A Comet Impact 12,900 Years Ago Destroyed an Advanced Civilisation
Randall Carlson, a geologist and frequent collaborator of Graham Hancock, combines the legitimate Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis with the unsubstantiated claim of a destroyed advanced civilisation. The comet hypothesis is the subject of serious scientific debate; the extension of that hypothesis to a lost civilisation has no archaeological support whatsoever.
What we know
Randall Carlson is an American geologist and businessman who has spent decades working on the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) - the hypothesis that a series of comet or asteroid impacts around 12,800 years before the present caused the abrupt climate reversal known as the Younger Dryas cold period. That hypothesis is legitimate and is actively investigated in peer-reviewed literature.
However, Carlson combines this hypothesis with Hancock's lost civilisation thesis, appearing on podcasts with dramatic claims about catastrophic biblical-scale floods that explain every flood myth in human culture and destroy an advanced culture. This is where the problem begins: while the YDIH has scientific merit (a controversial but legitimate hypothesis), the claim that this catastrophe destroyed an advanced civilisation has no direct support in geological or archaeological evidence. No remains of such a civilisation exist; no artefacts exist; nothing corresponds to the description.
An important distinction: Carlson maintains that his geological analysis of the catastrophe is legitimate, while the lost civilisation is Hancock's add-on. Yet on podcasts he consistently presents them together, implying that the one supports the other - an intellectual tactic that lends pseudoarchaeological claims a false aura of geological credibility.
The Decoding the Gurus podcast, which systematically analyses alternative intellectuals, documented the characteristic pattern: Carlson selectively emphasises the cataclysmic aspects of geological evidence (the Channeled Scablands in Washington State, the Missoula Floods) that are real and dramatic, and then makes an unjustified leap to 'therefore, an advanced civilisation must have been destroyed.' That leap is neither logically necessary nor supported by the evidence.
Common claims
- The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis is confirmed and uncontested.Misleading - a legitimate hypothesis but still debated
- A comet impact destroyed an advanced civilisation.Not supported - no direct evidence exists
- Mainstream geology ignores cataclysmic evidence.False - the YDIH is actively researched in peer-reviewed literature