Replies

(This guy's voice absolutely sucks.)

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
0:05 · Hello everybody and welcome to Ancient Architects.
0:12 · Please subscribe now to get the latest ancient history news and independent research from
0:16 · around the world.
0:19 · In the human story, the Pleistocene-Holocene transition is a very significant period, because
0:25 · it marks what I believe is the origins of civilisation, when we see the first permanent
0:32 · settlements in the Fertile Crescent followed by the onset of agriculture, and from then
0:38 · on humanity has developed exponentially.
0:42 · From an archaeological point of view, it s truly a fascinating time period, with so many
0:48 · incredible sites discovered in the past century, from Ancient Jericho in the West Bank, to
0:54 · Mureybet and Tell Qaramel in Syria, and Kortik Tepe, Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe in Turkey.
1:02 · The foundations of these sites were laid either just before, during or just after the Younger
1:08 · Dryas cold snap, which, according to platinum spike in the Greenland Ice Core data, began
1:16 · around 12,822 years ago and many parts of the world returned to glacial or near-glacial
1:23 · conditions, a change in climate that lasted around 1,000 years.
1:30 · Before the Younger Dryas, between 14,670 and 12,890 years ago, Greenland Ice Core data
1:38 · shows that the Northern Hemisphere was experiencing the Bolling-Allerod Late Glacial Interstadial.
1:45 · This period began with a sharp rise in temperature, but over the two thousand years that followed,
1:51 · although temperatures remained comparatively warm, the general climatic trend was decline.
1:57 · And this all came to a head with the onset of the Younger Dryas, where various data sets
2:03 · show there was a somewhat drastic drop in temperature, by 4 to 10 degrees Celsius depending
2:09 · on where you lived.
2:11 · And that is an important point, because not every part of the planet was affected in the
2:16 · same way. In Western Europe and Greenland, the Younger Dryas is a well-defined and synchronous
2:23 · cold period. South America had a less well-defined initiation but a sharp termination. Australia
2:32 · and New Zealand were seemingly unaffected but interestingly, around 100 years or so
2:38 · before the onset of the Younger Dryas as recorded in the Greenland data, Antarctica showed the
2:46 · opposite trend and started to rapidly warm up.
2:52 · With this in mind, with my personal interest in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, I really wanted
2:57 · to know what was happening in the Fertile Crescent. How did the Younger Dryas affect
3:02 · the climate from Anatolia down to the Levant, the area which really is the true cradle of
3:09 · civilisation?
3:10 · Well, for obvious reasons we can't obtain Ice Core Data from Turkey, Israel or Syria,
3:17 · and so we learn about the Younger Dryas in a number of different ways. Firstly, we can
3:24 · analyse the types of pollen, which gives us a good idea of what was growing in the region.
3:30 · The types of plants and trees give us a good indication of the climate.
3:36 · We also have animal bones in the sedimentary record, so we know which animals were present,
3:41 · dominant, dwindling or absent across the Palaeolithic-Holocene transition. Again, this is a good indication
3:50 · for the climate, environmental conditions and habitats.
3:56 · We can also analyse marine records as well as paleolake levels, to see how charged the
4:03 · natural lakes and reservoirs were, to give us an idea of how wet or dry the region was
4:10 · and if and when things changed.
4:13 · We can also study the sedimentary deposits themselves, as well as speleothems. These
4:20 · are mineral deposits formed from groundwater within underground caverns, such as stalagmites
4:26 · and stalactites.
4:29 · So, with all that in mind, what was it like in the Fertile Crescent during the Younger
4:34 · Dryas? What have we learned? Well actually a huge amount and the analysis has turned
4:42 · what I thought I knew about the Younger Dryas on its head.
4:47 · Of course, this is the time when many researchers propose there was a global cataclysm. A number
4:53 · of high-profile scientists, authors, podcasters and YouTubers believe there is enough evidence
4:59 · to suggest that a series of cosmic impacts or airbursts struck the Earth, others believe
5:05 · there was a major plasma discharge from the sun and many speculate there was a corresponding
5:11 · global Great Flood.
5:13 · But does the evidence and the data fit with a catastrophic model? What can we learn about
5:18 · the onset of the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent?
5:24 · In 2013, Donald O. Henry wrote a fantastic summary called The Natufian and the Younger
5:30 · Dryas, where he collates all of the data from decades of work and it helps us to see the
5:35 · bigger picture.
