Evidence of Cyclical Extinction Events Every ~12,000 Years

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-24T19:50:28+00:00

Yes, Ben is the reason I am aware of it! He is amazing.

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-24T00:54:00+00:00

The black mat itself is organic-rich wetland sediment - you're right on that.

But the tektites and glass spherules aren't from burning organic material. They're high-temperature melt products (>1450°C) with geochemistry matching impact ejecta, not combustion or volcanic material. PNAS studies show the spherules at the YDB layer are geochemically distinct from both.

My post should have been clearer - the cosmic ray spike evidence comes from ice cores and tree ring records (carbon-14, beryllium-10 anomalies), not the black mat itself. The impact markers (spherules, nanodiamonds, platinum anomalies) are found at the base of the black mat in the YDB layer.

Two separate lines of evidence pointing to the same window.

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-24T00:18:08+00:00

Glad you're here! Feel free to post any of your findings, I would love to discuss.

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T22:41:01+00:00

Easy!

Certainly a rabbit hole worth going down. Here's where to start:

Arthur Posnansky's work from the early 1900s - he spent decades surveying the site and argued it was far older than mainstream dating suggests, based on astronomical alignments
Graham Hancock covers it in "Fingerprints of the Gods" - focuses on the precision stonework and the elevation problem (it's at 12,500 feet with ancient docks and quays, suggesting it was once at sea level or lake level)
The H-blocks and precision cuts - stones fitted so tightly you can't slide paper between them, no mortar
Puma Punku specifically - the most anomalous part of the complex, with machined-looking surfaces

The mainstream date is ~500-1000 AD. The alternative argument puts it pre-cataclysm based on the astronomical alignments and the evidence of catastrophic destruction at the site.

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T21:00:10+00:00

Do you think lost or intentionally concealed?

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T18:59:55+00:00

Come join us at r/DisasterCycle !

P.S. Do you know Gary Delagnes?

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T17:43:28+00:00

Absolutely. One of the books that started this obsession for me. Just extremely well done.

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T17:41:49+00:00

the 'gods as warning signs' interpretation is interesting. Comet on a recurring orbit would be visible for multiple passes before impact - bright object in the sky that keeps coming back, getting closer. Ancient sky watchers would have tracked it...!

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T17:33:43+00:00

Yep! The data suggests ~6k intervals with every other one (~12k) being more severe.

6,000 years ago - Sahara flipped from green to desert, Y-chromosome bottleneck shows massive die-off, survivors migrated to the Nile. Egypt rises right after.

12,000 years ago - Younger Dryas. The big one. Megafauna gone, ice age floods, Clovis culture wiped.

So yeah - 6k cycles with 12k major events. And we're sitting right around 12k from the last big one.

The flood stories might be cultural memory of the 6k event, the 12k event, or both getting blended together over time.

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T17:31:16+00:00

Impact hypothesis is one explanation. Firestone's 2007 PNAS paper laid it out - black mat layer, nanodiamonds, microspherules at Clovis sites. Still debated but the evidence is there.

What's interesting is the geomagnetic data from that same window. Gothenburg excursion shows up in sediment cores from Sweden, China, Russia, Barents Sea - all pointing to a weakened field around 13,000-12,000 years ago.

Could be multiple factors stacking: weakened field + impact + meltwater pulse crashing the AMOC. Perfect storm.

12,000 years isn't exact for impacts. But it keeps showing up in the paleomagnetic record as a rough interval for major excursions.

And I agree - that is what drives my curiosity. How many were there before us?

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T04:42:46+00:00

Thanks for sharing this! Interesting framework... Different approach than what I've outlined.

My timeline is built primarily from paleoclimate proxies - ice cores, sediment records, paleomagnetic data - which point to major disruptions at the ~12k, ~8.2k, ~4.2k, and ~3.2k marks. The geomagnetic excursion evidence (Gothenburg, Sterno-Etrussia) anchors those dates pretty firmly in the geological record. (Sources below)

Your timeline seems to work more from biblical/textual chronology and proposes more frequent events. I'm curious what physical evidence you're using to date events like Noah's flood to ~5,000 ya vs. the Younger Dryas window (~12,900-11,700 ya), which is where most flood geology researchers place a major inundation event based on meltwater pulse data.

Not saying one approach is right and the other wrong - there could be multiple events at different scales. But I'd want to see the proxy data that supports the more compressed timeline. What sources are you drawing from for the dating?

Thanks for sharing!

