This is the last one from the Georgia roadtrip! I did want to descend into the canyon, but a massive storm had been through an hour earlier and turned most of the paths to mud...
2:04 A sign that just says "dont do it because I said so" isnt going to stop people. Just write "its just loose clay ya dingus, dont climb here" would be much more effective. Explained rules are followed, unexplained rules are broken.
@@Hoch134 They will be missed by their friends and family. But, you can't fix stupid. Since we have advanced medicine to save even vegetative babies when we are already overpopulated. At least there's still a bit of natural selection and evolution going on. I'm not heartless, just real. The rich bastards that run the world don't think human life is very valuable.
We battle the same sort of catastrophic soil loss from overfarming in the Central Kentucky Karst (where Mammoth Cave is). Once one of those scars gets started, it's damned difficult to stop. Letting the forest take over abandoned farmland is a good beginning.
Or grassland. Everyone forgets that Kentucky has a lot of natural grasslands but they are trying to turn them into forests ruining the ecosystem there and killing off tons of native plantlife.
There's something similar in Spain called Las Médulas, only deeper, wider and longer. It was very much manmade though by the Romans, as a source of gold. The way they eroded and burst those hills is actually very intricate, and a very interesting visit if you're in the area.
@@3DGEM3 Well... Crop rotation ,in one form or another, has been around for a very long time. Even if you look back into the Bible's Old Testament there is what can arguably be called a form of crop rotation but even if you don't go back that far, crop rotation was definitely a thing in Europe in the middle ages.
Adam Kendall Instead of constant use, where most of the land would be virtually barren for possibly months after harvest, crop rotation would have meant more land would have more vegetation on it more of the time; so no-matter the season there would have been vegetation to intercept precipitation and absorb the water, thus drastically reducing erosion. You're right as far as this wouldn't stop all erosion, but it could of helped a great deal.
Interesting tangent, as I recall from being a kid growing up in Georgia & visiting same canyon... Providence Canyon was a major justification all on it's own for the import of Kudzu, which is the invasive species vine that forms all those crazy topiary sculptures you've been seeing the past few days Tom. Kudzu being an attempt to help control erosion that worked a bit... TOO well. In a lot of ways Georgia is kind of the USA'S Australia, in terms of being the poster child of why countries need to quarantine for invasive species borking up the local ecology.
Kudzu is less a problem here in SE Texas because we have this thing I call Hell Vine that kills it. It makes massive tubers underground contrary to the laws of thermodynamics, and when Kudzu gets growing, the hell vine sprouts from its tubers and chokes the kudzu. I call it hell vine because of the thorns.
I've been there before, all the "rock" there is incredibly soft as we was saying. You can easily carve your initials into it with your finger. There's a lot of places where people have carved into it.
PyroNinja713 I can read the letters “ABC” and “FG” for sure. Could easily convince myself that I see an “E” as well, and perhaps the remains of a “D”. I’m watching on my phone so a bigger screen might work better.
@@olivermarr5017 Kind of like Mount Rushmore. Isn't it amazingly coincidental that those particular faces happened to form in the rocks? Nature is awesome.
I think it should be counted as a natural wonder. It wasn’t like a single human event made it, but humans are a part of nature I feel in the grand scope of things.
It’s a very human concept to assume that nothing should ever or can ever change over time. Technically, yes this is a man made change but the water is still following the paths it always did. The soil was just destabilized. It’ll fill back up.
Its a bit of both we are animals, but this excessive weath seeking we do can nolonger be called animalistic/natural. The farming wasnt the unnatural part, it was the re-discovering of those continents that was.
Reminds me of an area in Spain called Las Médulas. It's a old open cast gold mine created by the Roman's. Very scenic now, after 2000yrs of natural weathering, but the mining was so extensive, the area became unstable and hastened the erosion. Well worth a look though. Thanks for your well presented videos.
I know you said it as a joke, but it's in Southern Ga which is more sedimentary rock. A good bit of Ga is granite, and if I remember correctly the rest is metamorphic? But don't quote me on that.
This reminds me of something I did when I was rather small (I might have been like 7 or younger at the point). Me and my family were on vacation to a beach in Denmark I think it was, the memories are a little fuzzy since I wasn't very old). There was some kind of small lake (or rather a very big puddle) on the beach. Me and my siblings (possibly also my dad) decided to dig a trench from the "lake" into the ocean (as kids on the beach do), so we did. It was fun and playtime and we succeded. Water was flowing in a stream of about 10-20 cm from the "lake" to the ocean. Happy with our work, we went on to do something else, eventually leaving the beach. When we came back the day after, our small trench had turned into a huge river, maybe 1 meter across. A lot of people were standing there, looking at the thing we accidentally created. Details of this might be a little fuzzy (again, I was possible younger than 7 years old), and I'm not 100% sure this actually happened. But yes, I feel the settlers of Georgia, having accidentally created a river.
I would consider this a "natural" wonder simply because not only was the ground not stable to begin with, but it was natural occurances like erosion that ultimately created the canyon. All the settlers really did was get rid of the trees, which in turn meant the water didn't get soaked up by roots (and grass from all the trampling by walking on it) and just sat and made the ground even more unstable and then eroded said ground downhill over the course of decades. So they caused it by the trees but nature took the wheel after that.
