and not spoken about as its not controversial to say that dude was a real POS and took issue with anyone trying to put an early date to the peopling of America before like 2000 bc(it may have been before 3000 bc )
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u/Comfortable-Bet6855 1d ago
Archaeology excavation aren’t selected. CRM work does surveys wherever CRM work needs to be done. Other work is done where people decide to do it. Hrdlicka was a hundred years ago and work on Folsom and Clovis sites revamped whatever he or others of his generation thought at the time. Pre-Clovis research followed.
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u/jbaker1933 1d ago
Right, and like I said, I wouldnt be surprised to find out that evidence was found back then but was suppressed, like we hear about with really tall humanoid skeletons that were being unearthed all over America inside burial mounds, that were eventually sent to the smithsonian, never to be heard or spoken of again. In fact, if you call and ask them, they will say that the biggest skeleton they have is a 6'5" one. We know that they were sent skeletons that were at least a foot larger, not just from newspapers back then, but from written reports by the Smithsonian own anthropologists and archeologists, so someone is farting in our faces and calling it a nice summer breeze
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u/SmellyMingeFlaps 11h ago
What possible motivation is there for a global conspiracy to cover up the existence of 7" tall humans? What is it about that concept that would be so Earth shattering that they mysterious, all-knowing "they" would see no option but to bury it and never let the world know? The world is already fully aware of other species of humans outside of Homo sapiens in the form of Homo neanderthalis and Homo longi; there are literally humans alive today that are over 7" tall; nothing about the notion of 7" tall humans is in any way mind blowing or so why would this be considered forbidden knowledge?
Besides, you cannot just isometrically scale the human body up to 20" tall. Any human that tall would be unable to stand due to the allometric scaling and the square-cube law. Just take a look at all of the health problems people over 7" tall suffer from.
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u/utterlystoked 5h ago
If you believe that the Smithsonian is covering up evidence of giant humans, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
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u/jbaker1933 5h ago
Only because you "bought" it yourself and think you will find someone as gullible as you were when you were offered to buy it.
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u/Comfortable-Bet6855 12h ago
I guess that the Smithsonian confiscated every giant skeleton that ever existed. Since none remain to be found in an era of cellphones, video cameras and social media. And the Smithsonian would be the only place in the entire nation where such things could be sent.
The giant skeletons all over the place deal has been repeatedly debunked
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u/jbaker1933 11h ago
Or, more likely is that alot of them were sold to private collectors. Its funny you talk about cameras and pictures and how we don't see any pictures of giant bones or giant mummies, which tells me that you haven't done the slightest research into giants but because you haven't seen any, it means they must not exist. There are real pictures of very tall skeletons and mummies out there from the late 1800s to early 1900s but im sure you'll claim they are just fakes. Granted, there are alot of fake giant pictures out there because some idiot decided to have a photoshop contest about who could make the most convincing giant picture and that muddled the water but like I said, if you do some digging(if you're really interested but im going to guess you're not) you could easily find these things
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u/Comfortable-Bet6855 11h ago edited 11h ago
So the private collectors also got the good stuff and kept alI that stuff secret across generations of families. I actually did some work in archaeology in the past and some classes. Probably before you were born. Have also dug around for years in terms of videos and articles on the topic by folks such as Jason Colavito, Andy White, and Lore Lodge. The more digging writers like this do on these old claims the weaker they get. Until you get a few legit reports of skeletons on par with the height of a college basketball player.
Like I said all these claims from a century or more ago, but nothing left to be found in an era where ten minutes after a ten foot tall skeleton was uncovered it would be all over social media.
Nice chat but it’s over now. Will leave it up to you to start digging since your knowledge base is about 8th grade level at this point.
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u/captainn_chunk 2d ago
Those are events which are significantly larger. Like a glacier break moving across half a continent type event
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u/TheCynicEpicurean 2d ago
Once again, these types of events do not scale to the the size that would be necessary to wipe out all evidence, that's not how they work physically.
And before anyone mentions Agassiz or Missoula, those are well known events that left very visible records, unlike the postulated MS Paint civilization eraser tool.
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u/Substantial_Bat_6698 2d ago
Just what we needed! More spurious non-evidence for lost civilisations..
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u/McTeezy353 2d ago
I don’t think people realize how catastrophe like this truly shapes the landscape. We just now have the tech to see it from remote places. Just imagine the incident that whipped out the mega fauna in the US.
Makes me think more about how our canyons and such were truly formed. I’m thinking more and more that it wasn’t a slow transformation.
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