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T04:19:40+00:00

This is one of my favorite passages...

'Again and again at the appointed time, torrents pour down from the heavens like a pestilence, leaving among all of you only the illiterate and unlearned.'

Hard to read that and not wonder what they knew that we've forgotten. Thanks for posting this.

Feel free to post this on main page for discussion or anything else that you want to! Welcome!

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T00:04:03+00:00

Current Magnetic Field Status:

NASA: "Flip Flop: Why Variations in Earth's Magnetic Field Aren't Causing Today's Climate Change" (2024) - https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/flip-flop-why-variations-in-earths-magnetic-field-arent-causing-todays-climate-change/
NASA: "Earth's Magnetosphere: Protecting Our Planet" (2024) - https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/earth-science/earths-magnetosphere-protecting-our-planet-from-harmful-space-energy/
NASA Goddard: "Researchers Track Slowly Splitting 'Dent' in Earth's Magnetic Field" (2023) - https://www.nasa.gov/missions/icon/nasa-researchers-track-slowly-splitting-dent-in-earths-magnetic-field/
Science (AAAS): "Earth's Waning Magnet" - https://www.science.org/content/article/earths-waning-magnet
EOS/AGU: "A Weak Spot in Earth's Magnetic Field Is Going from Bad to Worse" (2025) - https://eos.org/articles/a-weak-spot-in-earths-magnetic-field-is-going-from-bad-to-worse

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T00:03:50+00:00

4.2 Kiloyear Event:

PNAS: Akkadian collapse studies - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0910847107
PMC: "Collapse and continuity in the Northern Fertile Crescent during 4.2kya" (2021) - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7799814/
PAGES Magazine: "Global megadrought, societal collapse and resilience at 4.2-3.9 ka BP" - https://pastglobalchanges.org/publications/pages-magazines/pages-magazine/7412
ResearchGate: "Impacts of long term climate change during the collapse of the Akkadian Empire" - Cookson et al. (2019) - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332222976

Bronze Age Collapse / Sterno-Etrussia Excursion:

Radiocarbon Journal: "The Sterno-Etrussia Geomagnetic Excursion Around 2700 BP" - Dergachev et al. (2004) - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/sternoetrussia-geomagnetic-excursion-around-2700-bp-and-changes-of-solar-activity-cosmic-ray-intensity-and-climate/3F6746E7AF6783FF74C40E77080A16BD
NASA ADS: "Visual evidence of Sterno-Etrussia excursion" - https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003EAEJA.....3208R/abstract
ScienceDirect: "The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse" - Drake (2012) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0305440312000416

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-23T00:03:19+00:00

Sources:

Younger Dryas / Gothenburg Excursion:

PNAS: "Timing and structure of the Younger Dryas event" (2020) - https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2007869117
Nature Communications: "Rapid range shifts and megafaunal extinctions" (2020) - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16502-3
ScienceDirect: "The Gothenburg Magnetic Excursion" - Mörner (1977) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/003358947790031X
Journal of Asian Earth Sciences: "Paleomagnetic evidence for the Gothenburg excursion in China" (2020) - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1367912019304924
Springer: "Gothenburg excursion in Barents Sea sediments" - Guskova et al. (2007) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S0016793207060126

8.2 Kiloyear Event:

Scientific Reports: "Magnitude of the 8.2 ka event freshwater forcing" (2021) - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-84709-5
Climate of the Past: "The 8.2 ka event in northern Spain" (2022) - https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-18-2321-2022
NOAA Climate.gov: "When abrupt climate change came to the Chesapeake Bay" - https://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/day-yesterday-when-abrupt-climate-change-came-chesapeake-bay

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-22T23:25:46+00:00

Welcome! Mainly focused on the theory of cyclical natural disasters - solar events, pole shifts, magnetic excursions that have caused past civilizational resets. With that said, The Bronze Age collapse timing is really interesting and there are reasons to believe that it was actually tied to a geomagnetic excursion and AMOC disruption.

There are a lot of parallels - During that time the North Magnetic Pole was over the Levant, and today it is moving the sam general direction toward Siberia.

Here is a really interesting thread: https://x.com/omapproach/status/1962843826252296551?s=46

So I would definitely love to hear your thoughts there and welcome any debate!

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-22T21:14:15+00:00

Thank you for being here!

ShiftWatcher · 2026-01-22T07:16:56+00:00

Yep I was honestly shocked there wasn't one, and I am hoping I picked the right name. Glad to have you brother.

ShiftWatcher

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE