Why does everything happen about 12,000 years ago, and why doesn't anyone mention the connection between this, "The Legend of Atlantis," and Gobekli Tepe? All of these events supposedly happened about the same time.

Further, why would you necessarily expect a slow starvation event to kill off saber tooth cats? They could just as easily be finished off by a bacteria or virus. Maybe they got toxoplasmosis and it drove them nuts and they jumped in the tar pits or something.

Maybe they were killed by smarter breeds of cat, dog, or heyena.

Maybe we do need to revisit the less popular hypotheses. If it wasn't humans directly, it could have been zoonoses (seen from the viewpoint of the fauna), from humans and their dogs if any.

@ Lurker: Obviously because there is absolutely no connection between a biological event, myths and constructions on the opposite side of the world. Besides, the Göbekli Tepe was not around until 1000 years later, so that suggestion is pure erroneous. [ http://en.wikiped...kli_Tepe ]

Why one would predict and test for starvation, and why it is a main hypotheses, is described in the article.

Lurker, you are asking the right questions, which takes some brass on this topic. Also this time period saw many other animals go extinct such as over 20 species of elephant, we have the disappearence of north american ice sheets and clovis man, dramatic rises in sea level, mammoths freezing in Siberia, younger dryas climate change, and a layer of impact nanodiamods and iridium......... this is not a problem of evidence, it is of human psychology.

Gobekli Tepe may well have been a memmorial built by the descendents of the survivors.