Scientists say they have found new signs of a massive flood that may have destroyed ancient civilisations around 20,000 years ago. Excavations at Tell Fara in Iraq, a site first explored in the 1930s, revealed settlements dating back more than 5,000 years. But researchers digging deeper discovered a thick layer of yellow clay and sand, known as an “inundation layer,” lying beneath the settlement.

Experts explain that such layers usually form on land that was once inhabited, suggesting that an older civilisation may have been wiped out by floods long before new communities settled there.

Similar finds across the world

Surprisingly, researchers have identified the same kind of clay and sand deposits in other ancient sites across the globe, from Ur and Kish in Mesopotamia to Harappa in the Indus Valley and early Nile settlements in Egypt. The repeated discovery has led some scientists to suggest that sudden floods may have devastated multiple regions thousands of years ago.

Researcher Matt LaCroix told the Daily Mail: “Nothing in the last 11,000 years even comes close to explaining it.” He believes geological records point to a worldwide disaster that erased traces of earlier societies.

Debate among experts

LaCroix says climate shifts likely played a role, noting: “A global catastrophe of this magnitude could have destroyed entire communities, leaving only fragments of culture and memory behind.” He links the floods to the Younger Dryas cooling period around 12,800 years ago, when sudden climate swings were recorded in ice cores.

However, not all researchers agree. Critics argue that complex societies could not have existed during the Upper Palaeolithic Period and question whether such a global flood ever occurred. But LaCroix insists that the geological evidence points to a much earlier, larger catastrophe than previously believed.

You might also be interested in - For the first time in medical science, eight healthy babies born using three-parent IVF