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12,000-year-old realistic human statue was unearthed
- potas 3y agoWhat freaks me out is how the hands are depicted on the statue. It’s eerily similar to the Moai statues of Easter Island [1]. I’m not sure what to make of it. [1] https://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/easterisland/IMG_3485%20left%20hand%2010-28-09%20anakena%20easter%20island.jpg https://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/easterisland/IMG_3485%20le...
- khole 3y agoThe recent excavations unearthed a painted wild boar statue, a human statue, and a vulture statue. All statues are new gateways to understanding pre-historic art and culture.
- chiefalchemist 3y agoNot being snarky but the big deal is we're pushing back the line (read: year / era) dividing pre-history from history. These discoveries became history now, yes?
- biorach 3y agoNope. > Prehistory, also called pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the first known use of stone tools by hominins c. 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistory The big deal is that these art works are far more sophisticated that anything else we have seen so early.
- late2part 3y agoNames don't constitute knowledge. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFIYKmos3-s&t=1s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFIYKmos3-s&t=1s
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThis is one common definition of the term history, but it's not a very good one and largely relegated to outdated encyclopedia entries rather than describing how professionals investigate history. It's very poor as a technical definition. For instance, does "history" in an area start when someone writes something, or does the writing have to survive to the present day? Does only one person need to write, or does it need to be socially widespread? Does it have to be full writing or does protowriting count? Do we have to be able to read the writing? Do partial readings count? These ambiguities weren't issues back when it was being used as a criterion for "civilization" ala childe, but that time has long since passed. Today, it's best to ignore all these difficult and largely unnecessary questions by simply using a descriptive definition where "history is the human past".
- chiefalchemist 3y agoNot nope :) By definition recorded history - as recorded in this art work, which are artifacts of history - is being pushed back. The big deal is we over-estimated what we thought we knew about the past and that over-confidence is being humbled. And because of that the definition of pre-history needs to be updated.
- caprock 3y agoThe last couple of pictures, of the eyes and the bird, are really neat. Göbeklitepe continues to provide interesting results. It's kind of comforting and exciting that we have so much yet to uncover about the past.
- detourdog 3y agoI take great comfort in trying to figure out why these sites were buried. I believe the current understanding is that that were carefully covered with dirt contemporaneously with usage.
- boffinAudio 3y agoThere is a theory that they were not intentionally buried after all, but rather that the deposits were the result of geological processes .. apparently they've found arrowheads in the deposit layers that demonstrate that the filling material was deposited over hundreds, or even thousands, of years ..
- detourdog 3y agoThat makes a lot more sense to me. Do you have a source for more info. I think that would imply a social collapse that could no longer maintain their infrastructure.
- boffinAudio 3y agoBoth the Miniminuteman and "The Prehistory Guys" channels on Youtube have featured more details on an analysis of the covering layers of Goebekli Tepe - you might want to check those channels out for more details.
- sakopov 3y agoIf I remember correctly only a small portion of the site was actually excavated mostly to preserve everything from erosion.
- pelorat 3y agoThat's not what I consider a "realistic human statue" ?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- z500 3y agoMore like anatomically correct.
- Koshkin 3y agoIt has all the parts...
- ftxbro 3y agoOn hacker news everything is 0% or 100%.
- ta8645 3y agoI see you're playing the 100% end of that range, by claiming that "everything" conforms to your insight.
- moomoo11 3y agoThat’s what people looked like back then.
- andrewstuart 3y agoWeird that people don't understand evolution.
- jdthedisciple 3y agoI beg to differ- how does that not look exactly like us https://i0.wp.com/themindcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/oldest-12000-years-old-statue-karahantepe-gobeklitepe-potbelly-hill.jpg https://i0.wp.com/themindcircle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/... From the better link someone posted below: https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-findings/ https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-fi...
- dinkblam 3y agobetter link with less and less offensive ads: https://arkeonews.net/new-discoveries-in-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-a-human-sculpture-with-a-realistic-facial-expression-found-in-karahantepe/ https://arkeonews.net/new-discoveries-in-gobeklitepe-and-kar...
- amphitheatre 3y agoThank you. What a garbage website OP linked to…
- 8bitsrule 3y agoBetter and more images though.
