A Wiki list of impact craters less than 10,000 years old.
Then we have the Burckle Crater in the Indian Ocean that appears to have impacted during or right before the rise of Sumeria, when the known written history begins:
And the big one in the “news” lately, is the newly discovered impact crater in Greenland, which may very well be the cause of the Younger Dryas Period, and the subsequent extincion of most North American mega-fauna.
Those are very good questions. There are several mysteries regarding ancient technologies and abilities such, for example, the stonework on many ancient structures, particularly in the Americas and Africa, that remain without any good explanation.
There is now much evidence showing human civilizations dating back as far as 40-80k years ago.
Unfortunately not much other than stone survives on timescales so vast so very little is known as far as written language etc prior to ancient Sumer and India.
There is evidence of constant human habitation in what is now Australia dating back as far as 65,000 years prior to colonization and still no real explanation as to where the original Aborigines came from but it is thought their origins date back the earliest expansion by humans out of Africa.
Genetically though they show now direct connection to any other group.
I think there’s a very good chance that humanity has all but been extinguished several times and “rebooted” so to speak.
Are you theorizing that advanced civilizations were present on Earth long before the 12,000 year mark? If so, where is the evidence? Archaeologists don’t seem to have too much trouble finding dinosaur bones - which go a lot farther back in time that humans do.
There’s very little evidence that any “advanced” civilizations existed at least none that might have advanced beyond the late bronze/early iron age prior to 12,000 years ago but not even reinforced concrete/steel construction would survive more than a few hundred years without maintenance.
Nothing technological that isn’t made of stone or minerals could survive in nature for very long at all.
The problem though with the fossil record is that it takes a very rare and specific set of circumstances for fossils to be produced and preserved so there are huge gaps in it and literally millions upon millions of species that live, die, and go extinct with no record at all.
The dinosaurs dominated Earth for more that 180 million years, and the last one has been dead for more than 65 million years. There were many hundreds of millions, probably billions of animals that lived and died over that time. The bones of only a minuscule number of them ever lay buried in the right conditions to become fossilized over tens of thousands of years and found by paleontologists.
Humans, on the other hand have been around less than a million years and did not live in large numbers until relatively recently. Not only have there been relatively few skeletons (compared to those of dinosaurs) to find, but there has not been sufficient time for most of them to fossilize.
In answer to SixFoot’s question about civilization…if that is the case, considering that the dinosaurs wen extinct, and if there was another meteorite that hit the Earth, I assume that civilization has restarted at least twice.
I wish I could say more on the subject and contribute better.
Meteor metal is among the most sought after and expensive in the world. For centuries it was prized for making weapons and many of the ancient heroes “magical” swords, spears, etc were made from it. The Iron, nickel and other metals in meteors were so much denser and stronger than bronze, brass, and stone weapons people attributed magical properties to it.
There’s strong evidence to suggest that Volcanoes had similar effects on early civilizations, wiping many out all but completely and causing several “reboots”.
Most meteors do disintegrate in the atmosphere. But millions (mostly the size of a grain of sand) reach the surface of Earth every year. Only the very few and occasional large ones leave craters (or ripples in water, snow or ice.)
By the way, if it reaches the surface it is a meteorite by definition. When in space they are called meteors.