5:38 · There have been many excavations of Epi-Palaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites in the Levant,
5:45 · as well as numerous paleoclimatic studies, and we do have a large amount of data to work
5:52 · with.
5:53 · For a start, and to clear up the age-old misconceptions and outlandish claims, there is absolutely
5:59 · no evidence of any kind for a great flood or megatsunami that covered the Fertile Crescent,
6:05 · at the beginning or end of the Younger Dryas. We do have a very good understanding of what
6:12 · the environment was like.
6:15 · The best place to start is speleothems - cave deposits. There are a number of cave sites
6:21 · that have been analysed in Lebanon and Israel, and we can measure oxygen and carbon ratios
6:28 · in deposits; they are dateable and that give us a good indication of what the climate was
6:34 · like.
6:39 · From analysing speleothems from sites such as the Soreq Cave in Israel, several caves
6:44 · in Galilee and the Jeita Cave in Lebanon, the regional timing of the Younger Dryas has
6:50 · been carefully documented and averaged. Interestingly, we see the climate becoming colder and dryer
6:58 · from 14,000 years ago, but, using isotopes in speleothems, the true onset of the Younger
7:04 · Dryas in this part of the world has been dated to between 13,000 and 13,200 years ago, which
7:12 · is earlier than expected, and ending between 11,200 and 11,400 years ago, which is later
7:21 · than expected. The Younger Dryas climate in the Fertile Crescent therefore differs considerably
7:28 · from what we see in the Greenland Ice Core data, both in terms of dating and duration.
7:35 · Speleothem dating therefore calls into question a cataclysmic origin for the Younger Dryas,
7:40 · which, if it did happen, would have let to a coherent cooling signature in deposits around
7:46 · the world. They should be staggered. We also see a similar thing with Antarctic Ice Core
7:53 · data, which also shows a drastic change in temperature a few hundred years before Greenland.
7:59 · I ll discuss this more in a future video.
8:03 · In the Levant, the Younger Dryas lasted for 1,800 to 2,000 years, in contrast to the 1,200
8:11 · to 1,300 years in Greenland. The beginning was probably more gradual compared to Greenland
8:19 · and speleothem evidence suggests termination of the Younger Dryas in the Levant was also
8:25 · a much slower process, taking some 500 years to move out of the cold and dry conditions.
8:34 · The same is seen in the Dongge cave records in China. It s not abrupt like we see in the
8:42 · Greenland Ice Cores.
8:45 · The pollen studies in Lake Ghab in Syria and Lake Huleh in Israel don't give us specific
8:51 · dates like speleothems do, but it does give us an indication of the changing landscape.
8:57 · For example, during the Younger Dryas, the forests of Syria sharply declined and were
9:04 · replaced by arid, tolerant shrubs. In the Southern Levant, the forests were replaced,
9:11 · but by open grassland interspersed with patches of oak-pistachia woodland.
9:17 · The dry conditions are confirmed by studying the levels of the ancient Lisan Lake in the
9:22 · Jordan Rift Valley. Scientists have noted it doesn't dramatically drop at the start
9:27 · of the Younger Dryas like many of us would expect, but we see a gradual fall.
9:32 · For example, 25,000 years ago, the lake level was at its highest at 164 metres below sea
9:40 · level. 15,000 years ago it s level had fallen to 300 metres below sea level and at the beginning
9:48 · of the younger Dryas, around 13,200 years ago, the lake level was 426 metres below sea
9:55 · level. The Bolling Allerod may have been a wetter and warmer period, but it was certainly
10:02 · a period of decline, and we do see this in the Greenland data as well.
10:09 · So it looks like the Younger Dryas had a somewhat gradual beginning, as opposed to being cataclysmic,
10:16 · and this is confirmed with geomorphic evidence as well. Between 17,500 and 15,000 years ago
10:24 · we find that the wet conditions and high-water table led to the cutting of new channels across
10:29 · the landscape, leaving substantial alluvial deposits in the sedimentary record.
10:35 · But by 14,000 years, 1,000 years before the Younger Dryas was in full swing, this had
10:42 · already stopped. There was no overbank flooding and channels were instead narrower. The environment
10:51 · was already becoming dryer and again we see that the lowering of the water table was gradual
10:58 · and not sudden.
11:00 · So, although this is a brief overview, the evidence suggests that the Younger Dryas began
11:05 · between 13,200 and 13,000 years ago and ended between 11,200 and 11,400 years ago, and that
11:15 · s from multiple studies across numerous sites in the Levant. It was a cold and dry period,
11:23 · with low lake levels and a change in vegetation cover.