- dang 3y agoOK, we changed to that from https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-findings/ https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-fi.... Thanks!
- solardev 3y agoSeems like graphics have gotten a bit better since then
- kshacker 3y agoCSS (Cosmetic Self-Care and Surgery) has come a long way over the millennia
- dghughes 3y agoWhat a crazy week for old things discovered this statue at Göbekli Tepe and the 400,000 year-old notched lumber beams in Zambia. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66846772 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-66846772
- EmilioMartinez 3y agoFrom the article: >I was amazed to know that woodworking was such a deep-rooted tradition
- silisili 3y agoWow, didn't see that Zambia one, that's big news to me. Question - how can they prove that someone in more recent times didn't notch more ancient wood?
- seneca 3y agoAs I understand it, in that case it is by dating the age of the materials the wood in question was buried in. The minerals are dated using luminescence dating. That tells you when those particles were last exposed to sunlight.
- facialwipe 3y agoI don’t trust any dating technique that requires the combustion of material.
- defrost 3y agoWell, this dating relates to when quartz and|or feldspar crystal were last in strong sunlight .. it's not "combustion" as such. The changes wrought in the material by sun exposure and subsequent changes over time in the dark are strongly repeatable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence_dating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence_dating
- 3y ago
- mkaic 3y agoIf you're interested in learning more about these incredible Turkish archaeological sites, I can't recommend the YouTube channel Miniminuteman [0] enough. Milo is extremely passionate about his field of study and makes highly entertaining and informative videos about archaeology and anthropology, including a recent series where he became the first real archaeologist ever to be allowed to film a documentary on-site at Karahantepe! [1] [0] https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773 https://www.youtube.com/@miniminuteman773 [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EaKFKYPXVk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EaKFKYPXVk
- softfalcon 3y ago+1 for Miniminuteman! His shorts debunking flat-earther types is also incredibly entertaining.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jpsouth 3y agoHis shorts are hilarious too, he has some great mini-debunks of conspiracies.
- Hikikomori 3y agoAnd a multi hour debunk of ancient apocalypse.
- 6D794163636F756 3y agoI just found him on Friday and lost the weekend. I can definitely say that his passion is infectious and makes the topics far more interesting.
- throwaway290 3y agoHe mentions that people back then lived around 35 years. I recall reading it's a mistaken interpretation of the average age, while many people died infants adults actually easily lived to 70+ yo. Is it true and he made the same mistake or am I thinking about a different period in history?
- andrewstuart 3y agoIt makes me happy that it's possible that future humans might live again on an earth 12,000 years in the future which has cooled again after our civilisation has boiled the planet.
- usrusr 3y agoWhy would it cool in 12k years? We are loading the atmosphere with carbon sequestered over much longer periods. Some of which even happened in a phase of massive imbalance in the evolutionary "war" between plants and plant consumers: trees had found a way to never rot (be consumed) which is rather tragic for incumbent biological systems but a crazy boost for carbon sequestering. The problem is not that we produce heat, the problem is that we change the balance point between energy influx from the sun and energy emission to space. That changed balance point will remain changed much, much longer than 12k years. If we don't have a technological miracle, humans 12k in the future will live in tiny habitable zones near the poles.
- hist_thw 3y ago[dead]
- otabdeveloper4 3y agoPretty sure we haven't yet mastered planetary engineering, bro. "Boiling" a planet is many orders of magnitude bigger than our entire energy budget.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- waynecochran 3y agoTwo things: how is is dated? and was that NSFW 12000 years ago?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seqizz 3y agoYou know there is already a conspiracy about its phallus [0]? Which might be broken for unknown reasons. [0]: https://arkeofili.com/karahantepede-bulunan-insan-heykelinin-penisi-nerede/ https://arkeofili.com/karahantepede-bulunan-insan-heykelinin...
- rationalfaith 3y ago[dead]
- nimbius 3y ago[flagged]
- ralusek 3y agoHere's to another year of the word Göbeklitepe playing on repeat in my head.
