[2342dfasdf]

Well, I'm just going to add the edge case of close-to-scifi speculation, could it just be that all the evidence of the YD is just from some orbital bombardment? What could have taken to a proto-civilization, let's say, 20.000 years ago, to go from building piramids to build rockets and nuclear weapons, then just nuke everything from low orbit.

Then the survivors restarted from almost nothing (building most of the crappy - but suspiciosly similar to very modern architecture - stone based stuff we keep finding), remember, not every person in an advacent civilization knows how to produce advanced technology. i.e. we have TSMC at hand, but I suspect there are other similar examples.

[tastyfreeze]

> not every person in an advacent civilization knows how to produce advanced technology

That's an understatement. If civilization collapsed today, how many of the things that you have could you make yourself?

[hn_version_0023]

Your comment reminds me of the excellent series "Connections" by James Burke. The opening episode in the series asks that exact question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetplHcM7aQ&list=PLf02uWXhaG...

[legulere]

How would they have destroyed civilizations without a trace (not even iron/steel being left) without eradicating most animal and plant species at the same time?

[ncmncm]

Have you looked on the sea floor?

All the choicest real estate of the time is under water now.

30+ genera of North American large animals were wiped out. Horses, camels, hippos, dire wolves, mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, sabertooths, giant beavers. The whole continent burned. There were extinctions in South America and Africa, too.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Also Doggerland in Europe, the land which connected Northern Europe with the British Isle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Seems to me this could be the root of the Viking legends of Valhalla, the eternal hunting grounds, because at the time it existed it had to be one fucking fertile marshland.

[ncmncm]

If it were nukes, we would know. This thing released way way way more energy than all of our nukes, on all sides, going off at once. But without radioactives, and with lots and lots of platinum.

If you want to blame somebody, you have to figure steering a comet in.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Hrm. This made me think of something. First hit gave

Nuclear Event in Ancient India

https://ancient-hebrew.org/ancientman/1054.html ?

edit: But also https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/the-radioactive-skeleton-...

Still, the few parts of the Mahabharata (which I've read(english translations of)) seem like Sci-Fi to me.

And then there is https://ge315.org/eze/1/the-celestial-chariot/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkabah_mysticism , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spaceships_of_Ezekiel and so on.