Catastrophic.Dates and Events

This is a compilation of articles referring to catastrophic events in the Earth’s recent past for the end of the Ice Age and early Holocene. This is to demonstrate some of the difficulties in determining dates for events and determining which events went together. Several of the following listings are describing the same or similar events, the trouble is in sorting it all out. I am merely borrowing the chronology from another site without making any attempt in evaluating the likelihood of any individual event or the date given for it.

http://www.barry.warmkessel.com/4related.html#g

A.THE 12,945 BC STRIKE – Swarm A – 14,945 YA ◦A Thousand Years Earlier A STRANGE COINCIDENCE….(26000 YEARS) SUPER WAVE THEORY AND ALL DR LAVIOLETTE PREDICTIONS THAT HAVE BEEN VERIFIED IS THIS THE WARNING WE NEED !! – 4/30/2010 Concordance (2000): LaViolette discovered evidence indicating that the largest acidity spike in the entire Antarctic ice core record was of extraterrestrial origin, possibly produced by a major incursion of interstellar or cometary dust; see paper posted at solar.html. The date of this event, beginning 13,880 B.C. and tailing off 13,785 B.C., closely corresponds to the date encoded in zodiac star lore marking the arrival of a galactic superwave. Verification (2004): Glaciologists find that the concentrations of iridium and platinum in submicron sized “meteoritic smoke?particles present in polar ice are two to three times higher during the last ice age. Verification (2007): A group of scientists, the Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) group, reports high levels of extraterrestrial indicators (Ir, Ni, cosmic spherules, microtektites, 3He, fullerenes at the 12,950 yrs b2k Alleröd/Younger Dryas boundary layer that overlies extinct megafauna and Clovis artifacts. Verification (2008): LaViolette locates the legendary solar conflagration event in Summit, Greenland ice cores. Using correlations to the Cariaco Basin varve chronology, he dates this event at 12,885 years b2k. He finds that it is marked by a sudden increase in atmospheric radiocarbon concentration which occurs together with a climatic warming climate in Greenland changing from glacial to interglacial temperatures within less than two years. He finds that the event is also associated with an increase of ammonium, oxylate, and formate ion, which is indicative of a period of global biomass combustion. This suggests that this is the time of the conflagration that produced the Usselo Horizon. He also finds that it occurs together with an acidity ECM spike lasting less than a month as well as a rise of nitrate ion, both being indicators of a dramatic rise in the influx of solar cosmic rays. ◦Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike WHEN DID HUMANS RETURN AFTER LAST ICE AGE? Technological advances have allowed researchers at Oxford University and London’s Natural History Museum to date the bones more accurately. Previous radiocarbon dates suggested a wide span of occupation of within 1000-1500 years. The new dates show a much narrower range of dates, corresponding precisely to climate warming, providing evidence that the archaeological material in the cave could have accumulated over perhaps as little as two to three human generations, centred on 14,700 years ago. Professor Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum Palaeontologist, commented: ‘ We were puzzled that the human bones we excavated in Gough’s Cave about 20 years ago, including those that may have been cannibalised, seemed to be up to a thousand years different in age. The new dating methods show instead that the butchery and consumption of both horses and humans occurred in a very short space of time, about 14,700 years ago. So as Europe rapidly defrosted, family groups probably followed herds of horses into Britain across grasslands where the North Sea is today.’ ◦Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike GOUGHS CAVE (CHEDDAR) The Cheddar Gorge in Somerset was one of the first sites inhabited by humans when they returned to Britain towards the end of the last Ice Age. New radiocarbon dates on bones from Gough’s Cave show people were living there some 14,700 years ago. The results confirm the site’s great antiquity and suggest human hunters re- colonised Britain at a time of rapid climate warming. From 24,000 years ago, an ice sheet extended over much of Britain. Beyond that ice sheet, in southern Britain and much of northern France, the environment resembled a polar desert. Evidence suggests these inhospitable conditions kept people out of north-west Europe for more than 9,000 years. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike A NEW TRIGGER FOR ICE AGE RETREAT About 14,600 years ago, a huge pulse of freshwater drained from continental ice sheets into the world’s oceans. Over 500 years, a discharge equivalent to five Amazon Rivers raised sea level by 20 meters ?marking one of the most dramatic chapters in Earth’s episodic climb out of the last Ice Age. Traditionally, paleoclimatologists have thought that the meltwater came from the Laurentide Ice Sheet, responding to an abrupt warming of the northern hemisphere called the Bolling-Allerod. The first evidence for a massive meltwater pulse came from Barbados in 1989. Dating of remnant corals in Barbados that had lived near the ocean surface prior to the meltwater deluge indicated that the pulse occurred 14,235 years ago, several hundred years after the onset of the Bolling-Allerod warming. ◦Swarm A SYNCHRONOUS HIGH AND LOW-LATITUDE NORTH ATLANTIC CLIMATE CHANGE DURING THE LAST DEGLACIATION ◦Swarm A:Cl – 1/2 Strikes MORE ON ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE: THE H1 TO BA TRANSITION B.THE 11,600 BC STRIKE – Swarm B’ – 13,600 YA ◦ THE YOUNGER DRYAS Note: 13.65 kyr BP aka YA (during the Bolling/Allerod) C.THE 11,000 BC STRIKE- Swarm B – 13,000 YA Lamb 1977 reported a Global Climatic Boundary at 2760 BP. The Younger Dryas cold period began 12,679 BP and by subtracting the radio carbon 2760 BP date provides the nominal 9919 years (supposedly two Vulcan orbital revolutions. The error uncertainty in the 2760 BP date is (2735 to 2788) cal.yr BP and the net error in the difference is +/- 32 years. Vulcan’s period computed from the comet impacts that may have caused these two weather changes and is half this interval, or 4959.5 +/- 16 years. Vulcan’s theoretical period computed by this web site 4969.0 years is two times this value is = 9938 +/- 11.5 years (one sigma error) compared to the 9919 +/- 32 year value from the comet induced weather change data. The impacts are thought to come from the B:Cl-2. ◦ A GIANT METEOR – NOT OVERHUNTING – WIPED OUT THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH BECAUSE IT STRUGGLED TO COPE WITH THE RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE THAT FOLLOWED – 21 May 2013 * A meteor hitting the Earth 12,800 years ago released toxic gases into the air and blocked out the sun causing temperatures to plummet and plants to die * Some species managed to adapt but the woolly mammoth died out It has long been thought that hunting was the cause of the creatures’ extinction, but researchers have now revised their opinion. They believe a huge meteor smashing through the Earth’s atmosphere broke up into ten million tonnes of fiery fragments, scattering over four continents. These fragments are thought to have released toxic gas which poisoned the air and blacked out the sun, causing temperatures to plummet, plants to die and landscapes to alter forever. ◦ DID A COMET REALLY CHILL AND KILL CLOVIS CULTURE? – 28 February 2013 A comet crashing into the Earth some 13,000 years ago was thought to have spelled doom to a group of early North American people, and possibly the extinction of ice age beasts in the region. But the space rock was wrongly accused, according