We have a similar phenomenon up here in Ontario called the Cheltenham Badlands that was created under very similar circumstances. In the 1930s poor farming practices led to erosion that exposed the underlying shale and this reminded me of it because it exhibits a similar pattern due to the red oxide in the deposits, although it's not quite as deep. The conservation authorities had similar concerns about further erosion so it was closed off for a time but it's been reopened with new trails that prevent visitors from climbing all over the formations
It's fortuitous that you've posted this as I'm heading to Georgia in a few weeks and this was one of the places I was going to swing by. Now I will for sure.
Providence canyon is a good place for hiking, primitive camping and for a school project outing which involves geology. I highly recommend visiting this park however you do need to be in shape for your trek into and from the bottom. I live in this area and the office I work out of, wildland fire control, is only 6 miles away. This county and the one to the south has an excessive amount of these gullies (+ 10 ft deep) hidden within the woods. Most are overgrown by trees and kudzu which is very effective in slowing the rate of erosion which causes these gullies to grow. However this makes wildland fire control, at night from the seat of a bulldozer, extremely difficult and dangerous. I am going to disagree with the narrators accusation that these people did not care. In order to make these fields, they cleared the woods in this area BY HAND. They used axes and cross-cut saws to drop the huge old growth timber and then cut it up into small enough pieces to be drug off by a mule. Then they used shovels to dig up the stumps. They were unaware of soil type in accordance to erodability. By the time they realized their mistake the only choice that they had was to install terraces to divert the water which would destroy part of the crops and severely limit the amount of food they could store up for the winter or wait until Fall when the crops have been gathered. Unfortunately most chose the latter where they realized that a mule and a plow was highly insufficient to rehab the erosion that had already occurred. After a few years most abandoned their efforts and moved off to find flatter land. Please understand, the majority of this started in the mid 1800s when heavy farming and earth moving equipment simply did not exist, I find it very difficult to accept that they did not care, especially after that much manual labor.
In a way, them getting exposed was natural too. Humanity might have allowed it to happen by removing the trees that kept the sand stable, but it was water that caused the slow change from flat land, to canyon. Humanity only gave it a starting point.
@@bolasblancas420 I think it's more a sliding scale with on the one end the concept of "natural" and on the other hand the concept of "artificial". Everything that has existed on this planet ultimately comes from nature. I think that the amount of intentionality behind the construction of something partly determines the artificiality of something. I further think that the more a species (or an individual from a specific species) is capable of reasoning, the more that species can intentionally construct things, and the more the things that that species constructs are artificial. So, a beaver dam or a termite hill are artificial to some extent, while something like a tool made by a non-human primate is more artificial, and a smartphone is even more artificial. I don't think that you can say that artificial versus natural is a strict dichotomy. The question is more: what determines the naturalness or artificialness of a construction.
@@supremebohnenstange4102 Reasoning is a process of nature, but reason isn't. Whether or not something is reasonable (in other words rational) is objective. Reasoning is merely the attempt to arrive at a reasonable/rational conclusion. Some organisms are better at reasoning than others, therefore some organisms tend to arrive at rational conclusions/exhibit rational behaviour more than others. The more an organism can arrive at rational conclusions, the more it can intentionally change the world around it. The more intention there is behind a change, the more artifical it is (which can also be seen in the word artifice).
@@PGraveDigger1 but the main point is what is this process on the basic level? Isn't it just molecules interacting, chemistry and physics, and therefore the results can't be differed from any other physical or chemical processes
Is it a natural wonder? That's really a question of where the line between natural and artificial is. Some things are unquestionably natural, formed entirely without the input of mankind; some things are unquestionably artificial, every component having been carefully manufactured and assembled into the whole. But this canyon is a collaboration between natural forces and humanity, which puts it in a gray zone. And, of course, there's the question of if there's any meaning at all to "artificial" as a term distinct from "natural". After all, we call the dams built by beavers and the cities built by termites "natural," but not dams or cities built by humanity. It's usually pedantic and can get in the way of the important points, but it's still a point worth considering when there aren't any such points in the discussion.
@William White I'm not sure if I entirely agree. Humans are natural, and at one point we lived wild and free in small groups. I guess it's similar to the chicken and the egg, at some point human behaviour ceased to be considered natural. But, if you get right down to it, the Earth birthed humanity. Our behaviour is as "natural" as an ant's behaviour. The only difference is scale.
Well words have meaning because we choose to give them meaning. I think this is more of a religious question. If you are religious then you would believe that humans transcend nature and are therefore separate from nature. If you aren’t religious then you would likely believe that humans are a natural aspect of the eco system. Maybe we’re an invasive species...but we’re still natural.
@@bolasblancas420 Ok, if words have meaning... At what point in our history did human behaviour stop being natural? Was it agriculture? Because other animals do that. Was it tool use? Cuz other animals do that too. Was it construction of structures? Other animals do that too. I'm genuinely curious where/when you'd define the line.
There's a gorge in Texas at Canyon Lake where an uncontrolled spillway ran over during a flood. It cut down to bedrock and exposed fossils in some places. Might wanna check it out if you're near Austin or San Antonio. Cheers!
HjFUN1 and get my Swiss watch stolen by some deputies out in the bush near some small town..then be railroaded by the small town DA and so called judge.. I don’t think so partner. Texas, where everything is bigger and corruption too.
I lived in Georgia most of my childhood and adult life (4 - 30). I had no idea this place existed.... and to answer your question, it is still a natural wonder, if only barely. Humans didn't go out to carve the canyon like art, it just kind of happened from us existing.