11:27 · The regional Levantine expression of the Younger Dryas differs in terms of duration, strength
11:33 · and tempo of termination compared to the North Atlantic. It started earlier and ended later
11:40 · than what we see in Greenland Ice Cores, and the changing climate was slower and more gradual,
11:48 · with the termination stretching over hundreds of years.
11:53 · The changes to the landscape were not as drastic as we are led to believe and humans certainly
11:58 · would not have viewed it as cataclysmic. Further paleoclimatic work has showed that the change
12:05 · in climate was even less drastic in the Southern Levant compared to the north.
12:11 · As far as we know, the beginning of the Younger Dryas also didn't lead to any drastic cultural
12:17 · shifts either. The Late Natufian cultural phase is dated from 13,700 to 11,000 years
12:26 · ago, so beginning hundreds of years before the Younger Dryas and running right up to
12:31 · the start of the Holocene.
12:34 · The culture s demise was not driven by the Younger Dryas. They would have experienced
12:40 · the climate changes gradually, and they would have adapted accordingly over many generations.
12:49 · There is evidence to say that some population groups did go mobile when the climate got
12:53 · worse, but a number of permanent settlements remained throughout the cold and dry period,
12:58 · and some new ones even emerged like Abu Hureyra and Mureybet.
13:03 · The climate was likely a driving force for many to move to sedentism and then onto the
13:09 · development of agricultural practices. Vegetation was changing, rainfall was becoming less frequent,
13:17 · and so people banded together. As key wild plant staples were diminishing, the cultivation
13:25 · of wild crops was probably a way to plan ahead, to create a surplus for local food stores
13:31 · to guarantee enough sustenance for the cold winters.
13:33 · There are indications that the levels of precipitation never fell below critical in the Younger Dryas,
13:44 · so cultivation was possible. The main problem was the cold temperatures and so storing food
13:51 · was probably a necessity.
13:55 · A huge amount of work has been done at the now-submerged site of Abu Hureyra, which pretty
14:00 · much shows continuous occupation from around 13,200 to 11,400 years ago, spanning the long-drawn-out
14:10 · Levantine Younger Dryas period as dated via speleothem deposits. This site shows some
14:16 · of the earliest evidence of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.
14:22 · Away from the Levant and into SE Anatolia, a great deal of paleoclimate work has been
14:28 · done at the Younger Dryas Early Holocene Boundary site of Kortik Tepe, which had continuous
14:35 · occupation from around 12,400 to 11,250 BC, another site with origins in the Younger Dryas.
14:46 · By all accounts, the people of Kortik Tepe didn't struggle as much as we d think. We
14:52 · know from the animal and plant remains that they exploited many types of local ecozones
14:58 · - wetlands, grasslands, mountainous habitats and so on. Red Deer and wild sheep were in
15:05 · abundance and were a common source of food during the Younger Dryas and throughout the
15:11 · transition into the Holocene.
15:14 · The animal remains at Kortik Tepe also tell us about the climate. In the early and Mid-life
15:21 · of the settlement, there are a lack of aurochs, wild boar and waterbirds. Being animals attracted
15:29 · to wetlands, their absence indicates dry conditions. But, in time, when the climate became wetter
15:37 · in the transition to the early Holocene, such animals would arrive and be hunted, and this
15:43 · marries up with what we know was an increase in marshland around lakes, streams and rivers.
15:53 · So that s a brief overview of life in the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent but
15:59 · there is one specific topic I need to mention, because it made the news back in 2020, and
16:05 · it concerns the Natufian site of Abu Hureyra in Syria.
16:10 · In 2020, Scientific Reports ran the article Evidence of Cosmic Impact at Abu Hureyra,
16:17 · Syria at the Younger Dryas Onset (~12.8 ka): High-temperature melting at >2200? C .
16:29 · Due to the complexity of the study and the importance of the conclusions, and because
16:34 · I have a number of questions that I m struggling to find answers for, I m going to discuss
16:39 · this in a separate forthcoming video.
16:42 · For example, Speleothem data places the origins of the Younger Dryas 2-400 years earlier than
16:50 · the date given for the proposed Abu Hureyra cosmic impact. Furthermore, in a new 2022
16:58 · paper, co-written by Andrew Moore, who also co-wrote the 2020 paper for evidence of a
17:04 · cosmic impact and high temperature melting, he states that there are three sub-phases
17:09 · in the first settlement of Abu Hureyra. One from 13,300 to 12,800 years ago, one from
17:18 · 12,800 to 12,300 years ago and one from 12,300 to 11,400 years ago.
