Prehistory Decoded

  Season 7, Episode 4 "The Mysteries of the World's Oldest Temple" explores my ideas (among others) about Gobekli Tepe. Available free to view for Now TV and Sky TV subscribers in the UK. Watch Forbidden History Season 7 Episode 1 Online - Stream Full Episodes (nowtv.com)

  The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) featured on the New York Times Magazine this week. The Comet Strike Theory That Just Won’t Die - The New York Times (nytimes.com) The article is well balanced, giving both sides of the story. The most interesting thing I learned was that Mark Boslough, long-time antagonist of the YDIH, has tried to end research into the YDIH. Apparently, and this is confirmed by those who should know, he wrote to all the editors of journals that ever have published pro-YDIH papers, lobbying them to retract those papers. I don't know of any scientist that would even think of doing this, yet alone actually carry it out. While it is quite normal to seek a retraction if there is good evidence of some kind of scientific malpractice, such as plagiarism or tampered results, it is not ethical to seek a retraction because you disagree with the science or if requests for samples have been denied. This is because writing to all the editors could bias the scientifi...

Pillar 43 at Gobekli Tepe Holliday et al. is highly misleading . In section 5.2 of their Gish gallop, Holliday et al. take aim against the astronomical interpretation of Gobekli Tepe's symbolism. Let's see what they have to say. My comments in italics. 5.2. Pseudoarchaeological Divined Date of the Impact Event Sweatman and Tsikritsis (2017a, p 233) ask in their abstract, “Is Göbekli Tepe the ‘smoking gun’ for the Younger-Dryas cometary encounter, and hence for coherent catastrophism?”  Correct. No evidence or arguments are provided by Holliday et al. against this. Sweatman in his 2019 book Prehistory Decoded (see also Sweatman andTsikritsis, 2017a,b; Sweatman,  2017; Sweatman and Coombs, 2018; Sweatman 2020) claims the date of the impact event is actually recorded on a carved stone pillar at the archaeological site of Göbekli Tepe, Turkey, “Given what is now known about the Younger Dryas impact event, summarised in Chapters 3 to 5, dated by the platinum spike in the GISP2 ice ...

  Megalithomania Conference, 4th - 5th May 2024

Holliday et al.'s "comprehensive refutation" of the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis (YDIH) is a highly misleading  Gish gallop. An earlier blog post addressed the presence of impact melts and microspherules in the YDB (Younger Dryas boundary). By themselves, they confirm a cosmic impact at Abu Hureyra near the YD onset. Due to the similarity of debris at the YDB across a wide range of sites, it's likely there were cosmic impacts across a wide area within a short timespan. Other blog posts examined the presence of nanodiamonds and platinum in the YDB. As they occur in the debris layer with microspherules at Abu Hureyra, they are also good impact indicators. They are present in many other YDB layers, along with apparent impact spherules, signalling a widely distributed cosmic impact. The previous blog post showed this layer of impact debris distributed across four continents within a narrow timeframe suggests a single event or highly correlated series of events wit...

Researchers associated with the comet research group have just published four new papers on micro-fractures in quartz, and how they can be used to diagnose cosmic impacts. The first paper is a detailed study linking shocked quartz to airbursts. The next three below apply this new understanding to the Younger Dryas impact specifically at Abu Hureyra, which is about 100 miles south of Gobekli Tepe. The journal is also new - "Airbursts and cratering impacts". It was set up so that papers rejected by the "impact mafia" can still be fairly reviewed and published. The impact mafia is a determined group of researchers who are expert in the more well-established science of large ground impacts where the existence of a large crater makes the diagnosis of an impact obvious. By requiring the same kind of evidence for the diagnosis of all cosmic impacts , they are effectively preventing the diagnosis of lower-energy impact events, for example small ground impacts or large airbu...

In this presentation I describe some of the supporting evidence for the astronomical interpretation of Gobekli Tepe. Many other presentations at Cosmic Summit 2023 are also available on YouTube, courtesy of George Howard who organised the whole thing. Here's the playlist .

The location of several Greenland ice cores, from Steffensen et al. (2008). Over the next few months/year I'll post a regular series of blog posts that deconstruct Holliday et al.'s (2023) (henceforth, just Holliday et al.) "comprehensive refutation" of the YDIH. Some common themes will become apparent. Essentially, there are no refutation arguments at all in it, so their title is misleading. Remember, the meaning of 'refute' is to 'disprove', but there are no arguments in Holliday et al. that disprove the YDIH. It's also worth looking up the  'Gish gallop' fallacy, because that is what is happening here. Holliday et al.'s paper might be extremely long, but it is lacking in serious arguments, and there are certainly no refutations. First up in this blog post is the timing of the YD climate change (specifically its onset) and the Greenland platinum spike. The relevant sections of Holliday et al. are 3.3 and 5.1. My comments are in itali...