The canyon that humans made by accident
The tourist guides promote it as Georgia’s Little Grand Canyon: but this is a scar on the Earth, caused by humans either not understanding or not caring about geology. Is it natural? Or man-made? Or both?
🟥 MORE FROM TOM: https://www.tomscott.com/
(you can find contact details and social links there too)
📰 WEEKLY NEWSLETTER with good stuff from the rest of the internet: https://www.tomscott.com/newsletter/
❓ LATERAL, free weekly podcast: https://lateralcast.com/ https://youtube.com/lateralcast/
➕ TOM SCOTT PLUS: https://youtube.com/tomscottplus
👥 THE TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES: https://youtube.com/techdif

@TomScottGo
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
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…
@schrodinger6991
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Interesting ecosystem
@treesmantrees
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Bit snotty for me.
@stananderson4524
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Same with the Desert of Maine.
@l.clevelandmajor9931
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
I live just a couple of hours drive from where this canyon is located. It stands as a lesson concerning bad farming practices. It is currently around 150 to 160 years old. Shows that canyons can form a lot faster that geologists say they can! I suspect that the Grand Canyon out west is no more that 3 or 4 thousand years old itself.
@trdgoeds
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
I would say the line is drawn between something that is deliberately constructed, and something that happened just because it happened.
@sudd3660
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
look at the comments, many do not know what man made means.
can i give up on humanity now?
@MrForest_123
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Someone tell Milo from mini minuteman, this goes well with the Great Raft
@samuelspace101
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Honestly should we really say this isnt natural, under the implication that human deeds can't produce natural events, its a good philosophical question and from my point of view, this hasnt cuased any bad, as far as im aware its even created new habitat and shade for many animals, and its not dangerous, except for the occasional rockfall, its well maintained and preserved and healthy.
@rbaxter286
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Yep, that's why I see the American Southwest as just a case of extremely poor land management, at the bottom of it all, when I see things like this in GA, where I live, and in SC, across the border.
Nothing scenic is mass wastage when you can see green life elsewhere.
@user-tb2jy9lu3d
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
2:20 Anyone know where the carvings on there came from? I see "ABC" "5G" "Th FC" and such that is a bit hard to make out. Was that carved out by someone before it eroded down to that point?
@stevecastle1730
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Natural wonder in the west: We subducted an entire oceanic plate under our crust, lifting a plateau of solid rock made of ancient sand dunes 6000 feet in the air and cut a 300 mile 6000 foot deep canyon in it.
Natural wonder in Georgia: we accidently cut down all the trees and made a 150 foot deep ditch in a pile of loose dirt.
@victordauphin2949
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
It's as natural as a beehive or a skyscraper. We're just as part of nature as any other species and so's everything we build.
@bobbarclay316
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Human activity? So what?
Just yesterday the press was celebrating the fact that a sunken ship will become a brand new coral reef where there was none before.
Which is it? Keep human hands from changing the planet, or let humans add coral reefs because we like them?
@stevefarmer1228
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
It’s ALL natural, if you can grok my reasoning; for better or worse, ‘humans’ ARE a part of nature, despite a belief we may somehow be ‘apart’, from nature.
@ron.does.stuff.
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
I thought that the title was: the canyon that made humans by accident 💀
@CalebHurely-bo6ff
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
When you say it’s a scar on the land yet the trees don’t mind I don’t think it’s a scar. It’s not the same as a bunch of chemicals poured on it
@Gkitchens1
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
You totally twisted this. It isn't man made at all, its a natural wonder that was created as nature's way of responding to our neglect.
@ashadowawhisper
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
What? You mean that wasn’t carved out little by little by a trickle of water over 30 million years?
@JackMcGuire-em7nt
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
This is called an Intermediate Geo-material (IGM). its usually considered a type of weak rock. soil cant sustain 90 degree slopes by definition.
@stroopwafelfalafel
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
2:18 who graffiti’d the canyon?
@DrTiborTBR
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
I did not make it and Im human….
@c4feg4r44
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
I mean humans are animals, animals are natural so. Ye.
@Novabella101
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
“Manifest destining all over this continent” 😂
@ryanmaxwelll2730
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Aren't humans part of nature? Why do we always presume ourselves to be outside nature? If gophers or moles are worms digging holes in this area were to cause the same type of erosion, would that be natural?
@nickc6332
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Tens of millions of years ago??? The Earth is NOT that old!!! Claiming that geological formations take millions of years is the most passed around LIE I've ever seen. This is the definition of Mansplaining. These people have ZERO ideas of what they're talking about. Passing this garbage off as factual should be a crime. This is ridiculous.
@Lenzcam
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
The weather is overcast, the colors in Providence Canyon can look muted. On my last trip to the canyon, though, the weather was perfect, and the colors of the canyon walls just popped without adjusting the color saturation.
@LA2047
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
When I see things like this "wonder of nature" that was caused by man's inability to consider consequences, I'm reminded of places like Glass Beach near Fort Bragg in California. The only reason Glass Beach exists is because for decades humans used the area offshore as their landfill, dumping absolutely everything they threw in the trash into the ocean. Tides and waves relocated much of it back to the nearby shore, where waves did what waves do and turned the broken glass into smooth multi-colored "gems" aaaaall over the beach. The government forced them to clean up the site eventually but in a case of humans never passing up a chance at making money, they decided to leave all the glass beads because they kinda looked cool and hey, we can charge people to come see the beach covered in smooth glass beads. In the irony of ironies, however, NOW the beach has signs lamenting the destruction of the beach because in the intervening decades humans have done what humans do and have systematically stripped the beach of the gems through souvenir collecting, returning the beach almost entirely back into its original state. I find that rather comically ironic.
@StevenDCook-rl5dg
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
I wouldn’t go down in the canyon floor. Darwin Award.
@StevenDCook-rl5dg
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Even if it isn’t, natural in a classic sense, there’s probably not an intervention that wouldn’t do more harm than good. Nature appears to be trying to achieve a new equilibrium and it may take millennia.
@markbrown2615
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Reminds me of the Desert of Maine. Human ignorance doesn’t count as ‘natural’.
@denniscrane9753
February 3, 2026 at 6:20 pm
Made in a couple decades? How old is the Grand Canyon really?
Comments are closed.