17:27 · So, if the area was hit by a cosmic impact or airburst, that generated temperatures of
17:34 · up to 2200 degrees, would Phase 1B really have started pretty much straight away, 12,800
17:41 · years ago? Wouldn't there be a substantial settlement gap?
17:45 · Wouldn't the people, animals and vegetation all have been fried? Would it not have become
17:51 · an uninhabitable wasteland for decades? Would people build a new settlement directly over
17:59 · one that had been destroyed by 2200-degrees-celsius temperatures?
18:03 · Calibration of all the radiocarbon dates from the first settlement show pretty much continuous
18:08 · occupation, so I do wonder if the evidence for a cosmic event has another, possible terrestrial
18:19 · interpretation, or whether the study really needs to be independently verified.
18:24 · The first phase of the first settlement of Abu Hureyra dates to the beginning of the
18:32 · Younger Dryas in this region as shown by Speleothem data, which for me makes sense. It explains
18:40 · the sudden move to sedentism between roughly 13,000 and 13,300 years ago, and so a 12,800-year-old
18:50 · settlement-destroying impact event, followed by a somewhat immediate resettlement
19:02 · seems bizarre.
19:07 · There is a large gap in occupation at Abu Hureyra but it was between 11,400 and 10,600
19:15 · years ago, which separates the end of the first major settlement and the beginning of
19:21 · the second. As you can see, I have a lot of questions and I still have a lot of reading
19:28 · to do, but hopefully it ll all become clear very soon.
19:35 · Thank you very much for watching this episode of Ancient Architects. If you enjoyed the
19:40 · video, please subscribe to the channel, please like the video, and please leave a comment
19:45 · below. Thank you very much.

--> YouTube-Generated Transcript <--
0:05	·	Hello everybody and welcome to Ancient Architects.
0:12	·	Please subscribe now to get the latest ancient history news and independent research from
0:16	·	around the world.
0:19	·	In the human story, the Pleistocene-Holocene transition is a very significant period, because
0:25	·	it marks what I believe is the origins of civilisation, when we see the first permanent
0:32	·	settlements in the Fertile Crescent followed by the onset of agriculture, and from then
0:38	·	on humanity has developed exponentially.
0:42	·	From an archaeological point of view, it s truly a fascinating time period, with so many
0:48	·	incredible sites discovered in the past century, from Ancient Jericho in the West Bank, to
0:54	·	Mureybet and Tell Qaramel in Syria, and Kortik Tepe, Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe in Turkey.
1:02	·	The foundations of these sites were laid either just before, during or just after the Younger
1:08	·	Dryas cold snap, which, according to platinum spike in the Greenland Ice Core data, began
1:16	·	around 12,822 years ago and many parts of the world returned to glacial or near-glacial
1:23	·	conditions, a change in climate that lasted around 1,000 years.
1:30	·	Before the Younger Dryas, between 14,670 and 12,890 years ago, Greenland Ice Core data
1:38	·	shows that the Northern Hemisphere was experiencing the Bolling-Allerod Late Glacial Interstadial.
1:45	·	This period began with a sharp rise in temperature, but over the two thousand years that followed,
1:51	·	although temperatures remained comparatively warm, the general climatic trend was decline.
1:57	·	And this all came to a head with the onset of the Younger Dryas, where various data sets
2:03	·	show there was a somewhat drastic drop in temperature, by 4 to 10 degrees Celsius depending
2:09	·	on where you lived.
2:11	·	And that is an important point, because not every part of the planet was affected in the
2:16	·	same way. In Western Europe and Greenland, the Younger Dryas is a well-defined and synchronous
2:23	·	cold period. South America had a less well-defined initiation but a sharp termination. Australia
2:32	·	and New Zealand were seemingly unaffected but interestingly, around 100 years or so
2:38	·	before the onset of the Younger Dryas as recorded in the Greenland data, Antarctica showed the
2:46	·	opposite trend and started to rapidly warm up.
2:52	·	With this in mind, with my personal interest in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic, I really wanted
2:57	·	to know what was happening in the Fertile Crescent. How did the Younger Dryas affect
3:02	·	the climate from Anatolia down to the Levant, the area which really is the true cradle of
3:09	·	civilisation?