1 million years in the future... Alien Guide: _"-This canyon were naturally formed by an apelike creature, who lived here for a brief period of time during the planets sixth mass extinction..."_
I'd say the "natural" describes the focus rather than the construction. Because if not then a forest planted by humans is not natural, but I feel many would say it is. Most of the world has been affected by humans in some way, so nothing is truly natural. I completely get your point Tom. I just like questions
@@minecraftshieldworshiper7776 If you're playing ultra-hardcore (no life regen from food), gold is anything but useless! (golden apples mean life or death. Especially in PVP.).
The need to regularly adjust the fences reminds me somewhat of the Sulphur Works in the Lassen Volcanic National Park. A touristy location with a network of plankways to showcase the bubbling sulfur pools in the park, every few years the management has to close off some section of the plankway path because the ground becomes too unstable underneath.
Providence Canyon SP is the only place in the Eastern US where the landscape looks somewhat like Badlands NP in Western South Dakota, or like the badlands of Utah and New Mexico. You have to travel about 2000 miles west or northwest of Georgia to find another landscape similar to Providence Canyon.
You should check out Malakoff Diggins here in California. It looks very similar, but it was done intentionally in the late 1800s, using giant water cannons in order to mine gold. It was a major contributing factor in the flooding of Sacramento almost 100 years later.
There's something oddly fascinating with seeing you, a Britt, documenting the American South. Though in any case, your content is wonderful. Thank you!
Reminds me of a place I visited in Ireland which was a bog but on hills and only exists because people cut down the rainforest hundreds of years ago. It kept raining but no trees created bog, and now its preserved as a unique ecosystem with specially evolved plants and animals.
A bit like the Salton sea although tbf that has had water in it before and was probably part of the gulf of California at one point. But the water in it now was definitely caused by humans.
It’s just a couple of hours north of Tallahassee. It’s really neat to visit and hike down to the canyon floor (very safe). Lots of nooks and crannies to explore and marvel at.
Funny. I don't see anyone taking offense to a beaver dam. Those things cause massive flooding of lands that aren't meant to be wetlands. You don't see anyone crying that those are unnatural. We humams are just as much an animal as a beaver, so why are our construction projects considered such? Human narcissism, that's why. Humans are so full of themselves that we refuse to see ourselves as a part of the world. Humans think they somehow have the ability to play God despite the fact that we're little more than hairless apes.
It's not like it's some catastrophic event that forever contaminated the soil or killed all life in the area though. It's just a big ditch. Is it really that big of an oopsie?
Just to be clear, my family didn't farm there, didn't create drainage diversion ditches, and didn't create a massive irrigation system for their mono-crops. That's all I'm saying and I'm sticking to it.
"Manifesting their destiny"......Oh Tom. Spare us. As I recall: "The sun never sets on the British Empire"..... You chaps were manifesting yours for 300 years before we started manifesting ours.
I used to go here all the time when I lived in Columbus GA. There's an old Homestead with cars still there that have trees growing thru the cab and out the windows
Rodrigo Juez not sure what you are seeing on your screen. There are two possibilities: 2:09 is at a jump cut so a low-bandwidth video protocol might have significant compression artifacts, or else you are seeing the image as intended and mistaking the blurry background in the upper right part of the screen as being “low res” when in fact it’s just blurry because that part of the image is the opposite canyon wall and out of focus because it’s further away than the camera’s depth of field for that shot. Hope that helps 😀
Not stupidity, ignorance. There was no intent, nor was there any understanding. This is a very unique scenario that had soil composition like this. Not knowing because it's a new thing is ignorance, stupidity is bungling it up with the opportunity to know better.
There’s a place like that outside my Grandad’s house in East Texas. A rancher dammed up a stream so it could build a little lake and give his cows more water. The canyons is about as big as that one I’d say. Anyway then the rancher moved on over just abandoned the canyons and over the decades the dam collapsed leaving behind a little canyon and it keeps growing each year. Every time we go over their for Christmas I can tell more dirt has fallen in and canyon keeps widening I don’t know if it be something your interested in but it’s outside Porter, Tx on the Northeast side of Houston
I subbed after just a couple videos, I love the quality and the excitement of you’re videos, it’s such a pleasant surprise to see a great channel unlike the majority of RUclips trash. And I love learning
To be fair, the education for farmers in the 1800's was very poor, in fact it's one of the factors that led to the Great Depression in the 1920's, all of the farmers were bad businessman and farmers to the point of having too much yield to sell and dirt that was quickly turning into dust in the wind.
The correct name of the place is "Providence Canyon State Park" and the unstable area shown is only 1/2 square kilometer, which is approx 1000 by 500 yards in Amerispeak.
@@hermelamarkos3435 . . . as defined by people. Whether or not we put ourselves up on a pedestal to claim we are separate from nature, the fact still remains that we are a natural part of everything.
This is the last one from the Georgia roadtrip! I did want to descend into the canyon, but a massive storm had been through an hour earlier and turned most of the paths to mud...
1 month old comment on 1 minute old video
Loved your Georgia videos! They were very interesting!
I would argue that setting up the conditions to expose them was very much human, but the actual PROCESS of exposing them was 100% natural.
Thanks for visiting! I often forget how much we really do have here.
You take prescheduling videos to a whole new level.
When a tourist disappears they know it’s time to move the fence.
lmao
When the fence disappears they know for sure
Last time I went there one part of the path around the top side had no ground underneath it, just a layer of dirt held together by roots.
@@909sickle well at that point the fence was already moved, their work is done!
