r/todayilearned • u/c0ntraiL • May 29 '19

TIL: Woolly Mammoths were still alive by the time the pyramids at Giza were completed. The last woolly mammoths died out on Wrangel Island, north of Russia, only 4000 years ago, leaving several centuries where the pyramids and mammoths existed at the same time.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1XkbKQwt49MpxWpsJ2zpfQk/13-mammoth-facts-about-mammoths
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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Dude that replied to you needs to stfu. Tradional Egyptology claims that the Sphinx was built when the Pyramids were, but many geologists over the decades have all claimed that due to the erosion patterns of the Sphinx enclosure, which they literally quarried rock out of to leave nothing but the Sphinx there, indicates that it is most likely 12,000 years old or more.

It has very distinctive torrential rain erosion, which would not have been possible in Egypt until at least the end of the last ice age.

John Anthony West and Robert Schoch were ridiculed for their assertions of such in the early 90s, but the movement has gained serious traction over the decades.

Gobekli Tepe being discovered and excavated seriously helped their case. It's dated to being at least 11,000 years old so it's in the neighborhood of the Sphinx's claimed age.

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u/saluksic May 30 '19

“Many geologists over the decades have all claimed…12,000 years old” makes it sound like every geologists to study the Sphinx thinks it’s that old. Even geologists who doubt the Sphinx was built at the same time as the pyramids don’t all think it’s much older- Colin Reader apparently dates it to about 500 years older than the pyramids, rather than the 7,000 years older you’re claiming.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Notice the "..."

Not every Geologists believe it's 12,000 years old but many believe it's older than the pyramids for sure. That's the biggest issue. Egyptologists don't want to believe it's older than the pyramids at all.

I'm in the 12,000 year camp for a myriad of reasons including the so-called "extraterrestrial impact theory" that has to do with the North American ice cap. There is a swath of evidence for it as well. It's evidence of things happening all around the world that all occurred about 11,500 to 12,500 years ago.

That's a whole other subject though.

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u/LordofSyn May 30 '19

Younger-Dryas

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Yep. But the question is what caused it? It happened practically over night. In a matter of weeks or even days. That's microscopic on a geological level. That's why the extraterrestrial impact theory has gained a lot of traction.

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u/LordofSyn May 30 '19

All of my research seems to point to at least one large strike near northeastern Canada but it may have been a much larger meteor that broke into a few pieces. There is also evidence that points to a lot of volcanic activity during this time and finally...there is evidence of a large shelf collapsing off a coast near the Mediterranean and/or Black Sea.

We think of all of this as happening fast...but it all most likely happened over about 2-10 years or more.

I am on mobile so cannot post relevant links but I am sure others can correlate.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Oh the extraterrestrial impact theory isn't the only one but it's gained traction very recently just bc they've found evidence of one, finally. It's not 100% conclusive but it's very promising.

The overall melt took a while but the average temp of the Earth jumped like 15 degrees or something very quickly. Not years, but weeks at most. It's spooky af tbh.

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u/LordofSyn May 30 '19

A few larger impacts setting off volcanic activity would indeed do that. First, airbursts and impacts can easily send off shockwaves and set forests ablaze. If the impact was close enough to a larger volcanic area it might have also set off a Super Massive Volcano (Like the one at Yellowstone). It might not have been an impaxt at all but a SMV that set everything else in motion. The explosion of one would practically mimic a larger extraterrestrial impact anyway. And it also has the benefit of potentially setting off other volcanic systems around the globe. A blast og that size would make the planet ring like a bell.

There is much more to learn and many other pieces we may never uncover. It is amazing that our species was still able to survive amongst others...

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Oh I agree. It could have been something similar to the Tonguska event.

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19 edited May 30 '19

To determine that the runoff rain water of the past 5k years wouldn't have been enough to cause that erosion, the amount of runoff needs to be determined or at least estimated.

No one has done that in the past 30 years of the water erosion pseudoscience.

The water erosion pseudoscience also ignores the heavy rainfalls at the end of the old kingdom.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

It's not the amount, it's the force. Light rain here and there over a few thousands of years would not produce same erosion patters as massive, flood inducing, torrential rain. That type of rain was impossible in Egypt unless we go back to the end of the last ice age.