3:10	·	Well, for obvious reasons we can't obtain Ice Core Data from Turkey, Israel or Syria,
3:17	·	and so we learn about the Younger Dryas in a number of different ways. Firstly, we can
3:24	·	analyse the types of pollen, which gives us a good idea of what was growing in the region.
3:30	·	The types of plants and trees give us a good indication of the climate.
3:36	·	We also have animal bones in the sedimentary record, so we know which animals were present,
3:41	·	dominant, dwindling or absent across the Palaeolithic-Holocene transition. Again, this is a good indication
3:50	·	for the climate, environmental conditions and habitats.
3:56	·	We can also analyse marine records as well as paleolake levels, to see how charged the
4:03	·	natural lakes and reservoirs were, to give us an idea of how wet or dry the region was
4:10	·	and if and when things changed.
4:13	·	We can also study the sedimentary deposits themselves, as well as speleothems. These
4:20	·	are mineral deposits formed from groundwater within underground caverns, such as stalagmites
4:26	·	and stalactites.
4:29	·	So, with all that in mind, what was it like in the Fertile Crescent during the Younger
4:34	·	Dryas? What have we learned? Well actually a huge amount and the analysis has turned
4:42	·	what I thought I knew about the Younger Dryas on its head.
4:47	·	Of course, this is the time when many researchers propose there was a global cataclysm. A number
4:53	·	of high-profile scientists, authors, podcasters and YouTubers believe there is enough evidence
4:59	·	to suggest that a series of cosmic impacts or airbursts struck the Earth, others believe
5:05	·	there was a major plasma discharge from the sun and many speculate there was a corresponding
5:11	·	global Great Flood.
5:13	·	But does the evidence and the data fit with a catastrophic model? What can we learn about
5:18	·	the onset of the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent?
5:24	·	In 2013, Donald O. Henry wrote a fantastic summary called The Natufian and the Younger
5:30	·	Dryas, where he collates all of the data from decades of work and it helps us to see the
5:35	·	bigger picture.
5:38	·	There have been many excavations of Epi-Palaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic sites in the Levant,
5:45	·	as well as numerous paleoclimatic studies, and we do have a large amount of data to work
5:52	·	with.
5:53	·	For a start, and to clear up the age-old misconceptions and outlandish claims, there is absolutely
5:59	·	no evidence of any kind for a great flood or megatsunami that covered the Fertile Crescent,
6:05	·	at the beginning or end of the Younger Dryas. We do have a very good understanding of what
6:12	·	the environment was like.
6:15	·	The best place to start is speleothems - cave deposits. There are a number of cave sites
6:21	·	that have been analysed in Lebanon and Israel, and we can measure oxygen and carbon ratios
6:28	·	in deposits; they are dateable and that give us a good indication of what the climate was
6:34	·	like.
6:39	·	From analysing speleothems from sites such as the Soreq Cave in Israel, several caves
6:44	·	in Galilee and the Jeita Cave in Lebanon, the regional timing of the Younger Dryas has
6:50	·	been carefully documented and averaged. Interestingly, we see the climate becoming colder and dryer
6:58	·	from 14,000 years ago, but, using isotopes in speleothems, the true onset of the Younger
7:04	·	Dryas in this part of the world has been dated to between 13,000 and 13,200 years ago, which
7:12	·	is earlier than expected, and ending between 11,200 and 11,400 years ago, which is later
7:21	·	than expected. The Younger Dryas climate in the Fertile Crescent therefore differs considerably
7:28	·	from what we see in the Greenland Ice Core data, both in terms of dating and duration.
7:35	·	Speleothem dating therefore calls into question a cataclysmic origin for the Younger Dryas,
7:40	·	which, if it did happen, would have let to a coherent cooling signature in deposits around
7:46	·	the world. They should be staggered. We also see a similar thing with Antarctic Ice Core
7:53	·	data, which also shows a drastic change in temperature a few hundred years before Greenland.
7:59	·	I ll discuss this more in a future video.
8:03	·	In the Levant, the Younger Dryas lasted for 1,800 to 2,000 years, in contrast to the 1,200
8:11	·	to 1,300 years in Greenland. The beginning was probably more gradual compared to Greenland
8:19	·	and speleothem evidence suggests termination of the Younger Dryas in the Levant was also
8:25	·	a much slower process, taking some 500 years to move out of the cold and dry conditions.
