00:00Seen a good horror movie lately?
00:03If you're a fan of those,
00:04then you can appreciate a good plot.
00:07But what if I told you that
00:09Mother Nature is the best script writer ever?
00:12Ancient disasters were scarier than any horror movie today.
00:16From tsunamis to volcanic eruptions,
00:19you'll be shocked by the scale of these events.
00:23One natural disaster you
00:26definitely don't want to experience is a tsunami.
00:29Those gigantic walls of water sweep across the coast
00:33and take out everything in their way.
00:35And it's nothing new for our planet.
00:38Scientists were able to piece together a timeline
00:40based on evidence that major tsunamis left.
00:44In northern Chile,
00:45a large boulder sits high above the Pacific Ocean.
00:49Behind it, a desert as far as the eye can see.
00:53This 44-ton stone obviously doesn't belong here.
00:57It's the result of an ancient tsunami.
01:00Waves as high as a six-story building
01:03carried boulders like pebbles.
01:05Researchers estimate this happened in 1420.
01:11But how can they possibly know this?
01:14In the 15th century,
01:15there were no written records in the region.
01:17Time for some detective work.
01:19Archaeologists discovered that around the same time,
01:22there was a tsunami in Japan
01:24on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
01:27The ground shook off the coast of Chile.
01:30That's how the tsunami was created.
01:32Then the wave traveled
01:33nearly two-fifths of the Earth's circumference.
01:36That's one tireless tsunami.
01:38But this wasn't a one-time event.
01:41Evidence suggests that a similar event
01:43happened 3,800 years ago.
01:46Ancient people abandoned their coastal villages
01:49around this time.
01:50They were moving inland.
01:52How did they know it was time to go?
01:54There's evidence of erosion due to strong currents,
01:57telltale signs of an ancient tsunami.
02:01As you know from school textbooks,
02:04oxygen is 21% of the air we breathe,
02:07but it wasn't always a part of Earth's atmosphere.
02:10Oxygen was missing
02:12during the first half of our planet's lifespan.
02:15Carbon dioxide and methane
02:17were the name of the game back then.
02:19CO2 is what makes our drinks fizz,
02:21but isn't the other gas dangerous?
02:24Yes, because you can't smell methane.
02:27And that's the reason there was no life on Earth
02:29billions of years ago.
02:31So how did we get from methane to oxygen?
02:36In come the cyanobacteria.
02:39This group of microbes started to evolve
02:41some 2.7 billion years ago.
02:44These tiny microbes mastered photosynthesis,
02:47converting sunlight into energy.
02:49And the byproduct of this process was,
02:52you've guessed it, oxygen.
02:54Soon it started escaping from water into the atmosphere.
02:58There, it reacted with methane,
03:00and over time, O2 replaced it completely.
03:04Scientists named this process the Great Oxidation Event.
03:08But how could it be bad?
03:10After all, we're alive thanks to it.
03:13All that oxygen acted as a poison for anaerobic organisms.
03:17And no, these are not life forms
03:19that didn't do aerobics or Pilates.
03:22The term simply means that these microorganisms
03:25didn't need oxygen to grow.
03:27Too much oxygen, and they would be goners.
03:30And that's precisely what happened.
03:32Scientists spoke of an oxygen overshoot
03:35that changed Earth's atmosphere for good.
03:38The disappearance of most anaerobic organisms
03:41was an early example of an extinction event.
03:44They didn't like the atmosphere at the time
03:46and decided to step down.
03:48But look on the bright side.
03:50They made room for oxygen-loving humans
03:52to enter the picture.
03:56Let's go to Turkey.
03:57No, not the seaside resorts
03:59that tourists visit in the summer,
04:01but the region of Anatolia in the southeast of the country.
04:05Göbekli Tepe is the world's oldest known
04:08Göbekli Tepe is the world's oldest known temple site.
04:12It dates back to the Neolithic period.
04:14Scientists found a stone pillar here
04:17that tells a tale of an ancient disaster.
04:20They presume that the pillar is commemorative.
04:22Today, humans still build similar structures
04:25to mark an important event or a person.
04:28Just one example is the Washington Memorial.
04:31It was built in honor
04:32of the first American president, George Washington.
04:35But the pillar in Turkey doesn't commemorate a happy event.