to a group of 16 scientists in fields ranging from archaeology to crystallography to physics, who have offered counterevidence to the existence of such a collision. But no explanation for the event is offered. This is an effort to off-ramp true researchers. ◦ COMET IMPACT DID NOT WIPE OUT PREHISTORIC HUMANS – January 31, 2013 Researchers from Royal Holloway University, together with Sandia National Laboratories and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe, have found evidence that rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth’s climate and terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance. Disinformation from the US government again. ◦ DID A MASSIVE EXTRATERRESTRIAL BODY IMPACT EARTH 12,000 YEARS AGO? – October 01, 2012 New research results are consistent with a controversial theory that an extraterrestrial body – such as a comet – impacted the Earth approximately 12,900 years ago, possibly contributing to the significant climatic and ecological changes that date to that time period. The paper in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) includes significant findings about the nature of so-called “microspherules” that were found at a number of prehistoric sites, based on research done at North Carolina State. ◦ TOPPER SITE IN MIDDLE OF COMET CONTROVERSY – September 18, 2012 That’s a question that has been hotly debated by scientists since 2007, with the University of South Carolina’s Topper archaeological site right in the middle of the comet impact controversy. However, a new study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) provides further evidence that it may not be such a far-fetched notion. ◦ CASE CLOSED? COMET CRASH KILLED ICE AGE BEASTS – 19 September 2012 A space rock crashed into Earth about 12,900 years ago, wiping out some of North America’s biggest beasts and ushering in a period of extreme cooling, researchers say, based on new evidence supporting this comet-crash scenario ◦ NEW EVIDENCE THAT EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT KILLED OFF THE MAMMOTHS – June 12, 2012 At three sites, however — in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Syria — they found melted glass that could only have been formed at very high temperatures. The glass, similar to that observed following the Trinity nuclear test explosion in New Mexico, was formed at temperatures of 3,100 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperatures that would have been reached during an impact event. Chemical studies showed that the material was not cosmic in origin, not man-made and no volcanic. The evidence of impact, the team said, now covers at least a third of the planet, ranging from California to Western Europe and the Middle East. The fact that melted glass has been found at several locations, they added, indicates that the meteor or comet that struck the Earth broke up during its entry to the atmosphere and struck at multiple locations. The team has yet to identify a limit to the debris field. ◦ STUDY FINDS NEW EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THEORY OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT – June 11, 2012 An 18-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has discovered melt-glass material in a thin layer of sedimentary rock in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Syria. According to the researchers, the material — which dates back nearly 13,000 years — was formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius (3,100 to 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit), and is the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth. These new data are the latest to strongly support the controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis, which proposes that a cosmic impact occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. Morphological and geochemical evidence of the melt-glass confirms that the material is not cosmic, volcanic, or of human-made origin. “The very high temperature melt-glass appears identical to that produced in known cosmic impact events such as Meteor Crater in Arizona, and the Australasian tektite field,” said Kennett. “Because these three sites in North America and the Middle East are separated by 1,000 to 10,000 kilometers, there were most likely three or more major impact/airburst epicenters for the YDB impact event, likely caused by a swarm of cosmic objects that were fragments of either a meteorite or comet,” said Kennett. ◦ NO LOVE FOR COMET WIPEOUT – 23 April 2012, Pigati says he accepts Firestone’s criticisms but stands by his team’s findings and interpretations. “We admit in our paper that we can’t disprove the impact hypothesis,” he notes. “Our point is that some of the spherules and other markers [cited in the 2007 report] aren’t uniquely produced by impacts.” ◦ DID A DEEP IMPACT CAUSE A DEEP FREEZE? – March 12, 2012 These nanodiamonds, they claim, support a controversial hypothesis that a comet or asteroid hit Earth 12,900 years ago. This would be right at the onset of a period called the Younger Dryas, known colloquially as the Big Freeze, and it’s when species like mastodons, woolly mammoths, saber-tooth cats, and dire wolves went extinct. “The youngest fossils of these animals are about 12,900 years old. There used to be a large diversity of animals in North America, but once the Younger Dryas came about, that changed” ◦ STUDY SUPPORTS COSMIC IMPACT HYPOTHESIS ABOUT 13K YEARS AGO – 07 March 2012 The approximate 13,000-year-old layer could be evidence that a cosmic body, such as an asteroid or comet, impacted Earth at about that time period in Earth’s history. Such impacts have occurred in the past on Earth, and will continue in the future. ◦ METEOR STRUCK MEXICO ALMOST 13,000 YEARS AGO, EXPERTS SAY – March 06, 2012 An international scientific team has identified in Lake Cuitzeo, in central Mexico, unusual materials in the sediment that support the theory of a meteorite impact some 12,900 years ago, according to an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The team, headed by Isabel Israde Alcantara, of Mexico’s Universidad Michoacana, said in the article that the layer of black lake sediment is rich in carbon and contains nanodiamonds and micro-spherules dating from the beginning of the so- called Younger Dryas period, an abrupt and very short cold interval that started about 12,900 years ago. “Our attention focused very quickly on an anomalous layer, about 10 centimeters (4 inches) thick and at a depth of 2.8 meters (9 feet) deep, which dates from some 12,900 years ago and coincides with several anomalous environmental and biotic changes, recognized independently in other … regional lake samples,” the article continues. Essentially, the scenario painted by the scientists is this: About 13,000 years ago, a piece of a comet or asteroid hurtled into the atmosphere at a shallow angle, superheating the atmosphere around it as it plunged toward the surface. The air grew hot enough to ignite plant material and melt the rock below the object’s flight path. Within a few microseconds, atmospheric oxygen was consumed and the freed carbon atoms condensed into nanodiamond crystals. The shock wave from the meteorite blew these nanodiamonds and other carbon particles high into the atmosphere and spread them widely. Larger mammals in North America not killed by the blast starved, unable to forage on the scorched earth, and human populations there also dwindled. The shock to the atmosphere was enough to lower global temperatures for more than 1,000 years. ◦ SCIENTISTS SEE SIGNS OF ANCIENT COSMIC HIT – Mar 6, 2012 The data suggest a comet or asteroid at least several hundred yards in diameter entered the atmosphere at a relatively shallow angle, with the resulting impact with Earth causing burned biomass, melted surface rocks, and major environmental disruption, researchers