8:34	·	The same is seen in the Dongge cave records in China. It s not abrupt like we see in the
8:42	·	Greenland Ice Cores.
8:45	·	The pollen studies in Lake Ghab in Syria and Lake Huleh in Israel don't give us specific
8:51	·	dates like speleothems do, but it does give us an indication of the changing landscape.
8:57	·	For example, during the Younger Dryas, the forests of Syria sharply declined and were
9:04	·	replaced by arid, tolerant shrubs. In the Southern Levant, the forests were replaced,
9:11	·	but by open grassland interspersed with patches of oak-pistachia woodland.
9:17	·	The dry conditions are confirmed by studying the levels of the ancient Lisan Lake in the
9:22	·	Jordan Rift Valley. Scientists have noted it doesn't dramatically drop at the start
9:27	·	of the Younger Dryas like many of us would expect, but we see a gradual fall.
9:32	·	For example, 25,000 years ago, the lake level was at its highest at 164 metres below sea
9:40	·	level. 15,000 years ago it s level had fallen to 300 metres below sea level and at the beginning
9:48	·	of the younger Dryas, around 13,200 years ago, the lake level was 426 metres below sea
9:55	·	level. The Bolling Allerod may have been a wetter and warmer period, but it was certainly
10:02	·	a period of decline, and we do see this in the Greenland data as well.
10:09	·	So it looks like the Younger Dryas had a somewhat gradual beginning, as opposed to being cataclysmic,
10:16	·	and this is confirmed with geomorphic evidence as well. Between 17,500 and 15,000 years ago
10:24	·	we find that the wet conditions and high-water table led to the cutting of new channels across
10:29	·	the landscape, leaving substantial alluvial deposits in the sedimentary record.
10:35	·	But by 14,000 years, 1,000 years before the Younger Dryas was in full swing, this had
10:42	·	already stopped. There was no overbank flooding and channels were instead narrower. The environment
10:51	·	was already becoming dryer and again we see that the lowering of the water table was gradual
10:58	·	and not sudden.
11:00	·	So, although this is a brief overview, the evidence suggests that the Younger Dryas began
11:05	·	between 13,200 and 13,000 years ago and ended between 11,200 and 11,400 years ago, and that
11:15	·	s from multiple studies across numerous sites in the Levant. It was a cold and dry period,
11:23	·	with low lake levels and a change in vegetation cover.
11:27	·	The regional Levantine expression of the Younger Dryas differs in terms of duration, strength
11:33	·	and tempo of termination compared to the North Atlantic. It started earlier and ended later
11:40	·	than what we see in Greenland Ice Cores, and the changing climate was slower and more gradual,
11:48	·	with the termination stretching over hundreds of years.
11:53	·	The changes to the landscape were not as drastic as we are led to believe and humans certainly
11:58	·	would not have viewed it as cataclysmic. Further paleoclimatic work has showed that the change
12:05	·	in climate was even less drastic in the Southern Levant compared to the north.
12:11	·	As far as we know, the beginning of the Younger Dryas also didn't lead to any drastic cultural
12:17	·	shifts either. The Late Natufian cultural phase is dated from 13,700 to 11,000 years
12:26	·	ago, so beginning hundreds of years before the Younger Dryas and running right up to
12:31	·	the start of the Holocene.
12:34	·	The culture s demise was not driven by the Younger Dryas. They would have experienced
12:40	·	the climate changes gradually, and they would have adapted accordingly over many generations.
12:49	·	There is evidence to say that some population groups did go mobile when the climate got
12:53	·	worse, but a number of permanent settlements remained throughout the cold and dry period,
12:58	·	and some new ones even emerged like Abu Hureyra and Mureybet.
13:03	·	The climate was likely a driving force for many to move to sedentism and then onto the
13:09	·	development of agricultural practices. Vegetation was changing, rainfall was becoming less frequent,
13:17	·	and so people banded together. As key wild plant staples were diminishing, the cultivation
13:25	·	of wild crops was probably a way to plan ahead, to create a surplus for local food stores
13:31	·	to guarantee enough sustenance for the cold winters.
13:33	·	There are indications that the levels of precipitation never fell below critical in the Younger Dryas,
13:44	·	so cultivation was possible. The main problem was the cold temperatures and so storing food
13:51	·	was probably a necessity.
