If you are not yet familiar with the research of Randall Carlson and Graham Hancock, I would highly recommend taking a crash course through their ideas by means of the Joe Rogan podcast.
My aim here is to summarize some of the main ideas that Randall Carlson has explored, with main focus on the idea that a catastrophic flood happened on earth that rebooted both the geology, climate, and civilizations of the earth as we know it. Graham Hancock complements Carlson very well, but his deeper ideas make more sense after exploring what Randall Carlson has "proven" with geological data.
FLOOD ACCOUNTS
As we all know, there is a certain story in the bible that describes a great flood which practically destroys a lot of life on earth with the exception of a man and his family along with a pair of each "kind" of creature in his vicinity.
Regardless of your personal beliefs, there are a shocking amount of other flood stories in practically every major culture on earth that seems to align with the exact same story of the bible, with expected variation. The fact alone that there is a story of a flood that destroyed all major life on earth and reset the entire course of civilization is enough motivation to dig deeper into this forgotten history.
This simple graphic shows just some of the parallels in flood stories of different cultures.
It had been embedded in the minds of students in many campuses across the earth that the bible is absolute fiction, yet all other stories of a flood are blatantly ignored, even though they sound almost as crazy as the Noah account. What does this say about our current mentality about science and what is actually possible on earth?
PARADIGM SHIFT
Without absolutely digesting the idea of a great flood, lets take a step back and figure out just why it is hard to believe in something that seems so obvious by studying the scars of the earth.
Throughout history we have endless examples of disagreements between scientists in every field about how the past affected the current state of their present earth. In almost every case, the difficulty of attaining evidence in previous times has resulted in very fragmented or wrong results from sometimes shaky hypotheses. And somehow, some of those outdated ideas still permeate our culture. Just as an example, the flat earth theory is still alive in well.
At the same time, the rejection of anything told in the bible the other hundreds of texts in practically every culture has resulted in the abandonment of a very probable event that led to what our earth looks like today.
You have to change the way you think about our history to accept the evidence Randall Carlson presents.
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
We have been taught that the Grand Canyon was formed over a very long time, but the evidence presented by Randall suggests that canyons such as this were created in a very short period of time. How short? Probably a couple of weeks.
Without getting into painstaking detail, the main argument is that the evidence in the rocks suggest that the sedimentation needed to happen very quickly in order for the receding of the water to create the types of layers we see today. Again, my aim here is to summarize and hopefully encourage you to investigate for yourself.
Moving on, there are endless formations across the earth which suggest that a rapid water event carved the earth. To clarify the argument, there is no agreement about whether or not these formations happened through one flood or several big floods.
What these images suggest according to Randall Carlson is that a very large amount of water not only carved the rock in a short period of time, but large boulders were moved rapidly as well. It would be very hard to prove that large boulders could be moved over a long period of time without a large amount of water moving them.
CLIMATE PROOF
One of the most fascinating pieces of evidence about the history of the earths climate lies inside a 2 mile layer of ice in Greenland.
Over a very long time, scientists cored out chunks of this ice and studied the oxygen isotopes inside the layers, effectively painting a picture of the temperature changes into the thousands of years before the present.
What was found was mind blowing. What appears to happen before about 12,000 years ago is a very erratic series of changes in temperature across the earth which would have resulted in the rapid release of water or ice.
What stands out the most is that the major temperature change at the 12,000 year mark aligns perfectly with the mainstream agreement about the end of the ice age. The argument is that a rapid melting of ice, mostly studied in North America, resulted in extremely severe flooding that ended up killing many species of large mammals, the Mammoth being the most well known.
THE MEGA FAUNA EXTINCTION
We have been taught in school that the extinction of these majestic creatures was caused by overkill in the hands of human beings. This hypothesis is absurd for the following reasons.
Armed with basic weapons, it would be impossible to cause the extinction of some of the most dangerous animals such as the Saber-toothed tiger.
There is enough evidence of rapid death among these large animals based on the surprisingly preserved and mangled state of the bones. In some cases Mammoth bones have been found broken, as though something really fast killed them.
We know that there was an Ice Age, and we are currently not in one. The amount of ice above North America was so substantial that its absence clearly speaks about melting that would have caused a massive flood.
WHAT ABOUT PEOPLE?
This is where the story gets proves that we know very little about what happened before this extreme change in climate.
Scientists can agree that human beings have been present for much longer that 12,000 years. So we know that civilizations were not only possible but absolutely probable. There is enough evidence emerging in modern geological studies to suggest that very advanced building techniques existed.
But it gets blurry. We know so little about the ancient civilizations that a definite consensus about what happened is hard to come to. But the idea of a great flood causing the instant death and burial of civilizations such as the mysterious Atlantis seems very plausible.
WHAT IS THE POINT?
What Randall Carlsons and Graham Hancocks research suggests is that there is a historical amnesia caused by a catastrophic event. The lack of hard evidence was caused by very rapid burial and destruction of so much material that we have no idea what was happening before the end of the Ice Age. But we can agree that people and animals existed before this event.
The significance of this idea is massive. If this happened before, it happened many times before that and will probably happen again. Not only that, but the mystery of our past is loaded with ideas that go against everything we ever thought to be possible. The earth looked significantly different before than it does now.
It is safe to say that the ancients knew a lot more than we thought, which goes against the notion that human beings have been progressing and that we were dumb neanderthals not so long ago.
WHAT CAUSED THIS CHANGE?
According to scientists, dinosaurs went extinct due to a massive impact on earth. But the idea that this happened again on a different scale has not yet been explored.
It is quite possible that another impact caused enough heat to melt ice and cause massive enough floods that could wipe out huge mammals in very little time. But regardless of the cause, it is important to keep an open mind about what history can teach us. Some of the ideas that a catastrophic flood would change are as follows:
The account of a flood in every culture can no longer be ignored.
Human beings have been smart much longer than we thought.
Geological formations happened in weeks not millions of years.
If the flood happened, how many of the other stories we dismiss can be true?
The ultimate significance of Randall Carlsons research is that we know much less about what is true than we thought. Catastrophe can hit again and it is not in our hands but in the hands of mother nature. We see several examples of what natural disasters can cause, but we somehow believe that great flood never happened.
I hope you will dive into this research and hopefully change your mind about what you always thought to be true.
Best,
Benji