04:39Scientists believe it shows a devastating occurrence,
04:42a comet crashing into the Earth.
04:45The event must have been destructive.
04:47There are also other signs on the monument.
04:50These symbols align with the setup of the night sky stars
04:54for the year 10,950 BCE.
04:58The date astounded the researchers.
05:00It matched their earlier research
05:02of an ice core in the northern hemisphere.
05:06The site was the first ice core sample in Greenland.
05:09This showed that a comet fragment hit our planet
05:12around the same time.
05:14The archaeological site could have easily been
05:17an ancient observatory.
05:21And whoever worked at it observed a cataclysmic event.
05:25The impact must have been so powerful
05:27that it changed the Earth's rotational axis.
05:31That's the imaginary pole going through our planet
05:33and the comet must have packed a punch
05:35to knock the blue planet off balance.
05:40Have you heard of the city of Tal el-Hammam
05:43in the Valley of the Jordan River?
05:45The reason why your answer is probably no
05:47is that the city doesn't exist today.
05:50It completely disappeared around the year 1650 BCE.
05:55It was one of the three major cities
05:57in this part of the Middle East.
05:59Together, these three cities had a population bigger
06:02than Palm Springs today.
06:04At the time, Tal el-Hammam was a metropolis.
06:08It even had high-rises, five-story buildings
06:11constructed using mud bricks.
06:13But archaeologists found strange markings on them.
06:16The bricks melted as they were exposed to high temperatures.
06:20Yes, sound the fire alarm.
06:22Some sort of disaster had caused a major fire.
06:27Archaeological finds pointed to a suspect for such damage,
06:31a rock from space.
06:35So, where was the crater?
06:37This comet, or an asteroid, never made it to the ground.
06:41It was traveling at high speed,
06:42so it disintegrated before hitting the ground.
06:46Such an event is called an airburst.
06:48The largest witnessed meteor airburst
06:50happened over Tunguska in the north of Asia in 1908.
06:57Scientists estimated that the airburst in Tal el-Hammam
07:01happened 2.5 miles above the city.
07:04This event released a lot of energy.
07:06Air temperature quickly rose to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:10That's hot enough to set clothes and wood
07:13on fire in an instant.
07:15Mud bricks and tools made from metal
07:17start to melt when exposed to such heat.
07:20This would explain the evidence scientists unearthed.
07:23But there was one more find, salt.
07:26The event was so powerful that it distributed salt
07:30over the region around the Dead Sea.
07:32Any farmer will tell you that salty soil and crops
07:36don't go well together.
07:37People started moving away from the area
07:39because they couldn't grow food.
07:44Imagine an island with whitewashed villages
07:47surrounded by a sapphire blue sea.
07:49Such a place exists in reality.
07:52It's the island of Santorini.
07:54But the history of this place hides a tale of destruction.
07:58The island is of volcanic origin.
08:00This means that a violent eruption created it
08:03some 3,000 years ago.
08:06Now there are two islands.
08:08The bigger one is shaped like a horseshoe.
08:10When you look at them from above,
08:12the two islands look like they form a circle.
08:15That's because they were once a single island.
08:21It had a large mountain and was round in shape.
08:24But then it all changed almost overnight.
08:27One of the largest volcanic eruptions in human history
08:30tore Santorini apart.
08:32The earth trembled, tsunamis formed,
08:35and clouds of ash filled the sky.
08:38A daunting image.
08:39People felt the eruption hundreds of miles away.
08:42When it was all over,
08:43seawater rushed into the caldera of the former volcano.
08:47That's why the water in the lagoon
08:49has such a beautiful color.
08:53Scientists know so much about Santorini's past
08:56because of an unlikely assistant, a tree.
08:59The juniper tree, to be exact.
09:02People use its aromatic wood for everything
09:04from furniture to making pencils.
09:07On the Greek island,
09:08its rings revealed the tale of the ancient eruption.
09:12As a tree grows, it doesn't only go up,
09:14it expands sideways as well.
09:17Each new layer of bark adds a ring to the trunk.
09:20It takes a year for one ring to form.
09:23And on Santorini, one ring was unnaturally pale.
09:27The scientists did the math and voila,
09:31they dated the eruption to 1560 BCE.
09:38That's it for today.
09:39So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,
09:42then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
09:44Or if you want more,
09:46just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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