13:55	·	A huge amount of work has been done at the now-submerged site of Abu Hureyra, which pretty
14:00	·	much shows continuous occupation from around 13,200 to 11,400 years ago, spanning the long-drawn-out
14:10	·	Levantine Younger Dryas period as dated via speleothem deposits. This site shows some
14:16	·	of the earliest evidence of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent.
14:22	·	Away from the Levant and into SE Anatolia, a great deal of paleoclimate work has been
14:28	·	done at the Younger Dryas Early Holocene Boundary site of Kortik Tepe, which had continuous
14:35	·	occupation from around 12,400 to 11,250 BC, another site with origins in the Younger Dryas.
14:46	·	By all accounts, the people of Kortik Tepe didn't struggle as much as we d think. We
14:52	·	know from the animal and plant remains that they exploited many types of local ecozones
14:58	·	- wetlands, grasslands, mountainous habitats and so on. Red Deer and wild sheep were in
15:05	·	abundance and were a common source of food during the Younger Dryas and throughout the
15:11	·	transition into the Holocene.
15:14	·	The animal remains at Kortik Tepe also tell us about the climate. In the early and Mid-life
15:21	·	of the settlement, there are a lack of aurochs, wild boar and waterbirds. Being animals attracted
15:29	·	to wetlands, their absence indicates dry conditions. But, in time, when the climate became wetter
15:37	·	in the transition to the early Holocene, such animals would arrive and be hunted, and this
15:43	·	marries up with what we know was an increase in marshland around lakes, streams and rivers.
15:53	·	So that s a brief overview of life in the Younger Dryas in the Fertile Crescent but
15:59	·	there is one specific topic I need to mention, because it made the news back in 2020, and
16:05	·	it concerns the Natufian site of Abu Hureyra in Syria.
16:10	·	In 2020, Scientific Reports ran the article Evidence of Cosmic Impact at Abu Hureyra,
16:17	·	Syria at the Younger Dryas Onset (~12.8 ka): High-temperature melting at >2200? C .
16:29	·	Due to the complexity of the study and the importance of the conclusions, and because
16:34	·	I have a number of questions that I m struggling to find answers for, I m going to discuss
16:39	·	this in a separate forthcoming video.
16:42	·	For example, Speleothem data places the origins of the Younger Dryas 2-400 years earlier than
16:50	·	the date given for the proposed Abu Hureyra cosmic impact. Furthermore, in a new 2022
16:58	·	paper, co-written by Andrew Moore, who also co-wrote the 2020 paper for evidence of a
17:04	·	cosmic impact and high temperature melting, he states that there are three sub-phases
17:09	·	in the first settlement of Abu Hureyra. One from 13,300 to 12,800 years ago, one from
17:18	·	12,800 to 12,300 years ago and one from 12,300 to 11,400 years ago.
17:27	·	So, if the area was hit by a cosmic impact or airburst, that generated temperatures of
17:34	·	up to 2200 degrees, would Phase 1B really have started pretty much straight away, 12,800
17:41	·	years ago? Wouldn't there be a substantial settlement gap?
17:45	·	Wouldn't the people, animals and vegetation all have been fried? Would it not have become
17:51	·	an uninhabitable wasteland for decades? Would people build a new settlement directly over
17:59	·	one that had been destroyed by 2200-degrees-celsius temperatures?
18:03	·	Calibration of all the radiocarbon dates from the first settlement show pretty much continuous
18:08	·	occupation, so I do wonder if the evidence for a cosmic event has another, possible terrestrial
18:19	·	interpretation, or whether the study really needs to be independently verified.
18:24	·	The first phase of the first settlement of Abu Hureyra dates to the beginning of the
18:32	·	Younger Dryas in this region as shown by Speleothem data, which for me makes sense. It explains
18:40	·	the sudden move to sedentism between roughly 13,000 and 13,300 years ago, and so a 12,800-year-old
18:50	·	settlement-destroying impact event, followed by a somewhat immediate resettlement
19:02	·	seems bizarre.
19:07	·	There is a large gap in occupation at Abu Hureyra but it was between 11,400 and 10,600
19:15	·	years ago, which separates the end of the first major settlement and the beginning of
19:21	·	the second. As you can see, I have a lot of questions and I still have a lot of reading
19:28	·	to do, but hopefully it ll all become clear very soon.
19:35	·	Thank you very much for watching this episode of Ancient Architects. If you enjoyed the
19:40	·	video, please subscribe to the channel, please like the video, and please leave a comment
19:45	·	below. Thank you very much.