Nervous Tom Scott at the end 😂
'It's not a bug, it's a feature"
That is a perfect description of this canyon.
Thank you Bethesda, very cool!
thank you every modern game from a million dollar company, very cool
Thank you Minecraft, very cool!
thank you Apple, very cool!
Don't you hate it when you accidentally create an massive canyon?
It happens all the time to me. Damn, I hate it
A massive canyon.
I don't know. I quite like making massive, impressive canyons by accident. They're very nice to look at later and think: "Huh, when did I do THAT?"
Goddamit i did it again
Daniel Philpott all the time! I’ll wake up and I’ll have created a massive canyon in my backyard. So annoying!
2:04 A sign that just says "dont do it because I said so" isnt going to stop people. Just write "its just loose clay ya dingus, dont climb here" would be much more effective.
Explained rules are followed, unexplained rules are broken.
Nah, they just say "hold my beer" and go for it.
Well, not that they planned it but those who really think they have to climb there won't be missed
@@Hoch134 They will be missed by their friends and family. But, you can't fix stupid.
Since we have advanced medicine to save even vegetative babies when we are already overpopulated. At least there's still a bit of natural selection and evolution going on.
I'm not heartless, just real. The rich bastards that run the world don't think human life is very valuable.
@@markgigiel2722 Sadly, you are probably right; candidates for Darwin Awards are everywhere apparently
The sign also has a useful function in protecting the state park authorities from lawsuits brought by greedy relatives of dead morons 8-)
We battle the same sort of catastrophic soil loss from overfarming in the Central Kentucky Karst (where Mammoth Cave is). Once one of those scars gets started, it's damned difficult to stop. Letting the forest take over abandoned farmland is a good beginning.
Or grassland. Everyone forgets that Kentucky has a lot of natural grasslands but they are trying to turn them into forests ruining the ecosystem there and killing off tons of native plantlife.
I live in Kentucky and didn't know that haha!
We see it all the time where they mined chert for construction too.
There's something similar in Spain called Las Médulas, only deeper, wider and longer. It was very much manmade though by the Romans, as a source of gold. The way they eroded and burst those hills is actually very intricate, and a very interesting visit if you're in the area.
Thanks, I didn't know this. I googled it and it looks spectacular. Interesting place.
I no spanish
They collapsed those hills with the slaves that dug the tunnels still inside. Romans were brutal!
hydraulic mining
@@asktheetruscans9857 They learned it from you guys!
Hey, isn't this the guy who threw two drums and a cymbal off a cliff 9 years ago?
Just to get the Badum tish for a joke :)
Yes it is.
Hey, isn't this the guy who was on that gameshow "Only Connect" series 3 episode 4 nine years ago?
That was just cymbalic
That video was just recommended to me literally right before this one.
"Until settlers manifested their destiny all over this continent" that's a way of saying it , almost fell off my bed laughing
It makes the description... a little more spunky
the bill wurtz way of saying it
I like the part where the settlers said "it's manifesting time!" And manifested all over everyone
@@battlesheep2552 no
The "Manifest Destiners" Manifest Destinied all over the continent
"It's probably fine." (backs away slowly)
"Either they didn't know about crop rotation, or they didn't care."
Yes
They didnt know, this peaked during the dust bowl.
@@3DGEM3 Well... Crop rotation ,in one form or another, has been around for a very long time.
Even if you look back into the Bible's Old Testament there is what can arguably be called a form of crop rotation but even if you don't go back that far, crop rotation was definitely a thing in Europe in the middle ages.
Not sure what crop rotation has to do with razing the Earth and it eroding away. Crop rotation is for keeping a nutrient balance in the soil.
"Crop rotation in the 14th century was considerably more widespread after John Lloyd invented the patent crop rotator." Neil
Adam Kendall
Instead of constant use, where most of the land would be virtually barren for possibly months after harvest, crop rotation would have meant more land would have more vegetation on it more of the time; so no-matter the season there would have been vegetation to intercept precipitation and absorb the water, thus drastically reducing erosion.
You're right as far as this wouldn't stop all erosion, but it could of helped a great deal.
2:17 I'm sure the people who carved "ABC" into the cliff were following those warnings...
They fell whilst trying to write the next letter...
How did you manage to spot that? Must have eyes like an eagle 😆
@@patagonia816 I only noticed it because for some odd reason I paused right when the video showed them.
@@Hoch134 There's actually an FG below it and some other markings inbetween that could be D and E
Like Michelangelo said the sculptures are inside the stone, the letters were inside the sediment.
Interesting tangent, as I recall from being a kid growing up in Georgia & visiting same canyon... Providence Canyon was a major justification all on it's own for the import of Kudzu, which is the invasive species vine that forms all those crazy topiary sculptures you've been seeing the past few days Tom. Kudzu being an attempt to help control erosion that worked a bit... TOO well. In a lot of ways Georgia is kind of the USA'S Australia, in terms of being the poster child of why countries need to quarantine for invasive species borking up the local ecology.
Hell yeah. Bamboo and kudzu are just... *everywhere*
Kudzu is less a problem here in SE Texas because we have this thing I call Hell Vine that kills it. It makes massive tubers underground contrary to the laws of thermodynamics, and when Kudzu gets growing, the hell vine sprouts from its tubers and chokes the kudzu. I call it hell vine because of the thorns.
Another similarity between OZ and Georgia: BOTH were dumping areas for Limey criminals.