- optimalsolver 3y agoGo Becky Teppy
- boffinAudio 3y agoIf you love Goebekli Tepe, you're gonna adore Narwala Gabarnmang, which is theorized to be the worlds first educational institute, and which has extraordinarily interesting ties to Goebekli Tepe, which is believed to be paying tribute to Narwala Gabarnmang with the T-shaped pillars .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung I avidly await all news related to these sites, its an immensely fascinating subject.
- wolverine876 3y ago> featuring a lifelike facial expression Notice that, although it was a completely alien culture in a very far away time, before agriculture and writing, we still know what a lifelike facial expression looks like. Many things vary from culture to culture. Facial expressions, at least many of them, are consistent across humanity. If someone stubs their toe or tastes something delicious, you'll know without words. Look up 'human universals' in anthropology, evolutionary psychology, and in other fields. Donald Brown (see below) gives some opinionated background here, including a literature review (of Brown's own writings, and more): https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2017/06/25/human-universals/ https://literary-universals.uconn.edu/2017/06/25/human-unive... The seminal book is Human Universals by Donald Brown: https://archive.org/details/humanuniversals0000brow/ https://archive.org/details/humanuniversals0000brow/ (I don't know how fully accepted it is; there seems to be at least some disupte over Brown's theories.)
- verbify 3y agoHow many of these universals are shared with other mammals (especially apes)?
- TrapLord_Rhodo 3y agoShowing teeth, universally means aggression. In humans, it's for showing you are happy, or excited.
- gumby 3y agoI don't think any other species has the set of facial muscles humans do. Cats seem inscrutable because they have very few; dogs seem more understandable because they can move their eyebrows. I think the non-human animal with the most facial expressions is the chimpanzee, but even then it is much less expressive than a human in this regard. Various mammals have (non-facial) macroexpression somewhat similar to humans, such as excitement, curiosity and fear. Many non-mammals such as birds, fish, and some reptiles can express fear to some extent.
- jamiek88 3y ago
- victor106 3y agoI am always curious to know how they determine the date of historical artifacts? Anyone here can throw some light?
- smilespray 3y agoOne technique is radiocarbon dating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating EDIT: For artefacts made entirely out of stone, you can date objects in the sediment around them to get an approximation.
- phero_cnstrcts 3y agoBut that only works for organic material. Not stone.
- tootie 3y agoThe article says there were traces of pigment that could be dated. There are other techniques related to the layers of sediment or other clues. I think with a site like this they don't need to date every object. If they can gather enough data points they know when the site was in use. It's technically possible that the statue stone is older and was brought to the site and we might never know, but it's just highly unlikely.
- hnfong 3y agoI think the "highly unlikely" part is pure speculation. If the stone in TFA gets buried when _our_ civilization collapses, the stone would now probably date to 2020 AD instead of whatever it should have been.
- LennyWhiteJr 3y agoThere is organic matter buried in and around the site that can be used to date the point at which it was filled in.
- theduder99 3y ago
- mcpackieh 3y agoThere must be so much more underground in that region waiting to be discovered. For instance less than ten miles south is the town of Kisas, about which wikipedia says: "It is built on top of an old archaeological mound (höyük) which has not been excavated because it lies completely under the town." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%B1sas,_Haliliye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%B1sas,_Haliliye
- alephnerd 3y agoAnd what may have been destroyed and will forever be forgotten. This region is only a couple miles north of Raqqa, which was an ISIS stronghold only a couple years ago, and they destroyed innumerable historical artifacts.
- an-allen 3y agoI think whomever this statue represents, would get a cosmic kick out of people, 12000 years into the future, appreciating the majesty of his phallus.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoIt looks like it’s saying that Death is a wanker. I wonder if it was deliberately humorous, which would add another dimension. I know that the Incas had statues that were basically hardcore pr0n. I’m not sure the reason. Probably fertility stuff.
- PepperdineG 3y agoIt would be funny if it was the prehistoric equivalent of the city of Dog River putting up a sign saying "Wullerton Sucks!" It could for instance represent a foreigner with the statue saying certain foreigners are wankers.
- lazide 3y agoEveryone likes porn, some are just ashamed of it? And apparently they weren’t?
- Loughla 3y agoI feel like comedy is so cultural that there are a number of artifacts that are jokes, but we'll never, ever know. Like this thing - maybe it's mocking someone? Who knows.