said. “These results are consistent with earlier reported discoveries throughout North America of abrupt ecosystem change, megafaunal extinction, and human cultural change and population reduction,” Kennett said. “These changes were large, abrupt, and unprecedented, and had been recorded and identified by earlier investigators as a ‘time of crisis.’” ◦ NEW RESEARCH SUPPORTS THEORY OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT – Mar. 5, 2012 A 16-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has identified a nearly 13,000- year-old layer of thin, dark sediment buried in the floor of Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico. The sediment layer contains an exotic assemblage of materials, including nanodiamonds, impact spherules, and more, which, according to the researchers, are the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth. ◦IF NOT BY IMPACT, THEN WHAT? – 16 May 2011 I asked NASA’s David Morrison what he thought of these things. He expressed his doubts that so many craters could be all the same age. He said he thought that a cluster impact event would be “Highly unlikely”. Pictures in ‘CraterField’ ASTEROID AND COMET IMPACT HAZARDS – Responsible NASA Official David Morrison ◦Swarm B:Cl-2(and components?) DID A MASSIVE SOLAR PROTON EVENT FRY THE EARTH – Jun 06, 2011 Now, Starburst Foundation researcher Dr. Paul LaViolette has found evidence that this mysterious die-off may have had a solar flare cause. In his paper published this week in the journal Radiocarbon, LaViolette concludes that a super sized solar proton event (SPE) impacted the earth about 12,900 years ago (12,837+/- 10 calendar years BP).* The Cariaco Basin varve chronology dated these events at 12,837 years BP and 12,639 years BP. Interestingly, they were separated by 198 +/- 9 years, or nine Hale solar cycle periods. This interval also matched the 200-year de Vries solar cycle period which is believed to be one of the most prominent of the Sun’s solar cycle periods. This was the smoking gun that indicated that these spurts very likely had a solar cause. The Younger Dryas cold period began 12,679 BP. Thus there seemed to be three dates when members of the B Swarm’s clusters appear to have impacted Earth. These are ◾12,837+/- 10 BP Swarm B:Cl-? ◾12,679 BP Swarm B:Cl-2 ◾12,639 BP Swarm B:Cl-? ◦ COMET THEORY COMES CRASHING TO EARTH – May 14, 2011 But now, four years after the purportedly supportive evidence was reported, a host of scientific authorities systematically have made the case that the comet theory is “bogus.” Researchers from multiple scientific fields are calling the theory one of the most misguided ideas in the history of modern archaeology, which begs for an independent review so an accurate record is reflected in the literature. “It is an impossible scenario,” says Mark Boslough, a physicist at Sandia Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M., where he taps the world’s fastest computers for nuclear bomb experiments to study such impacts. His computations show the debris from such a comet couldn’t cover the proposed impact field. In March, a “requiem” for the theory even was published by a group that included leading specialists from archaeology to botany. Yet, the scientists who described the alleged impact in a hallowed U.S. scientific journal refuse to consider the critics’ evidence — insisting they are correct, even though no one can replicate their work: the hallmark of credibility in the scientific world. ◦ THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE: AN HOUR-LONG STORM STARTED A MINI ICE AGE, SAY SCIENTISTS – 2nd April 2010 An hour-long hailstorm from space bombarded the Earth 13,000 years ago – plunging the planet into a mini-ice age, scientists claimed today. The catastrophe was caused by a disintegrating comet and saw the planet sprayed by thousands of frozen boulders made of ice and dust. The collisions wiped out huge numbers of animal species all over the world, disrupted the lives of our stone age ancestors and triggered a freeze that lasted more than 1,000 years. Scientists have long been puzzled by what caused a sudden cooling of up to 8C (14F) just as the Earth was warming up at the end of the last ice age. ◦ EVIDENCE FOR AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT 12,900 YEARS AGO THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE MEGAFAUNAL EXTINCTIONS AND THE YOUNGER DRYAS COOLING – R. B. Firestone et al. Communicated by Steven M. Stanley, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, July 26, 2007 (received for review March 13, 2007) ◦ THE YOUNGER DRYAS IMPACT EVENT AND THE CYCLES OF COSMIC CATASTROPHES – CLIMATE SCIENTISTS AWAKENING ◦ NEW EVIDENCE OF ICE AGE COMET FOUND IN ICE CORES – March 30, 2010 A new study cites spikes of ammonium in Greenland ice cores as evidence for a giant comet impact at the end of the last ice age, and suggests that the collision may have caused a brief, final cold snap before the climate warmed up for good. In the April Geology, researchers describe finding chemical similarities in the cores between a layer corresponding to 1908, when a 50,000-metric-ton extraterrestrial object exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, and a deeper stratum dating to 12,900 years ago. They argue that the similarity is evidence that an object weighing as much as 50 billion metric tons triggered the Younger Dryas, a millennium-long cold spell that began just as the ice age was loosing its grip (SN: 6/2/07, p. 339). The presence of ammonium suggests that the Tunguska object was most likely a comet, rather than asteroids or meteoroids, Melott says. Any object slung into the Earth’s atmosphere from space typically moves fast enough to heat the surrounding air to about 100,000?Celsius, says Melott, so hot the nitrogen in the air splits and links up with oxygen to form nitrates. And indeed, nitrates are found in snow around the Tunguska blast. But ammonium, found along with the nitrates, contains hydrogen that most likely came from an incoming object rich in water ?like an icy comet. More than a century after the impact, scientists are still debating what kind of object blew up over Tunguska in 1908. They also disagree about whether an impact or some other climate event caused the Younger Dryas at the end of the ice age. But the presence of ammonium in Greenland ice cores at both times is accepted. “There’s “a remarkable peak of ammonium ions in ice cores from Greenland at the beginning of the Younger Dryas,” comments Paul Mayewski, a glaciologist at the University of Maine in Orono who was not involved in the new study. The new findings are a compelling argument that a major extraterrestrial impact occurred then,” he notes. Whenever a comet strikes Earth’s atmosphere, it leaves behind a fingerprint of ammonium, the researchers propose. Immense heat and pressure in the shock wave spark the creation of ammonia, or NH3, from nitrogen in the air and hydrogen in the comet. Some of the ammonium, or NH4+, ions generated during subsequent reactions fall back to Earth in snow and are preserved in ice cores, where they linger as signs of the cataclysmic event. ◦ COMET CREATED TINY DIAMONDS AND KILLED THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH – Oct 8, 2010 UCSB professor’s study shows evidence of impact causing mass extinction “There is a layer in the ice with a great abundance of diamonds,” said Kennett in a press release. “Most exciting to us is that this is the first layer of diamonds ever found in glacial ice anywhere on Earth. The diamonds are so tiny that they can only be observed with special, highly magnifying microscopes. They number in the trillions.” This study fuels the heated debate that scientists have been having about diamonds, comets and mammoths since last year. In 2009, Kennett discovered similar nanodiamonds on Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara that first suggested that a comet impact caused extinction. This sparked a debate from other scientists, who disputed that an impact could create shock waves powerful enough to turn rocks into diamonds and trigger the mini-Ice Age that killed the mammoths and other large mammals. Some were also unconvinced that the researchers even found diamonds at all, although three separate labs confirmed their composition. Other research studies were published with results that contradicted Kennett’s conclusions. ◦ ‘DEEP FREEZE’ DIDN’T AFFECT SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE – 8 September 2010 Approximately 13,000 years ago, as the last ice age was winding down, Earth’s Northern Hemisphere reverted to a near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas. Temperatures dropped by 15?C, and giant ice sheets again advanced south from the Arctic. But things were much different in the Southern Hemisphere. New data reveal that the globe’s bottom half continued to warm its way out of the ice age, even as the north temporarily plunged back into a another deep freeze. And geomorphologist Martin Kirkbride of the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom says the study pinpoints “the timing of glacier advances as precisely as is technologically possible.” That’s very important, he says, for understanding how ocean circulation transmitted climate change across Earth’s surface at the end of the ice age. ◦ REVISITING THE YOUNGER DRYAS – 17 July 2010 Several of the key features of the study include: 1. The global mean cooling of the LGM relative to the peak of our current interglacial is approximately 5ºC as a minimum value. It is likely larger than this since many of the records are from the ocean which are typically less sensitive to temperature change than landmasses, and further, adiabatic cooling of marine air advected over land masses would result from the ~120 m reduction in sea level. The cooling is global in scale and largest at high latitudes, as expected from polar amplification. 2. In contrast, during the YD, there is much more spatial heterogeneity as the North became colder and drier (increasing with latitude) while the South became warmer and wetter in the opposite sense. The global mean cooling during the YD is only ~0.6ºC . The tropics cooled by 2.5ºC (with an error of about a degree in either direction) at the LGM, yet exhibited very little temperature change during the YD. Thus, while the YD was a global scale climate change event with widespread signatures, it was not a widespread global cooling event. 3. The timing of the LGM and peak interglacial is synchronized between hemispheres on orbital timescales, which the authors attribute primarily to the global radiative forcing provided by CO2. As has been noted in the past, the CO2 lags the onset of deglaciation in most records, as this is paced by summer insolation changes. However the CO2 still acts as the dominant temperature- change influence throughout the deglacial period and provides an effective means to communicate temperature anomalies to the tropics. On the other hand, the YD exhibits the well-known bipolar see-saw effect which involves a reduction in northward heat transport, which warms the South. The see-saw is best expressed in the mid to high latitudes, although the see-saw model is a poor descriptor for the tropical variability. As a conclusion, over the last couple of years, there has now been growing evidence that an event similar to the YD is not “unique” but instead is a common theme across various deglacial events; this provides evidence against the necessity for a “catastrophic trigger,” and while it may be the case that a comet or some other catastrophe occurs at each termination, that seems improbable. ◦ DID A SIGNIFICANT CLIMATE CHANGE EVENT, KNOWN AS YOUNGER DRYAS, IMPACT CLIMATE AROUND THE GLOBE? – July 22, 2008 “The whole point is that this was a time of rapid environmental transition that we do not understand the cause for,” says Lowell. “One of the primary things you have to understand before you can attribute cause is how widespread the event was. That’s a question my work in the Southern hemisphere has been associated with. “It just might be that we don’t have the necessary dating techniques to make these determinations.” There are only a handful of known locations in the Southern hemisphere (one of which is Quelccaya) where samples for both kinds of testing can be obtained at the same site. ◦ NEW STUDY CHALLENGES CLOVIS COMET CATASTROPHE THEORY – 2010-09-30 ◦ UA ARCHAEOLOGIST, COLLEAGUES FIND NO EVIDENCE OF CATASTROPHIC IMPACT – September 30, 2010 ◦ PREHISTORIC FIRST HUMANS IN NORTH AMERICA WERE NOT WIPED OUT BY A COMET – 1st October 2010 ◦ MINI-ICE AGE DEBATE ROCKING GEOLOGY WORLD – September 11, 2010 Comets are believed by some experts to have wiped out megafauna species ◦ NO EVIDENCE FOR ANCIENT COMET OR CLOVIS CATASTROPHE, ARCHAEOLOGISTS SAY – ◦ NANODIAMONDS DISCOVERED IN GREENLAND ICE SHEET – 2010-09-09 Nanosize diamonds have been discovered in the Greenland ice sheet, according to a study reported by scientists in a recent online publication of the Journal of Glaciology. The finding adds credence to the controversial hypothesis that fragments of a comet struck across North America and Europe approximately 12,900 years ago. “There is a layer in the ice with a great abundance of diamonds,” said co- author James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara. “Most exciting to us is that this is the first such discrete layer of diamonds ever found in glacial ice anywhere on Earth, including the huge polar ice sheets and the alpine glaciers. The diamonds are so tiny that they can only be observed with special, highly magnifying microscopes. They number in the trillions.” The event also corresponds with the time of extinction of many large animals across North America, including mammoths, camels, horses and the saber tooth cat. There is also evidence of widespread wildfires at that time, said Kennett. An associated sharp climatic cooling called the Younger Dryas cooling is also recorded widely over the northern hemisphere. A high proportion of the nanosize diamonds in the Greenland ice sheet exhibit hexagonal mineral structure, and these are only known to occur on Earth in association with known cosmic impact events, said Kennett. This layer of diamonds corresponds with the sedimentary layer known as the Younger Dryas Boundary, dating to 12,900 years ago. ◦ CLUE TO HOW LAST ICE AGE ENDED – Sep. 8, 2010 As the last ice age was ending, about 13,000 years ago, a final blast of cold hit Europe, and for a thousand years or more, it felt like the ice age had returned. But oddly, despite bitter cold winters in the north, Antarctica was heating up. For the two decades since ice core records revealed that Europe was cooling at the same time Antarctica was warming over this thousand-year period, scientists have looked for an explanation. ◦ SCIENTIST SMACKDOWN: NO PROOF THAT A COMET KILLED THE MAMMOTHS? – August 31st, 2010 Nearly 13,000 years ago, North American megafauna like the mammoths and giant sloths—and even human groups like the people of the Clovis culture? disappeared as the climate entered a cold snap. ◦ ARIZONA’S MAMMOTH HUNTERS — OUT WITH A WHIMPER OR A BANG? – April 14, 2010 Did a change in climate or an extraterrestrial impact bring an end to the beasts and people that roamed the Southwest shortly after the last ice age? When the last ice age came to an end approximately 13,000 years ago and the glaciers covering a large portion of the North American continent began melting and retreating toward the north, a sudden cooling period known as the “Big Freeze” or, more scientifically, the Younger Dryas, reversed the warming process and caused glaciers to expand again. Even though this cooling period lasted only for 1,300 years, a