@@brucewelty7684 yea but Australia’s just kinda endearing for it, Georgia is.. kinda nasty
I've seen more Kudzu in NC than in Jawja. Maybe I wasn't lookin' hard enough.
“No, no. I didn’t accidentally create a canyon, boss.”
"manifested their destiny all over the continent" is probably the best way I've heard of putting it
2:17 someone carved the alphabet into it?
I'd wager it's just their initials or something. The whole alphabet would be a bit pointless and time consuming me thinks.
I've been there before, all the "rock" there is incredibly soft as we was saying. You can easily carve your initials into it with your finger. There's a lot of places where people have carved into it.
No that's just natural erosion over millions of years resembling the alphabet, pfft everyone knows that.
PyroNinja713 I can read the letters “ABC” and “FG” for sure. Could easily convince myself that I see an “E” as well, and perhaps the remains of a “D”. I’m watching on my phone so a bigger screen might work better.
@@olivermarr5017 Kind of like Mount Rushmore. Isn't it amazingly coincidental that those particular faces happened to form in the rocks? Nature is awesome.
I think it should be counted as a natural wonder. It wasn’t like a single human event made it, but humans are a part of nature I feel in the grand scope of things.
Nate and Noah Try Life so... nothing is artificial?.
Witness the iPhone XX! Best most magical Natural Wonder in the world.
@@bolasblancas420 I would say not, everything we do fits within what nature has aloud us to do
In my world, artificial has a meaning.
Nate and Noah Try Life its naturally artificial
2:08 When the textures haven't loaded yet
I've looked at that 20 times and I don't understand why it looks so odd.
@@reksie7816 it's further down and out of focus
@@ZainDhananil1k3ab0s5 oh now I see hahaha
RTX Off
I came to the comments literally because of this.
2:28 I dislike the implication that humans are not a part of nature, and that everything we do is unnatural…
It’s a very human concept to assume that nothing should ever or can ever change over time. Technically, yes this is a man made change but the water is still following the paths it always did. The soil was just destabilized. It’ll fill back up.
Its a bit of both we are animals, but this excessive weath seeking we do can nolonger be called animalistic/natural.
The farming wasnt the unnatural part, it was the re-discovering of those continents that was.
Reminds me of an area in Spain called Las Médulas. It's a old open cast gold mine created by the Roman's. Very scenic now, after 2000yrs of natural weathering, but the mining was so extensive, the area became unstable and hastened the erosion. Well worth a look though.
Thanks for your well presented videos.
“Whoops!” *_*ENTIRETY OF GEORGIA COLLAPSES*_*
bro... no
And nobody notices.
Oh well, peaches weren't that good anyways
I know you said it as a joke, but it's in Southern Ga which is more sedimentary rock. A good bit of Ga is granite, and if I remember correctly the rest is metamorphic? But don't quote me on that.
@@evanallaire2829 Too late, the granite isn't magma
Manifesting my destiny always makes a mess.
Tbf, its not like making a canyon for tourists is that big of a mess
I manifested my destiny all over that canyon
@mMMM SNIpPERCLIPs damn, bro
@mMMM SNIpPERCLIPs Pyromaniac.
I manifested my destiny all over Christy Canyon
Lewd
Pass The Butter Robot like doing coco
This reminds me of something I did when I was rather small (I might have been like 7 or younger at the point). Me and my family were on vacation to a beach in Denmark I think it was, the memories are a little fuzzy since I wasn't very old). There was some kind of small lake (or rather a very big puddle) on the beach. Me and my siblings (possibly also my dad) decided to dig a trench from the "lake" into the ocean (as kids on the beach do), so we did. It was fun and playtime and we succeded. Water was flowing in a stream of about 10-20 cm from the "lake" to the ocean. Happy with our work, we went on to do something else, eventually leaving the beach. When we came back the day after, our small trench had turned into a huge river, maybe 1 meter across. A lot of people were standing there, looking at the thing we accidentally created.
Details of this might be a little fuzzy (again, I was possible younger than 7 years old), and I'm not 100% sure this actually happened. But yes, I feel the settlers of Georgia, having accidentally created a river.
The people just watching it makes it way funnier!
I would consider this a "natural" wonder simply because not only was the ground not stable to begin with, but it was natural occurances like erosion that ultimately created the canyon. All the settlers really did was get rid of the trees, which in turn meant the water didn't get soaked up by roots (and grass from all the trampling by walking on it) and just sat and made the ground even more unstable and then eroded said ground downhill over the course of decades. So they caused it by the trees but nature took the wheel after that.
agreed, one wildfire might have done the same
We have a similar phenomenon up here in Ontario called the Cheltenham Badlands that was created under very similar circumstances. In the 1930s poor farming practices led to erosion that exposed the underlying shale and this reminded me of it because it exhibits a similar pattern due to the red oxide in the deposits, although it's not quite as deep. The conservation authorities had similar concerns about further erosion so it was closed off for a time but it's been reopened with new trails that prevent visitors from climbing all over the formations
It's fortuitous that you've posted this as I'm heading to Georgia in a few weeks and this was one of the places I was going to swing by. Now I will for sure.
My question throughout this video: "But can I climb here?"
Tom: "You cannot climb here." **ROCKFALL**
Me: "Okay, do not climb here."
Gravity sucks...