- hnbad 3y agoIt's nearby a relief that is literally some guy stroking his cock with his other hand resting on his stomach. For all we know this was just the work of a very dedicated and very horny artist.
- tanepiper 3y agoArchaeologist: "This amazing find represents us understanding early humans and their ties to the seasons and fertility" [8000 years earlier] "Man": "Yea, so Gary over there cut down my favourite Olive tree so I commissioned this huge statute of a dick to let him know how much I hate him"
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoYet more astonishing finds from the PPNA! Contemporaneous or even earlier than the Balıklıgöl statues, but the piece and its expression is far beyond it. Each time I think I won't be surprised by another Turkish find and yet . . Looking at the oldest finds on a world map, I can't help wondering what sort of finds are in those areas less developed - or more wrought by internal violence - were those places to suddenly be easy to roam for archeologists. If Iran were as accessible as Germany, who knows what the equivalent of the Hohlenstein Löwenmensch would be? The events of the early 21st century (can and will) cast a long shadow in the scholarship.
- cratermoon 3y agoI'm sensing an overabundance of pareidolia in this story.
- cjohnson318 3y agoI wonder how long ago our ancestors forgot about this settlement and it was lost, and how many times it was rediscovered through the ages. I bet Homer knew of or had heard of some ancient sites that were either never memorialized in a poem, or poems never survived to modern times.
- Loughla 3y agoIt's honestly staggering to think about how much didn't survive because it was made of wood or clay. And the oral history of our species that is forever lost. Just staggering.
- imchillyb 3y agoIt's even more staggering to think how much didn't survive due to conquerors, demolitions, fires, and intolerance.
- OJFord 3y agoI find it more staggering that anything survived (with a gap before being rediscovered). It's just funny to think about the set of circumstances that might lead to things being left, forgotten, and buried, isn't it?
- mcmoor 3y agoXenophon already writes about sites that are already old and forgotten by his time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anabasis_(Xenophon)
- cjohnson318 3y agoThat's very interesting! I imagine a bunch of bored Victorians have already dug everything up and thoroughly wrecked the provenance of everything.
- opportune 3y agoThere was 4x the amount of time between Gobekli Tepe and Xenophon as there was between Xenophon and right now
- sshaginyan 3y agoI wouldn't trust anything out of Turkey.
- derefr 3y agoIs there some way that we could "scan the Earth" to find other long-buried sites like Göbeklitepe? Would it be possible to do something from imaging satellites — something akin to ground-penetrating radar / laser range-finding / ultrasound — that might not be good enough for much, but which would be "just good enough" to find any other gigantic cities with walls built of dense stone, hidden under 10-50ft of dirt or sand?
- Lukeas14 3y agoYes they've been doing lidar scans throughout central america to detect ancient Mayan pyramids and cities that are hidden under foliage. They've identified thousands of structures but other factors have limited their ability to unearth them (# of archaeologists, funding, politics).
- derefr 3y agoYes, lidar is great and all for what it does, and will definitely find us many new sites; but lidar just detects structures that cause raised areas (i.e. plants growing up and over the structures) rather than detecting structures hidden within a flat plane of fill-in medium like dirt/sand, the way Göbeklitepe was hidden. Lidar wouldn't have found Göbeklitepe.
- paganel 3y ago> Is there some way that we could "scan the Earth" to find other long-buried sites like Göbeklitepe? The Brits had started a Lidar survey of most of their country a few years ago, I'd say 2015-2016, but I'm not sure if that information is entirely accurate and, if it is accurate, I'm not sure how far they have got with it (what if all the cuts made to spending money on stuff that is not seen as essential).
- helsinkiandrew 3y agohttps://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surveys-light-up-open-data/ https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2015/09/18/laser-surve... Browsable map: https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=TQ7237355141 https://houseprices.io/lab/lidar/map?ref=TQ7237355141
- quasarj 3y agoAm I high? The face is completely missing in the pictures, what is this nonsense about a "lifelike" facial expression? That's a lifelike penis, at least.
- burtonator 3y agoYeah... rock hard!
- imchillyb 3y agoIt's almost comforting to know that 12,000 years ago humans were essentially sending random people dick-pics. All the passersby got a dirty little airdrop to the eye holes.