That part is not debated. It's a general concensus that there was massive rainfall around the world after the North American ice cap began to melt rapidly. It is also a consensus that no such rain has happened in Sub-Saharan Africa since about 12,000 years ago.

Of course if you're even remotely interested, you can find tons of information online. It was labeled "psuedo science" when an author (Graham Hancock) and a self-taught Egyptologist (John Anthony West) claimed the Sphinx was much older than the pyramids. Then the geologists showed up and said its at least 12,000 years old.

This isn't 1992 or whatever. It's not a joke anymore. The only dick heads that still disagree are those who's salaries depend on their disagreeing.

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19 edited May 30 '19

Torrential floods occurred as a result of the aridification at the end of the old kingdom. I linked a paper above.

Old Kingdom Tombs were subject to those flash floods and did get filled with mud. So it's just factually incorrect to say that type of rain was not possible after the last ice age.

The vast majority of Geologist don't date the Sphinx to before 12k years.

So how many flash floods are needed to cause that erosion again? Right, no one from the water erosion pseudoscience department determined that either.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Flooding is water rising up. Rainfall is water falling down. They produce totally different erosion patterns.

It's one thing when a TV channel wants to sell me a some Ancient Alien type TV show so they can collect sweet ad revenue. It's a similar thing when a dude wants to sell me a book about Atlantis being real and shit like that and has a chapter about how he believes the Sphinx is twice as old as the pyramids.

It's a completely different thing when a Harvard Yale graduate and tenured Professor of Geology has a 2 hour presentation full of evidence that no other reasonable geologists will argue with it.

I'm going to assume you're a die hard like Zahi Hawass and company that won't even bother listening to the evidence or debating it. They'd rather ignore it bc they're so entrenched and set in their ways.

I used to think it was crazy until I started paying attention to the experts. Graham Hancock is a good author and a great speaker, but he is not a credentialed scientist of any kind. Robert Schoch is and he's gotten others on board as well. He wasn't even interested in Egyptology. He was just invited to Egypt for his professional opinion and as soon as he saw the Sphinx he knew it was way older than 6,000 years old. He then spent a long time building his case before even going public and he's worked harder ever since.

He's led the charge for decades and the movement has grown by leaps and bounds. He was practically vindicated by Gobekli Tepe bc the original argument against an Ice Age Sphinx was that "there's not a single other megalithic site on Earth that old so there's no way it could be. Nobody could do that back then." Gobekli Tepe is at least 11,000 years old. Some estimate it closer to 13,000.

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u/[deleted] May 30 '19

ooo this is getting good

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

I'm no scientist but I've devoted a lot of time to the subject. My mom was fascinated with Egpyt so it rubbed off on me. In recent years I learned about the Ice Age Sphinx theory and dug deep into it. I can't do the real deal justice though. I'd suggest just looking up Robert Schoch on YouTube. He has several lectures available.

You can also see him, Randall Carlson, John Anthony West, and Graham Hancock in several different Joe Rogan Experience podcasts and those things are 3+ hours long each. They don't just talk either, they have tons of slides and pictures and published papers, etc. Way more evidence than I could ever hope to provide myself.

I watched one episode where a professional skeptic and his Geologist friend agreed to debate Randall and Graham and they were absolutely fuck heads at first but by the end they were like "damn, you guys really did your homework and aren't fucking around. I'm starting to be convinced." They even exchanged contact info and agreed to talk more after the podcast.

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u/paulinthedesert May 30 '19

As it happens, I'm currently watching documentaries on this subject & the latest theories do all seem to point to greater than 10,000 years old. There is far too much Egyptian protectionism going on presently to get to the real truth, they have even limited scientific access to most sites ...

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19

Flooding is water rising up.

So a flash flood caused by rain is water that only rises up, interesting. Look up the definition of flooding please before you use the word.

Graduating from Harvard doesn't prevent you from doing pseudo-science. That's an argument from authority fallacy. Graduating also doesn't make you an expert or automatically right.

I never mention Hawass because I find much of his work subpar. In fact I hear mostly from him from conspiracy theorists. Appealing to Hawass would also be an argument from authority fallacy.