blink of an eye in geologic timeframes, it witnessed the disappearance of an entire fauna of large mammals. The big question, according to Haynes, is ‘Why did those animals go extinct in a very short geological timeframe?’” “When you go out and look at the sediments deposited during that time, you see this black layer we call the Black Mat. It contains the fossilized remains of a massive algae bloom, indicating a short period of water table rise and cool climate that kept the moisture in the soil. Below the Black Mat, you find all kinds of fossils from mammoths, bison, mastodons, Dire wolves and so forth, but when you look right above it &’ nothing.” Scientists have suggested several scenarios to account for the rapid Pleistocene extinction event. Some ascribe it to the rapid shift toward a cooler and dryer during the “Big Freeze,” causing widespread droughts. Does this mean the results obtained by Haynes and his coworkers rule out the possibility of a cosmic event? “No, it doesn’t,” Haynes said. “It just doesn’t make it very likely.” ◦DID A COMET TRIGGER A MINI ICE AGE? – 5 April 2010 Known as ‘the Younger Dryas’, it has been also called the Big Freeze and the Last Blast of the Ice Age – but for researchers trying to understand the Earth’s ancient climate, it’s one of the big mysteries of the field. Around 12,900 years ago, Earth was on a steadily warming trend after almost 100,000 years of harsh glaciation, during which ice sheets placed a swathe of the northern hemisphere under a dead hand, extending their thrall as far as south as New England and Wales. Unexpected plunge in temperature But just as the glaciers were beginning to retreat, and an easier life at last beckoned for Earth’s tiny population of humans, everything went into reverse. Temperatures fell dramatically by up to 8°C, heralding a cruel winter that would last 1,300 years. But what caused it? Earth collided with debris from a vast comet, measuring 50 to 100 km across, that had wandered into the inner Solar System some 30,000 years ago before breaking up, says Bill Napier, a professor at Cardiff University’s Astrobiology Centre. The impact unleashed a firestorm that blanketed the atmosphere with ash and dust, reducing heat and light from the Sun, Napier suggests in Monthly Notices, a journal of the Royal Astronomical Society. What is worrying, adds Napier, is that our planet still crosses the path of the remaining orbiting cometary rubble, a well-observed, although still enigmatic, phenomenon called the Taurid Complex. Many of these fragments are tiny and their burnup in the atmosphere, causing periodic showers of meteo Scepticism from astronomers Other astronomers, though, have railed at this theory. At the time, they note, the Solar System had been largely cleansed of the monster rocks of its infancy, and the chance of a collision with an object of this magnitude was a thousand to one against. Unless there is a Vulcan in the outer solar system to draw in Kuiper Belt objects, that is. ◦ WHAT CAUSED THE YOUNGER DRYAS COLD EVENT? – April 2010, v. 38, no. 4 The Younger Dryas Cold Event (ca. 12.9?1.6 ka) has long been viewed as the canonical abrupt climate event (Fig. 1). The North Atlantic region cooled during this interval with a weakening of Northern Hemisphere monsoon strength. Greenland ice cores also show ammonium (NH4+) increases during the Tunguska event and the Younger Dryas (Fig. 1B). While biomass burning is implicated for the Younger Dryas increase (e.g., Firestone et al., 2007), the amount of burning during the Tunguska event is too small to account for the ammonium increase of >200 ppb (Melott et al., 2010). Another alternative, involving direct ammonium deposition from the bolide, still fails to account for the observed Tunguska increase. The authors thus suggest a third mechanism called the Haber process that could account for both the Younger Dryas and Tunguska increases, in which, under high pressure, nitrogen and hydrogen can form ammonia. For the Tunguska increase, a potential impact with permafrost could provide the hydrogen, whereas the Laurentide Ice Sheet itself might be the hydrogen source for the Younger Dryas impact. ◦SCIENTIST SMACKDOWN: EVIDENCE OF A MAMMOTH-KILLING COMET, OR BUG POOP? – June 23rd, 2010 It makes for a good movie: 12,900 years ago, a comet slams into Earth, igniting forest fires across North America and sending the planet into a thousand cold years, killing off mammoths, giant sloths, and a bunch of other big mammals. But scientists have fiercely debated whether such a movie, about the cause of the planet-wide cooling period called the Younger Dryas, should be documentary or science fiction ◦THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE: AN HOUR-LONG STORM STARTED A MINI ICE AGE, SAY SCIENTISTS – 02nd April 2010 An hour-long hailstorm from space bombarded the Earth 13,000 years ago – plunging the planet into a mini-ice age, scientists claimed today. The catastrophe was caused by a disintegrating comet and saw the planet sprayed by thousands of frozen boulders made of ice and dust. The collisions wiped out huge numbers of animal species all over the world, disrupted the lives of our stone age ancestors and triggered a freeze that lasted more than 1,000 years. The theory is the brainchild of Professor Bill Napier, from Cardiff University, who says it explains the mysterious period of extinction around 11,000 BC. Scientists have long been puzzled by what caused a sudden cooling of up to 8C (14F) just as the Earth was warming up at the end of the last ice age. The change in climate caused retreating glaciers to advance once again, and coincided with the extinction of 35 families of North American mammals. The collision left behind tell tale traces in the rocks – including a black ‘mat’ of soot an inch thick thought to have been created by continental wide wildfires. Microscopic ‘nanodiamonds’ created in massive shocks and only found in meteorites or impact craters have also been discovered dating back to the disaster These findings have led to claims that a 2.5mile long comet or asteroid smashed into the ice sheet covering what is now Canada and the northern US. But other scientists say the chances of the Earth being struck by such a large object only 13,000 years ago are one thousand to one against. And they say a single impact cannot explain such widespread fires. Happens up to 12 to 15 times every ten thousand years. ◦Swarm B:CL-1 – 12,800 YA to 12,900 YA ◦ NEW EVIDENCE OF ICE AGE COMET FOUND IN ICE CORES – March 30, 2010 In the April Geology, researchers describe finding chemical similarities in the cores between a layer corresponding to 1908, when a 50,000-metric-ton extraterrestrial object exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, and a deeper stratum dating to 12,900 years ago. They argue that the similarity is evidence that an object weighing as much as 50 billion metric tons triggered the Younger Dryas, a millennium-long cold spell that began just as the ice age was loosing its grip (SN: 6/2/07, p. 339). Whenever a comet strikes Earth’s atmosphere, it leaves behind a fingerprint of ammonium, the researchers propose. Immense heat and pressure in the shock wave spark the creation of ammonia, or NH3, from nitrogen in the air and hydrogen in the comet. Some of the ammonium, or NH4+, ions generated during subsequent reactions fall back to Earth in snow and are preserved in ice cores, where they linger as signs of the cataclysmic event. ◦SIGNS OF GIANT COMET IMPACTS FOUND IN CORES – March 30th, 2010 Copious ammonium may be evidence of a 50-billion-ton strike at the end of the ice age ◦SCIENTISTS FIND SIGNS OF 13,000-YEAR-OLD EXTINCTION EVENT – January 02, 2009 Comet may have exploded over planet, causing fires, die-offs, researchers say The idea that a comet may have caused catastrophic climate change and extinction relatively recently in