- user3939382 3y agoGraham Hancock has entered the chat
- bluehorizon2 3y agoIt feels like the significance of this is lost on many people. My understanding is that complex things like statues were not supposed to be possible 12,000 years ago. I think it’s supposed to be more like 6000 years ago. The fact that it has been carbon dated to 12,000 tears should means that we have to rewrite the theories on the start of human civilization. These statues needed to be carved out of tools and the educational techniques for carving it off stone and the social structure to support art were not supposed to exist at this time. This is pretty huge in terms of figuring out the birth of human civilization. And the fact that the same site also has these huge stone megaliths that also weren’t supposed to be possible and were also dated to 12,000 years so just solidified the idea that our current theories are completely wrong.
- softfalcon 3y agoA common statement was brought up in my history classes: "humans of the past were often as resourceful, if not more resourceful than we are, they simply had less opportunities than we do today." If you put yourself in the place of your ancestors. Who you are, you could probably figure out a way to make a statue. It stands to reason that someone a bit smarter (or more motivated) than you or I could also figure it out without our modern day tools. Human ingenuity is astounding and I love the idea that past humanity was just us without iPhones.
- beezlewax 3y agoDo you need special tools to do this though? Or just one rock that's harder than the other one? That said I used to make "tools" out of sticks and rocks as a child playing outdoors. Why do we think people didn't have tools or the capacity to invent them 12000 years ago?
- poulpy123 3y agoI don't even understand what are you on about. The same kind of statue up.to the holding of the genital has been found in the same area in 1993 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfa_Man https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urfa_Man Not even talking of the fact that 25000 years before people were making incredible art at the grotte Chauvet or that around the same time, a 30cm statue was carved in Germany representing an anthropomorphised Lion ans
- jjtheblunt 3y agoI read the article and didn’t see the 12,000 years (perhaps obscured by countless irrelevant ad overlays) and wondered how does one date stone, since carbon dating is irrelevant for something that didnt stop breathing and eating?
- appplication 3y agoOne way is to date the deposition of the sediment immediately surrounding the artifact. I don’t know exactly how they do this but I recall reading this was the method for some older structures that made the front page a week or two ago.
- blorpypig 3y agoThere is no overstating just how absolutely wrong in almost every dimension possible most of the posters on this site are. It’s distilled ignorance mixed with the arrogance of an annoying 8 year old. Hacker News is the worst “tech” site that exists.
- gt2 3y agoPlease enlighten us! I'll be people would overlook the tone of your comment if you just said something constructive along with it (I hope you do).
- nologic01 3y agoPeople seem to assume that realistic art is a sign of artistic "progress" and sophistication. But is it really so? People in prehistoric times must have been the most skilled stone carvers ever. This was the technology of the era. What they might have lacked in tooling they surely had in craftmanship and available time. Is it a case of not being able to carve something more realistic or not interested in doing do? Maybe confronted with the later artistic fashion of emulating reality (started in Ancient Greece and ended in the early 20th century) they would retort: Why waste your time reproducing something that already exists?
- kiba 3y agoCarved in what sense? Making art has more to do with how you think than how you coordinate your hands.
- avar 3y ago> People in prehistoric times must have been the most skilled stone carvers ever. Look up CNC stone carving, the ancient have nothing on us.
- defrost 3y agoLook up Kailasa Temple and show us a CNC equivalent one piece carving of that scale.
- tonyvince7 3y agoGraham Hancock must be feeling vindicated
- mvdwoord 3y agoI visited a small archeological site on Corsica yesterday. This got us talking about this stuff which led to my gf asking to watch the gobekli tepe episode of ancient apocalypse last night. Just after, as I was checking hn, this article was dropped. Same thing went through my mind.
- gadders 3y agoI don't know if he is yet, but it must at least be a bit of a point in his favour. I've no idea if his theory is true, but it would be so cool if it was.
- AlertGooble 3y agoHe's too caught up in the impact theory when, clearly, it's the sun.
- anon-3988 3y agoI feel like there's way too many discoveries of ancient civilization dated 10-15k years ago to not think that "some" of his ideas must have some truth to it. Obviously I understand that he might have exaggerated a lot of it.