They have hiking here that requires gear and fall protection
Providence canyon is a good place for hiking, primitive camping and for a school project outing which involves geology. I highly recommend visiting this park however you do need to be in shape for your trek into and from the bottom. I live in this area and the office I work out of, wildland fire control, is only 6 miles away. This county and the one to the south has an excessive amount of these gullies (+ 10 ft deep) hidden within the woods. Most are overgrown by trees and kudzu which is very effective in slowing the rate of erosion which causes these gullies to grow. However this makes wildland fire control, at night from the seat of a bulldozer, extremely difficult and dangerous.
I am going to disagree with the narrators accusation that these people did not care. In order to make these fields, they cleared the woods in this area BY HAND. They used axes and cross-cut saws to drop the huge old growth timber and then cut it up into small enough pieces to be drug off by a mule. Then they used shovels to dig up the stumps. They were unaware of soil type in accordance to erodability. By the time they realized their mistake the only choice that they had was to install terraces to divert the water which would destroy part of the crops and severely limit the amount of food they could store up for the winter or wait until Fall when the crops have been gathered. Unfortunately most chose the latter where they realized that a mule and a plow was highly insufficient to rehab the erosion that had already occurred. After a few years most abandoned their efforts and moved off to find flatter land. Please understand, the majority of this started in the mid 1800s when heavy farming and earth moving equipment simply did not exist, I find it very difficult to accept that they did not care, especially after that much manual labor.
"That's probably fine, probably fine" whispered Tom while slowly walking away from the canyon edge :)
In a way, them getting exposed was natural too. Humanity might have allowed it to happen by removing the trees that kept the sand stable, but it was water that caused the slow change from flat land, to canyon. Humanity only gave it a starting point.
Sage Channel so... nothing is artificial?.
@@bolasblancas420 I think it's more a sliding scale with on the one end the concept of "natural" and on the other hand the concept of "artificial". Everything that has existed on this planet ultimately comes from nature. I think that the amount of intentionality behind the construction of something partly determines the artificiality of something. I further think that the more a species (or an individual from a specific species) is capable of reasoning, the more that species can intentionally construct things, and the more the things that that species constructs are artificial. So, a beaver dam or a termite hill are artificial to some extent, while something like a tool made by a non-human primate is more artificial, and a smartphone is even more artificial. I don't think that you can say that artificial versus natural is a strict dichotomy. The question is more: what determines the naturalness or artificialness of a construction.
@@PGraveDigger1 but then what is reasoning?isnt it a process of nature aswell, doesn't is apllie to the same rules?
@@supremebohnenstange4102 Reasoning is a process of nature, but reason isn't. Whether or not something is reasonable (in other words rational) is objective. Reasoning is merely the attempt to arrive at a reasonable/rational conclusion. Some organisms are better at reasoning than others, therefore some organisms tend to arrive at rational conclusions/exhibit rational behaviour more than others. The more an organism can arrive at rational conclusions, the more it can intentionally change the world around it. The more intention there is behind a change, the more artifical it is (which can also be seen in the word artifice).
@@PGraveDigger1 but the main point is what is this process on the basic level? Isn't it just molecules interacting, chemistry and physics, and therefore the results can't be differed from any other physical or chemical processes
Is it a natural wonder? That's really a question of where the line between natural and artificial is. Some things are unquestionably natural, formed entirely without the input of mankind; some things are unquestionably artificial, every component having been carefully manufactured and assembled into the whole. But this canyon is a collaboration between natural forces and humanity, which puts it in a gray zone.
And, of course, there's the question of if there's any meaning at all to "artificial" as a term distinct from "natural". After all, we call the dams built by beavers and the cities built by termites "natural," but not dams or cities built by humanity. It's usually pedantic and can get in the way of the important points, but it's still a point worth considering when there aren't any such points in the discussion.
Humans are a natural phenomenon, after all.
@William White I'm not sure if I entirely agree. Humans are natural, and at one point we lived wild and free in small groups.
I guess it's similar to the chicken and the egg, at some point human behaviour ceased to be considered natural.
But, if you get right down to it, the Earth birthed humanity. Our behaviour is as "natural" as an ant's behaviour. The only difference is scale.
Andy Lord no... words have meaning.
Well words have meaning because we choose to give them meaning. I think this is more of a religious question. If you are religious then you would believe that humans transcend nature and are therefore separate from nature. If you aren’t religious then you would likely believe that humans are a natural aspect of the eco system. Maybe we’re an invasive species...but we’re still natural.
@@bolasblancas420 Ok, if words have meaning... At what point in our history did human behaviour stop being natural?
Was it agriculture? Because other animals do that.
Was it tool use? Cuz other animals do that too.
Was it construction of structures? Other animals do that too.
I'm genuinely curious where/when you'd define the line.
There's a gorge in Texas at Canyon Lake where an uncontrolled spillway ran over during a flood. It cut down to bedrock and exposed fossils in some places. Might wanna check it out if you're near Austin or San Antonio. Cheers!
Yas! Came here to post this. 210 baby
HjFUN1 and get my Swiss watch stolen by some deputies out in the bush near some small town..then be railroaded by the small town DA and so called judge.. I don’t think so partner. Texas, where everything is bigger and corruption too.
@@cattleNhay well.... I won't argue with you on that
I lived in Georgia most of my childhood and adult life (4 - 30). I had no idea this place existed.... and to answer your question, it is still a natural wonder, if only barely. Humans didn't go out to carve the canyon like art, it just kind of happened from us existing.
it is a wonder of Human Nature you can say...
@@stanislavkostarnov2157 humans are a part of nature, though. Does anyone call it unnatural when a beaver dams a river?
