[kiproping]

I know this is going into conspiracy realm but do you think this could have caused mass wipe out of both humans and wildlife and that it could have possibly killed earlier advanced (agricultural and can build rather than hunter gatherer) civilisations.

[ahje]

There's some anectotal evidence for pre-Younger Dryas civilizations, such as various peoples' myths regarding previous golden ages ended by terrible floods and so on, as well as some early civilizations using techniques and doing stuff that seems impossible to us.

If there was a relatively advanced civilization somewhere in the area, a meteor strike and subsequent climate instability could definitely have brought it down. Ice sheets could easily have crushed any cities in the northern hemisphere without leaving much trace except from the oral traditions of more primitive peoples who managed to survive.

Problem is, that without solid evidence it's just guesswork.

[ghthor]

Yes. Part of the hypothesis about the lost civilization of Atlantis is related to this younger dryas extinction event. The massive shift in weight from the 2 mile deep ice sheet back into the oceans, along with the water rise itself could have pushed the plate deeper into the mantle where the civilization is said to have existed, the mid Atlantic.

[kijin]

Massive flooding would make sense (many cultures have flood myths), but I don't believe a whole civilization could have sunk into the ocean in the given time frame. There is no plate in the mid-Atlantic that could have been pushed deep into the mantle. The mid-Atlantic is an area where new oceanic plate is created, not where existing plates go down.

[dogma1138]

Isn’t the prevailing theory is that Atlantis was in east Africa specifically in modern day Mauritania?

King Atlas who was the king of the Mauri people shares a name with the King of Atlantis the Atlas Mountains are also in Africa and the Eye of the Sahara seems to match the ring structure of Atlantis as described by Plato.

[craftyguy]

Really? 12000 years ago would have pre-dated any known invention of written language by something like 8000 years. Even if Atlantis existed 12000 years ago when this event happened, how can we trust any description of it that was passed along orally for 8000 years before anyone had any chance of writing it down (and then maintain accuracy for another 4000 years of religions, states, entertainers and others who would readily change such a story for their own benefit)?

Atlantis is likely a made-up story, for entertainment purposes, just as Hollywood has made a billion dollar business out of making up stories for entertainment. I wonder if historians in 1000 years will wonder where Frodo Baggins is buried, or how to get to the planet featured in Avatar.

[ahje]

Atlantis may very well be a true story. Problem is we have no idea what the original myth was; such stories have a tendency to develop over time, getting more and more fantastical for every iteration.

How would a Paleolithic hunter/gatherer describe a neighboring tribe who developed certain tools and techniques far ahead of anyone else? A small town of wooden buildings and 400-500 people would seem a great marvel from that perspective.

Imagine there was such a tribe 12000 years ago. Now imagine a tsunami hitting that village and that hunter/gatherer describing the event to future generations. Imagine how that oral tradition would develop over the years until someone writes it down 4000 years later.

[AnimalMuppet]

"And wildlife": Seems to me this matches the timeframe of the extinction of several North American megafauna species. Those extinctions have been blamed on the arrival of humans; maybe there's another explanation here.