Earth’s long history suggests scientists shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of it happening again, Wolbach said. “Should we be doing more to try to deflect future asteroids, or is that too scientfic” she said. “If this is true and there was an impact 12.9 thousand years ago, obviously this is not something that’s just a theoretical idea, it’s a real thing.” ◦ GEMS POINT TO COMET AS ANSWER TO ANCIENT RIDDLE – January 2, 2009 Something dramatic happened about 12,900 years ago, and the continent of North America was never the same. A thriving culture of Paleo-Americans, known as the Clovis people, vanished seemingly overnight. Gone, too, were most of the largest animals: horses, camels, lions, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, ground sloths and giant armadillos. In just the last few years, there has arisen a controversial scientific hypothesis to explain this chain of events, and it involves an extraterrestrial calamity: a comet, broken into fragments, turning the sky ablaze, sending a shock wave across the landscape and scorching forests, creatures, people and anything exposed to the heavenly fire. Now the proponents of this apocalyptic scenario say they have found a new line of evidence: nanodiamonds. They say they have found these tiny structures across North America in sediments from 12,900 years ago, and they argue that the diamonds had to have been formed by a high-temperature, high-pressure event, such as a cometary impact. ◦ GEMS SHOW COMET HIT CONTINENT, SCIENTISTS SAY – January 2, 2009 Diamonds are generally considered a sign of love and devotion, but a thin layer of microscopic diamonds a couple of feet beneath the surface of North America represents a far more horrific tale – one of fire, flood and devastation that extinguished woolly mammoths and dealt a blow to early civilization, scientists reported today. According to the theory – which has its critics – as the comet broke apart, it rained fire over the entire continent, igniting the plains and forests and creating choking clouds of smoke. Heat from the explosions and fires melted substantial portions of the Laurentide glacier in Canada, sending waves of water down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico. That caused changes in Atlantic Ocean currents, which started a 1,300-year ice age known as the Younger Dryas. Battered by fire and ice, as many as 35 species of mammals including American camels, mammoths, mastodons, the short-faced bear, the giant beaver, the dire wolf and the American lion either immediately vanished or were so depleted in number that humans hunted them to extinction. The humans themselves, a Paleo-Indian grouping known as the Clovis culture for the distinctive spear points they employed, suffered a major population drop, disappearing in many areas for hundreds of years. ◦ JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE: DID A COMET CAUSE THE CAROLINA BAYS? These elliptical, wetland depressions, often rimmed with white, crystalline sand, are sprinkled along much of the North Carolina coast and parts of the eastern seaboard from Georgia to the District of Columbia. To Howard and those who share both his interest and his theory, these droplet-shaped dents (often choked with bay trees, hence the name) were most likely caused by a life- obliterating comet that landed on earth about 13,000 years ago: in geologic terms, quite recently. Howard wants to prove this, and he wants the world to take note. Yes a comet caused the Carolina Bays, but 11,600 years ago, not 13,000 years ago. ◦ EXPLODING ASTEROID THEORY STRENGTHENED BY NEW EVIDENCE LOCATED IN OHIO, INDIANA Geological evidence found in Ohio and Indiana in recent weeks is strengthening the case to attribute what happened 12,900 years ago in North America — when the end of the last Ice Age unexpectedly turned into a phase of extinction for animals and humans ?to a cataclysmic comet or asteroid explosion over top of Canada. A comet/asteroid theory advanced by Arizona-based geophysicist Allen West in the past two years says that an object from space exploded just above the earth’s surface at that time over modern-day Canada, sparking a massive shock wave and heat-generating event that set large parts of the northern hemisphere ablaze, setting the stage for the extinctions. Now University of Cincinnati Assistant Professor of Anthropology Ken Tankersley, working in conjunction with Allen West and Indiana Geological Society Research Scientist Nelson R. Schaffer, has verified evidence from sites in Ohio and Indiana ?including, locally, Hamilton and Clermont counties in Ohio and Brown County in Indiana ?that offers the strongest support yet for the exploding comet/asteroid theory. The only plausible scenario available now for explaining their presence this far south is the kind of cataclysmic explosive event described by West’s theory. “We believe this is the strongest evidence yet indicating a comet impact in that time period,” says Tankersley. ◦ THE END OF AN (ICE) AGE University researchers Douglas Kennett and Jon Erlandson are part of a group of scientists proposing that a comet or asteroid hit North America about 13,000 years ago – near the end of the last ice age – and contributed to major events in the continent’s history, including the die-off of horses, mammoths and other large mammals around the same time. ◦ ICE AGE COMET THEORY CAUSES BIG BANG – Some say it hit U.S. 13,000 years ago Now a research group that includes two University of Oregon scientists is proposing a more dramatic cause for the extinctions: A 3-mile-wide comet or asteroid exploded over Canada or slammed into the continent about 13,000 years ago. University of Oregon archaeologists Douglas Kennett and Jon Erlandson are among about two dozen scientists who say the impact also could have led to the abrupt cooling known as the Younger Dryas, which lasted 1,200 years. The researchers laid out their proposed theory recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They say the evidence is in a 2-inch-thick carbon-rich black mat found in about 50 sites across North America. Their article says the layer contains grains with iridium, carbon spherules and fullerenes packed with concentrations of helium 3, “all of which are evidence for an extraterrestrial impact” about 12,900 years ago and the raging wildfires that followed. They suggest that heat from the detonation or impact may have set off wildfires across the continent and destabilized the vast Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered much of Canada and the northern United States. The melting of ice may have led to a flood of fresh water, changing ocean currents in the North Atlantic and contributing to the cooling climate that reduced human populations and added to the demise of the animals. No giant crater has been found from the impact, but the scientists say the comet may have broken into smaller pieces and detonated in various places. “If a comet hit the Laurentide Ice Sheet, it would not have left a big crater,” Erlandson said. “It’s ice on ice, and it’s going to throw up enormous amounts of shattered ice and debris.” ◦ EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT WIPED OUT LIFE DURING ICE AGE What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But now, a new study has reported evidence of a comet or low-density object barrelling toward Earth, exploding in the upper atmosphere and triggering a devastating swath that wiped out most of the large animals, their habitat and humans of that period. “The detonation either fried them or compressed them because of the shock wave. It was a mini nuclear winter,” said Ted Bunch, NAU adjunct professor of geology and former NASA researcher who specializes in impact craters. Till date, no one has found a giant crater in the Earth that could attest to such a cataclysmic impact 13,000 years