Graham Hancock on history: what the evidence says · JRE #1543
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
the last time you have that heavy rainfall in Egypt is the period that geologists call the Younger Dryas, roughly between 12,800 and 11,600 years ago. So the body of the Sphinx, the trench out of which it is carved, is saying, I am 12,000 years old.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
The water-erosion dating of the Sphinx originates with geologist Robert Schoch and writer John Anthony West in the early 1990s, who argued that rounded weathering channels on the enclosure walls required sustained heavy rainfall unavailable in Egypt after roughly 5,000 BCE, implying an age far older than the conventional ~2500 BCE date. This interpretation was directly challenged by other geologists (Gauri, Sinha and Tandon, 1995, Geoarchaeology), who proposed that the same channel and rounding features can form through arid-climate weathering of alternating hard and soft limestone strata combined with pre-existing karst drainage features, concluding the monument "may still be regarded as of pharaonic origin." A 2024 fluid-dynamics study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that lion-like yardang landforms, including Sphinx-like heads, necks and paws, can be produced by ordinary wind and sand erosion of rock outcrops with alternating hard and soft layers, without any need for ancient rainfall; the same paper notes that archaeological surveys indicate the Sphinx's body was largely or entirely carved by human excavation rather than left as a purely natural formation. The great majority of Egyptologists and geologists date the Sphinx to the reign of Pharaoh Khafre (circa 2500 BCE) based on stylistic, stratigraphic and archaeological evidence tying it to the Khafre pyramid complex; the Younger Dryas water-erosion hypothesis remains a minority position rejected by mainstream archaeology and is not supported by independent dating methods.