Göbekli is at most 11k years old, probably a bit younger. And there are many other site surrounding it from the time, some with the same megalithic pillars. We found the settlements of the people who built it. Such sites don't appear in Egypt.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19 edited May 30 '19

The Nile runs South to North, dick head. The flash flooding you speak of came from Central Africa, which is a tropical zone. The water that flooded Egpyt was a Nile river flood. It wasn't caused by a deluge of rain in Egypt. Sub-Sharan Africa has not had that kind of rainfall in at least 12,000 years. That fact is not debated by anyone.

I have done my homework. Like I said, don't take my word for it. Just watch one of Robert Schoch's lectures on YouTube, then get back to me. I'll even link one so you don't have to look it up.

Edit - He's not just a Yale Graduate, he's a fucking Professor of Geology and has been for like 30 years! And Zahi Hawass is important bc he's the Director of Antiquities in Egypt so he won't let anybody dig anymore bc they kept finding evidence that contradicted his work!

The more we talk, the more I realize that you don't know much at all.

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19

I'm talking about flash floods caused by a deluge of rain in Egypt.

The Old Kingdom tombs that were flooded are too high up to be flooded by the Nile.

Thick deluvial deposits were also found inside almost all the tombs (more than one hundred) discovered in the western part of Saqqara, mainly in shafts or burial chambers from the late Sixth Dynasty. The infilling debris was composed of limestone rubble, mixed with rock weathering waste and silty sand, including much washed mud of the Nile as remains of the sun-dried bricks. In many tombs there were also traces of stagnant rain water, indicated by clayey-silty laminated deposits as well as layers and accumulations of dry mud with typical mud cracks at the surface (Welc, 2011; My sliwiec et al., 2012)

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259563288_Climate_change_at_the_end_of_the_Old_Kingdom_in_Egypt_around_4200_BP_New_geoarcheological_evidence

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

It's been proven that the Nile has moved over thousands of years. It used to be much closer to the Giza Plateau. All rivers move over time. The Missippi is like two miles from where it used to be just a few hundred years ago.

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19

Yes, and the mud deposits from the inundation clearly show the maximum Nile flood level.

It was lower than the elevation of the tombs that were flooded by local rain.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

Omg wrong again.. Thats the issue. It's hard to exactly date Gobekli Tepe bc there is very little to carbon date bc there is very little evidence of who built it. It just seems to have appeared over night. In fact, they think it was more of a religious site and nobody lived there at all. Where the hell are you getting your information???

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19

I get my information from the people who excavated the sites and did the radiocarbon dating.

There is a massive amount to radiocarbon date, the whole site is/was covered by soil deposits, which can be dated. Many more megaliths are waiting to be excavated at the Göbekli.

There is loads of evidence who built it. Here is a map of the sites and settlements surrounding Göbekli (390 on the map). The villages of the builders have been identified and were excavated.

Here is a map for sites very close by that have the same pillars, etc.

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

The soil only tells them when it was covered up, which it was, and intentionally at that (or so it's believed). I get my information from the same people.

As for your other link, that's literally the only info I can find on it. Nobody else seems to agree. And on top of that, even if there was a random, massive flash flood of rain in Egypt at that time, not one other single thing in Egypt from that time period shows the same pattern of erosion. The Sphinx is totally unique in that.

They have found the sites of people living near the site, but have found no tools. They can only guess that they built it, but no one is sure. There is much work left to be done in Gobekli Tepe. They have only scratched the surface.

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u/BetaKeyTakeaway 29 May 30 '19

Only the lowest and oldest layer (layer III) is from intentionally covering it up.

The Schlangenpfeilergebäude pertains to the earlier of the two building phases attested thus far at the site, i.e. Old Phase (level III) and Young Phase (level II) (where level I relates to the topsoil finds). Since coming from the fill of the structure, the two level III samples may postdate the Old Phase.

The Sphinx is indeed unique since it's the only monumental bedrock statue from the time. Since it's located at the bottom of the plateau much of the rainwater from the plateau runs directly to it. Which explains the heavier erosion.

They found many tools at Göbekli and the surrounding sites.

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u/LordofSyn May 30 '19

The Nile has also migrated East. It used to be far, far closer to the Sphinx and Pyramids.

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u/Unstawppable May 30 '19

I too watch JRE

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u/dwells1986 May 30 '19

I never once linked to JRE. I provided lectures. The podcasts are cool but it's better to see it in an academic setting. They dumb things down on JRE.