Evidence found of an advanced civilization lost 20,000 years ago due to a massive flood

A team of researchers believes they have discovered the remains of an ancient civilization, a highly advanced but previously unknown civilization, which disappeared approximately 20,000 years ago, wiped out by a catastrophic global event.

Evidence of this supposedly lost civilization has been found at Tell Fara , a Sumerian archaeological site in Iraq . Excavations there have uncovered layers of clay and yellow sand beneath ruins some 5,000 years old, suggesting that massive floods swept through the land before known settlements emerged.

The Tell Fara case is not unique. Similar finds have been documented in Ur and Kish (Mesopotamia), Harappa (Indus Valley), and ancient Nile settlements in Egypt, where geological investigations have also found evidence of heavy flooding. This has led some experts to raise the possibility that flooding 20,000 years ago was a global phenomenon that completely wiped out several early human communities.

That is, for example, the hypothesis being considered by researcher Matt LaCroix. In his opinion, 20,000 years ago, an abrupt climate change occurred that could have generated massive floods that wiped out entire societies. To support his hypothesis, LaCroix has compared geological records —ice cores, tree rings, volcanic ash, and magnetic anomalies—with mythological accounts of floods and ancient astronomical alignments, finding significant coincidences. “These natural records reflect the same event described in the Flood legends,” he told the Daily Mail.

Excavations at Tell Fara have long since brought to light, beneath the layer of sediment left by the flood, remains of objects that suggest they were created by a civilization with a remarkable level of cultural development : proto-cuneiform tablets (clay tablets used by early Mesopotamian civilizations to record information before the full development of cuneiform writing), ceramic bowls and polychrome vases, all of which reflect a technical sophistication unusual in Upper Paleolithic societies.

Archaeologist Erick Schmidt , who led the 1931 excavations at Tell Fara that unearthed many of these artifacts, was quick to assert that these remains represented an "absolute cultural break" with the artifacts from before and after the flood, indicating that the civilization that produced them had either abruptly disappeared or moved to another location. The paucity of human remains in the lower layers suggests that the site's inhabitants may have abandoned the settlement before it was inundated by severe flooding.

LaCroix suggests that this lost civilization could have been part of a global network of cultures connected not only by trade but also by symbols, myths, and the memory of natural disasters. The existence of flood stories in Sumeria, Egypt, India, and even pre-Columbian Peru reinforces the hypothesis of a shared cultural memory surrounding a natural disaster that would have reshaped early human history. If this theory is confirmed, the origins of civilization could be pushed back at least 8,000 years, compared to the conventional narrative, which places the appearance of the first cities between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago.

A team of researchers believes they have discovered the remains of an ancient civilization, a highly advanced but previously unknown civilization, which disappeared approximately 20,000 years ago, wiped out by a catastrophic global event.