@@SkunkApe407 I meant Human nature in a different sense....
1 million years in the future...
Alien Guide: _"-This canyon were naturally formed by an apelike creature, who lived here for a brief period of time during the planets sixth mass extinction..."_
I'm not sure alien's would be so ape-centric in their definitions...
Perhaps something about years of erosion and vegetation loss
I'd say the "natural" describes the focus rather than the construction. Because if not then a forest planted by humans is not natural, but I feel many would say it is. Most of the world has been affected by humans in some way, so nothing is truly natural.
I completely get your point Tom. I just like questions
Humans are part of nature. Just a weird and unfitting the rest of the pattern one.
On the plus side, you’ll get to diamond level quicker now!
@Nothing in Particular +1, this is clearly a mesa biome.
@@minecraftshieldworshiper7776 If you're playing ultra-hardcore (no life regen from food), gold is anything but useless! (golden apples mean life or death. Especially in PVP.).
Where are the mineshafts though?
You can't get enchanted gapples though
Oooh, a Minecraft reference.
I remember those.
The need to regularly adjust the fences reminds me somewhat of the Sulphur Works in the Lassen Volcanic National Park. A touristy location with a network of plankways to showcase the bubbling sulfur pools in the park, every few years the management has to close off some section of the plankway path because the ground becomes too unstable underneath.
1:38, those rocks sticking out of the sand look like gold nuggets.
there's gold in dar hills
*jumps off the railing*
All I see is corn… XD
Providence Canyon SP is the only place in the Eastern US where the landscape looks somewhat like Badlands NP in Western South Dakota, or like the badlands of Utah and New Mexico. You have to travel about 2000 miles west or northwest of Georgia to find another landscape similar to Providence Canyon.
this is a video from the present not a present but the present.
Stop
@@dfwai7589 Hammer time!
(Insert "I got that reference" meme here)
SciBlast Official
Insert (insert here meme)
@@sciblastofficial9833 I did not. help?
More like Artificial Blunder.
"Until settlers manifested their destiny all over this continent."
Pure comedy gold.
Or just gold?
I loved how you made Manifest Destiny sound like a bukkake scene from a porno. lmao
Erosion mitigation can be aided by contour farming as well as cover crop to hold soil. Crop rotation purpose is nutrient replenishing.
I like this channel all the videos are short sweet and to the point which makes easy and enjoyable to watch
You should check out Malakoff Diggins here in California. It looks very similar, but it was done intentionally in the late 1800s, using giant water cannons in order to mine gold. It was a major contributing factor in the flooding of Sacramento almost 100 years later.
"Probably Fine"
Famous last words.
@2:10 I thought the rocks were poorly rendered like in an old video game but then realized they're in the background and just blurry.
Or maybe Tom is just showcasing his latest game
Graphics cards weren't as good back when the canyon was made.
*Fallout 76 intensifies*
@@tmoneytechnic Jesus Christ, nowhere is safe.
RTX Off
Grand Canyon: "I formed over millions of years."
Georgia settlers: "MEDIOCRE"
the mediocre canyon
The Grand Canyon did not form initially over millions of years. It formed when a natural dam released a huge amount of water rather quickly.
I’ve lived near Atlanta for 17 years and have never heard of this place!
There's something oddly fascinating with seeing you, a Britt, documenting the American South.
Though in any case, your content is wonderful. Thank you!
You could probably say the same about the Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan.
Reminds me of a place I visited in Ireland which was a bog but on hills and only exists because people cut down the rainforest hundreds of years ago. It kept raining but no trees created bog, and now its preserved as a unique ecosystem with specially evolved plants and animals.
I used to go hiking here as a kid. My middle school science teacher was a park ranger here on the weekends.
I love this channel. Always informative and always interesting. Thank you!
A bit like the Salton sea although tbf that has had water in it before and was probably part of the gulf of California at one point. But the water in it now was definitely caused by humans.
Vulcans: Yep, accidentally making a valley does sound about right for the humans.
there are no mistakes, just happy little accidents.
Well, a happy giant accident
I live in Georgia and I have never heard of this. Thanks for the upload! Looks like my wife and I are going on a road trip soon.
Be prepared to be underwhelmed. The hiking trails around it are much more interesting than the "canyon" itself.
It’s just a couple of hours north of Tallahassee. It’s really neat to visit and hike down to the canyon floor (very safe). Lots of nooks and crannies to explore and marvel at.
*_"Until settlers manifested their destiny all over this continent"_*
😂😂😂
You are SO good at making videos. This is so interesting and educational.
oh i had no idea you came here
sad i missed you, chief
-sincerely, a georgian fan
@Moritz der Echte oh no providence canyon is in the us state of georgia i'm a native english speaker
Love the way Tom says "probably fine" at the end
Reminds me of the Malakoff Diggins in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California. The diggins were created by the hydraulic mining for gold.
This is in Stewart county which has a very low population. Not much light pollution. The night skies there are some of the best in the state.
Probably why I haven't heard of the place.
Darn... I happened to go there and camp a cloudy night. My area has a lot of light pollution sadly. Btw, are you related to Jack Pattillo, AH Member
People that were there must be "caught in a landslide, no escape..."
"From reality..."
"Open your eyes..."
"Look up to the skies..."
@@bendtfender2894 "And see..."
@@lizs004 I'm just a poor boy...
2:18 of you look REALLY REALLY carefully... you can see some dude from millions of years ago are tryna learn there alphabets
Good news: Tom Scott survived to make more videos.
