Devastating comet to hit Earth in next 20 years, claims best-selling author

London: Graham Hancock, the best-selling author has claimed that a devastating comet – big enough to end life as we know it - is hitting the Earth in next 20 years.

As per a report from the Daily Mail, Hancock, whose new book is called 'Magicians Of The Gods' says that more than 200 ancient myths tell of a human civilisation brought to an end by flood and fire.

“Within the next 20 years, Earth faces a catastrophe a thousand times worse than the detonation of every nuclear weapon on the planet - a collision with the remnants of a comet big enough to end all life as we know it,” he told the Daily Mail.

“To understand what that could mean, we need to look back at the tumultuous epoch between 10,800 BC and 9,600 BC, which geologists call the ‘Younger Dryas.”

Claiming that warning signs have been ignored for “millennia”, he argues scientific advances have finally decoded urgent messages from our ancestors.

“A cataclysm rocked our planet 12,800 years ago, causing mass extinctions of large animals such as the mammoth and sloth bears, and all but wiping out our own race. An entire episode in the human story was rubbed out, a chapter not of unsophisticated hunter-gatherers but of advanced technology,” he added.

Graham also claims scientists have only recently begun to accept that the words of ancient storytellers were actually based on fact - not fiction.