ago. But the research team has offered evidence of a comet, two and a half to three miles in diameter, that detonated 30 to 60 miles above the earth, triggering a massive shockwave, firestorms and a subsequent drastic cooling effect across most of North America and northern Europe. “The comet may have broken up into smaller pieces as it neared the Earth and then these pieces detonated in various places above two continents,” Bunch said. ◦ RESEARCH TEAM SAYS EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT TO BLAME FOR ICE AGE EXTINCTIONS 24-Sep-2007 – What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home. A team of international researchers, including two Northern Arizona University geologists, reports evidence that a comet or low-density object barreling toward Earth exploded in the upper atmosphere and triggered a devastating swath of destruction that wiped out most of the large animals, their habitat and humans of that period. ◦ WERE ANCIENT AMERICANS WIPED OUT BY METEOR STRIKE? Some 12,900 years ago disaster struck the North American continent. The Earth’s climate, which had been getting steadily warmer at the tail end of the retreating Ice Age, suddenly dropped catastrophically. The megafauna, such as camels and mammoth died out. And the first people to populate the American landscape saw their numbers drop by an estimated 75%. A number of explanations have been offered for why this happened. One of the latest is that cataclysmic event thought to have caused several other upheavals in the Earth’s history, an impact from outer space. Some event took place at the start of what we now call the Younger Dryas period, that had a violent effect on the Earth’s climate world wide. While the temperature dropped in the north, the hunter-gatherers of the Levant and Middle East saw their surroundings stricken by severe drought. Many hold that this drought was the impetus for the invention of agriculture in this region, rich in easily domesticated plants and animals, setting mankind on the road to urbanisation, trade, and modern civilisation. The Clovis people were not so lucky. The melting glaciers that had covered Canada and large swaths of the United States had formed a giant fresh water sea, called Lake Agassiz, bigger than all of the present-day Great Lakes combined, in the center of North America. The remaining glaciation formed a dam, preventing a gradual run-off into the Atlantic. At some point, 12,900 years ago, that dam burst, and enormous quantities of cold fresh water drained into the North Atlantic in a deluge. And now some scientists are theorising that an impact might have contributed to three events almost 13,000 years ago, the sudden cold period, the disappearance of 35 large species of mammals (the horse and camel actually evolved in the Americas, and survived by crossing the Bering land bridge, heading the opposite way as the migrating humans, before they became extinct in their native environment), and the collapse of the Clovis culture. The demise of the megafauna could be explained by the Clovis hunters driving them to extinction. And the traditional Lake Agassiz deluge and the subsequent colder climate would suffice to explain the rest. But great systemic breakdowns are ususally not due to a single isolated event, but to a confluence of blows. While the system might have survived one, the second, or even third, proves fatal. At the joint assembly of the American Geophysical Union, which came together in Acapulco, Mexico on the 24th of May this year, a group of researchers presented their findings, which pointed to a major impact event on the North American continent at close to the start of the Younger Dryas period. A comet, some five kilometres across, entered the Earth’s atmosphere, and exploded above the northern ice sheet, causing, among other damage, the catastrophic deluge of melt-water into the Atlantic. While they have been unable to point to any central impact crater, this could be explained by the bolide disintegrating in the air, and the principal strike zone being covered by glaciation. They also point to four large trenches below the present Great Lakes as possible testaments to the impact. The so called Carolina bays, located in line with the lakes, as well as thousands of smaller features along the Atlantic coast, might also have been a result of the impact. But some geologists protest that there are other, and far more plausible explanations for these features. All we know for sure is that the number of arrowheads, and probably the number of people, fall by 75% following this period. The America that emerged from the catastrophe, would be totally different from the one that had once been. And so it might be again. ◦ COMET THEORY COLLIDES WITH CLOVIS RESEARCH Archaeologists have long known that the great beasts of the age – the wooly mammoth and mastodon – suddenly disappeared around the same time period (12,900 – 12,800 years ago), but little was known about their demise. It was thought to be the result of over-hunting by Clovis man or climate change associated with a new ice age. The notion that a comet collided with Earth and caused these events was farfetched until recently, when the group of scientists began looking for evidence of a comet impact, which they call the Younger – Dryas Event. They turned to Goodyear and the pristine Clovis site of Topper. They found iridium and plenty of it,” said Goodyear. “The high concentrations were much higher than you would normally see in the background of the earth’s crust. That tends to be an indicator of a terrestrial impact from outer space.” The researchers also found high iridium concentrations at six other Clovis sites throughout North America, as well as in and along the rims of the Carolina Bays, the elliptically shaped depressions that are home to an array of flora and fauna along South Carolina’s coast. The Younger- Dryas Event suggests that a large comet exploded above Canada, creating a storm of fiery fragments that rained over North America. The fragments could have easily killed the giant mammals of the day, as well as Clovis man. ◦ COMET THEORY COLLIDES WITH CLOVIS RESEARCH, MAY EXPLAIN DISAPPEARANCE OF ANCIENT PEOPLE – June 28, 2007 The researchers also found high iridium concentrations at six other Clovis sites throughout North America, as well as in and along the rims of the Carolina Bays, the elliptically shaped depressions that are home to an array of flora and fauna along South Carolina’s coast. The Younger- Dryas Event suggests that a large comet exploded above Canada, creating a storm of fiery fragments that rained over North America. The fragments could have easily killed the giant mammals of the day, as well as Clovis man. ◦ DID COMET START DEADLY COLD SNAP? A comet or some other extraterrestrial object appears to have slammed into northern Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered an abrupt and catastrophic climate change that wiped out the mammoths and many other prehistoric creatures, according to a team of U.S. scientists. The sediment layer formed 12,900 years ago and coincides with both the extinction of the animals and the onset of a mini-ice age that lasted more than 1,000 years, say Ms. Becker and her colleagues from several U.S. universities and research labs. They say they are increasingly convinced the impact, extinction and cold snap are all related. According to their scenario, a comet or large meteoroid generated a shock wave and threw massive amounts of debris, heat and gas into the atmosphere. This set off wildfires that raced across grasslands in southern North America, depriving the mammoths and other grazing animals of food. The impact and heat also destabilized the ice sheet that blanketed Canada at the time, creating a flood of melt water that poured into the North Atlantic, according to their theory. The pulse of fresh water