- Eumenes 3y agoI liked this article headline: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient-apocalypse-is-the-most-dangerous-show-on-netflix https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/nov/23/ancient...
- dizhn 3y agoIn local media photographs of the statue is lacking a penis. I hope it's a photoshop job and not actual severing.
- anon-3988 3y agoIt always sounded strange to me when I learnt in high school that the "earliest" civilization had rock structures, ziggurats, temples and the like. It gives an impression that human suddenly that converged together at some point, decided to have priests and kings, and construct large structures for no practical worldly reason. Take the discovery of fire. It is not like some ape suddenly discovered fire and suddenly learnt how to cook. It probably took thousand of years of "consistently being able to create fire" before realizing that it can be used for cooking. The ability to create fire also implies that the prehistoric human was already able to think of risk/benefit. Since fire is obviously dangerous it leads me to think that they already have some sort of culture/philoshopy. Critical thinking cannot exist in a vacuum i.e. they have to had to used it for other purposes as well. This is obviously unscientific and extremely speculative, but I just think that these things cannot exist in a vacuum is all.
- khole 3y agoMore info and photos: https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-findings/ https://themindcircle.com/new-gobeklitepe-and-karahantepe-fi...
- elesbao 3y agoDudes should bury that back. The exorcist taught us everything we needed about status with hard-ons.
- pachico 3y agoHonest question. How do young-earth creationists react to these news? We don't have many in Spain, despite being quite a religious country, and I'm always intrigued.
- waterheater 3y agosvpk's comment aligns with my own understanding. Also, some young-earth creationists may say that God created the earth with age. If you ask them why God did that or where they find such information in the Bible, they'll either say it's part of God's plan or be silent. Another interesting place where young-earth creationists provide physical theories for biblical events is the Flood. Many ancient cultures have flood myths, some talk of a global deluge in the distant past, and few cultures attempt to derive a physical explanation for the massive flowing of water. Though less popular today, some young-earth creationists interested in physical explanations (who also almost always have some theories about the Flood) hypothesized the existence of a "vapor canopy", which served as the source of the flood waters. Essentially, the vapor canopy was a water shell which surrounded the earth. The floodwaters came when God caused the vapor canopy to collapse. Now, this hypothesis fails to withstand a small amount of physics inquiry; the earth's gravitational forces would naturally collapse the shell, and the water's shell would make the earth's surface too dark to sustain life. Yet, they're not bad people, just misguided. Since we're on this topic, there's one physical theory for a global deluge which is my personal favorite from a scientific standpoint. We know the earth has a crust and mantle. The crust is like a hard shell around the mantle, while the mantle acts like a viscous fluid. The mantle is thought to be magnetic [1]. One interesting and obscure field of research is magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), or the study of the dynamics of magnetic fluids. The geodynamo effect [2] proposes that the earth's magnetic field arises from magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) effects in the mantle. Now, let's say the earth experiences a magnetic pole flip. Presumably, the earth's magnetic field will collapse for some period of time before returning in a reversed configuration. At some point during the flip, the field collapses completely. During that collapse, the MHD forces in the mantle are eliminated. The precise effects are unknown to us, but perhaps the crust then experiences a sudden rotational deceleration. Conservation of momentum says that the earth's oceans will slosh across the surface of the planet. Once the earth's magnetic field returns, the oceans gradually calm again, but much of the earth's surface has now been washed by a tsunami spanning all oceans. From a purely theoretical standpoint, I like the scientific plausibility of this theory to explain the deluge, particularly because there's no need for the magical invention of a water source. However, there's still issues, like the precise cause of the earth's magnetic pole flip. If the pole flip is caused by, say, the Sun, then we need to know why and if the Sun's own electromagnetic field induces the MHD forces in the mantle. (MHD forces cause magnetic fluids to flow, which, short of additional information, would imply the Sun may cause the earth to rotate via MHD, which, according to a quick web search, is not the scientifically-accepted rationale for the earth's rotation.) [1] https://www.geoengineer.org/news/magnetic-field-found-in-earths-mantle https://www.geoengineer.org/news/magnetic-field-found-in-ear... [2] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978AnRFM..10..435B/abstract https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1978AnRFM..10..435B/abstra...