10 Prehistoric Disasters That Erased Entire Civilizations

Get the Prehistoric Joe ebook : https://azmedia1.gumroad.com/l/dkpqaf All right, let's go. Number 10. The Zanclean Flood, when the Atlantic Ocean drowned an entire sea. Approximately 5.33 million years ago, long before anything resembling human civilization existed, the Mediterranean Sea was gone. Not reduced. Not partially dried. Gone. A geological event called the Messinian Salinity Crisis had sealed off the Strait of Gibraltar, cutting the Mediterranean basin from the Atlantic Ocean. Over hundreds of thousands of years, evaporation did what evaporation does. The water disappeared, leaving behind a vast desert basin stretching from modern-day Spain to the shores of Lebanon. Salt deposits hundreds of meters thick carpeted the floor. Temperatures in the deepest sections, nearly 5 kilometers below the surrounding continental shelves, would have reached extremes incompatible with complex life. The Mediterranean wasn't a sea. It was an abyss.