"I accidentally a whole canyon." "You accidentally what?" "A whole canyon."
This is some very visual evidence of the sort of impact we can have on nature, even by accident.
Funny. I don't see anyone taking offense to a beaver dam. Those things cause massive flooding of lands that aren't meant to be wetlands. You don't see anyone crying that those are unnatural. We humams are just as much an animal as a beaver, so why are our construction projects considered such?
Human narcissism, that's why. Humans are so full of themselves that we refuse to see ourselves as a part of the world. Humans think they somehow have the ability to play God despite the fact that we're little more than hairless apes.
"Settlers manifested their destiny all over this continent" Adding that phrase to the lexicon.
we need to have a lexicon by pretending some version of english or another is going extinct, that would be great
Humans did a big oopsie this time
It's not like it's some catastrophic event that forever contaminated the soil or killed all life in the area though. It's just a big ditch. Is it really that big of an oopsie?
Newby ton no
Wait a second--geologists said the Grand Canyon took millions of years to create. Oops.
"Tens of millions of years" and "not compacted by time." 😂🤣
Just to be clear, my family didn't farm there, didn't create drainage diversion ditches, and didn't create a massive irrigation system for their mono-crops. That's all I'm saying and I'm sticking to it.
You should have checked out the Tallulah Gorge!
"Manifesting their destiny"......Oh Tom. Spare us. As I recall: "The sun never sets on the British Empire"..... You chaps were manifesting yours for 300 years before we started manifesting ours.
Britain: that's a nice island you have in some remote corner of the ocean. 🧐
I used to go here all the time when I lived in Columbus GA. There's an old Homestead with cars still there that have trees growing thru the cab and out the windows
Georgia has a whole world inside. They have their own Stonehenge, and now a grand canyon... Craziness.
2:09 Whats Up with the low res texture
Rodrigo Juez not sure what you are seeing on your screen. There are two possibilities: 2:09 is at a jump cut so a low-bandwidth video protocol might have significant compression artifacts, or else you are seeing the image as intended and mistaking the blurry background in the upper right part of the screen as being “low res” when in fact it’s just blurry because that part of the image is the opposite canyon wall and out of focus because it’s further away than the camera’s depth of field for that shot. Hope that helps 😀
The top right of the screen is much further in the distance. Like down the canyon. So it's out of focus.
Portrait mode.
Christ guys, it was a joke
@@jophiel999 oh, I fail to see the humour. Must be out of my wheelhouse.
I thought it said
The canyon that made humans by accident
Ha! Glad I'm not the only one.
Definitely a natural wonder. Made by the most powerful force of nature: human stupidity.
Not stupidity, ignorance. There was no intent, nor was there any understanding. This is a very unique scenario that had soil composition like this. Not knowing because it's a new thing is ignorance, stupidity is bungling it up with the opportunity to know better.
I've been there a few times. It's awesome. Super super cool. You can walk all through it
I’m glad you had fun in GA. Come back again soon!
"Oops! Honey, I did it again."
Humans are natural, you silly Billy.
It's never too late to learn what words are for.
Ah yes I do love looking at the world's natural wonders like the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty!
when u have eier kletter up
yes
@@nichtvorhanden5048 hah yes
@@PCAiN hahaha yes
@@fortunex353 hahahhahah yes
There’s a place like that outside my Grandad’s house in East Texas. A rancher dammed up a stream so it could build a little lake and give his cows more water. The canyons is about as big as that one I’d say.
Anyway then the rancher moved on over just abandoned the canyons and over the decades the dam collapsed leaving behind a little canyon and it keeps growing each year. Every time we go over their for Christmas I can tell more dirt has fallen in and canyon keeps widening
I don’t know if it be something your interested in but it’s outside Porter, Tx on the Northeast side of Houston
I subbed after just a couple videos, I love the quality and the excitement of you’re videos, it’s such a pleasant surprise to see a great channel unlike the majority of RUclips trash. And I love learning
I think it's cool. I'm glad we made this. We should make more.
The settlers were used to European and English soil. Crop rotation was decades away. If they had considered it, they may have done things differently.
But British soil needs crop rotation too. They were using crop rotation from the middle ages, centuries before this event.
To be fair, the education for farmers in the 1800's was very poor, in fact it's one of the factors that led to the Great Depression in the 1920's, all of the farmers were bad businessman and farmers to the point of having too much yield to sell and dirt that was quickly turning into dust in the wind.
"all we are is dust in the wind.. "
The correct name of the place is "Providence Canyon State Park" and the unstable area shown is only 1/2 square kilometer, which is approx 1000 by 500 yards in Amerispeak.
I always thought this was started by the use of primitive water cannons blasting away in search of gold.
Always a curious thing, how people exclude people as being a part of nature.
But that is literally how culture - the opposite of nature - is defined. Everything humans created.
@@hermelamarkos3435 . . . as defined by people.
Whether or not we put ourselves up on a pedestal to claim we are separate from nature, the fact still remains that we are a natural part of everything.
"Tens of millions of years"? Why didn't it compact into sedimentary rock like all the deposits we've been told about?
Not enough pressure. It takes time AND pressure for that to happen.
2:25 but humans are part of nature so yea it is definitely natural
Terrible logic
I’ve been there!! It’s really cool because you can find old residents cars out along the trails
There is a similar condition somewhere in Southern Mississippi. Same geology same issue same results. A highway is moved every few years due to it..