then shut down the ocean currents carrying heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, leading to an abrupt cooling. The resulting “mini-ice age” in the Northern Hemisphere, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted more than a thousand years. ◦ CATASTROPHIC COMET CHILLED AND KILLED ICE AGE BEASTS (AND CLOVIS PEOPLE) An extraterrestrial object with a three-mile girth might have exploded over southern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out an ancient Stone Age culture as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths. The blast could be to blame for a major cold spell called the Younger Dryas that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of time spanning from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago. “Based on the distribution of material, it looks like this impact probably occurred in southern Canada near the Great Lakes, over what at that time would have been a major glacier, the Laurentide ice sheet,” said one of the presenters, Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They couldn’t find a distinct crater, suggesting the comet burst in the air rather than slamming into Earth. Even an airburst should leave its mark, so the scientists think the Laurentide Ice Sheet absorbed much of the impact. During the last catastrophic animal extinction, more than three-fourths of the large Ice Age animals, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant bears, died out. Scientists have debated for years over the cause of the extinction, with both of the major hypotheses—human overhunting and climate change—insufficient to account for the mega die-off. An extraterrestrial explosion could have triggered a wave of massive wildfires that reduced to ashes the mastodons of the day, say the scientists. At one site called Murray Springs in Arizona, a well-known Clovis site, the scientists found megafauna covered by the comet debris. The evidence for a comet impact is substantial. ◦ OREGON RESEARCHERS INVOLVED IN NEW CLOVIS-AGE IMPACT THEORY ◦ COMET MAY HAVE DOOMED MAMMOTHS ◦ ICE AGE ENDS SMASHINGLY: DID A COMET BLOW UP OVER EASTERN CANADA? Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth’s atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America’s ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say. The long axes of the great majority of the Carolina Bays point toward locations near the Great Lakes and in Canada—a hint that the extraterrestrial object disintegrated over those locales, says Howard. Because scientists “haven’t discovered a large, smoking hole” left by the event, the object that blew up in the atmosphere probably was a comet, says West. Heat from the event would have set off wildfires across the continent, the scientists suggest. The heat and shock from the explosion probably broke up portions of the ice sheet smothering eastern Canada at the time, they add. The flood of fresh water into the North Atlantic that resulted would have interrupted ocean currents that bring warmth to the region, and thick clouds of smoke and soot in the air would have intensified cooling across the Northern Hemisphere. The inferred date of the event matches the beginning of a 1,200-year-long cold spell that geologists call the Younger Dryas, which in its first few decades saw temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere drop as much as 10°C. ◦ ICE AGE ENDS SMASHINGLY: DID A COMET BLOW UP OVER EASTERN CANADA? (MORE) (CAROLINA BAYS) – June 02, 2007 Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth’s atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America’s ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say. IT’S IN THERE. A layer of carbon-rich sediment (arrow) found here at Murray Springs, Ariz., and elsewhere across North America, provides evidence that an extraterrestrial object blew up over Canada 12,900 years ago. The hallmarks include lumps of glasslike carbon (top), carbon spherules (middle, in cross section), and magnetic grains rich in iridium (bottom). West; (middle inset): Cannon Microprobe At sites stretching from California to the Carolinas and as far north as Alberta and Saskatchewan—many of which were home to prehistoric people of the Clovis culture—researchers have long noted an enigmatic layer of carbon-rich sediment that was laid down nearly 13 millennia ago. “Clovis artifacts are never found above this black mat,” says Allen West, a geophysicist with Geoscience Consulting in Dewey, Ariz. The layer, typically a few millimeters thick, lies between older, underlying strata that are chock-full of mammoth bones and younger, fossilfree sediments immediately above, he notes. New analyses of samples taken from 26 of those sites reveal several hallmarks of an extraterrestrial object’s impact, West and his colleagues reported at the spring meeting of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco, Mexico. ◦ ICE AGE ENDS SMASHINGLY: DID A COMET BLOW UP OVER EASTERN CANADA? – June 02, 2007 Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth’s atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America’s ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say. At sites stretching from California to the Carolinas and as far north as Alberta and Saskatchewan—many of which were home to prehistoric people of the Clovis culture—researchers have long noted an enigmatic layer of carbon-rich sediment that was laid down nearly 13 millennia ago. “Clovis artifacts are never found above this black mat,” says Allen West, a geophysicist with Geoscience Consulting in Dewey, Ariz. The layer, typically a few millimeters thick, lies between older, underlying strata that are chock-full of mammoth bones and younger, fossil-free sediments immediately above, he notes. A host of unusual geological features, collectively known as Carolina Bays, hints at the cataclysm’s location, says team member George A. Howard, a wetland manager at Restoration Systems, an environmental-restoration firm in Raleigh, N.C. Around 1 million of these elliptical, sand-rimmed depressions, measuring between 50 meters and 11 kilometers across, scar the landscape from New Jersey to Florida. In samples taken from 15 of the features, Howard and his colleagues found iridium-rich magnetic grains and carbon spherules with tiny diamond fragments similar to those found at Clovis archaeological sites. The long axes of the great majority of the Carolina Bays point toward locations near the Great Lakes and in Canada—a hint that the extraterrestrial object disintegrated over those locales, says Howard. Because scientists “haven’t discovered a large, smoking hole” left by the event, the object that blew up in the atmosphere probably was a comet, says West. ◦ ICE AGE BLAST ‘RAVAGED AMERICA’ A controversial new idea suggests that a large space rock exploded over North America 13,000 years ago. The blast may have wiped out one of America’s first Stone Age cultures as well as the continent’s big mammals such as the mammoth and the mastodon. The blast, from a comet or asteroid, caused a major bout of climatic cooling which may also have affected human cultures emerging in Europe and Asia. All, they argue, point to the explosion 12,900 years ago of an extraterrestrial object up to 5km across. No crater remains, possibly because the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which blanketed thousands of sq km of North America during the last Ice Age, was thick enough to mask the impact. Another possibility is that it exploded in the air. Professor James Kennett, from the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB), said the explosion could be to blame for the extinction of several large North American mammals at the end of the last Ice Age. ◦ DID A COMET HIT GREAT LAKES REGION, FRAGMENT HUMAN POPULATIONS, 12,900 YEARS AGO? The researchers propose that a known reversal in the world’s ocean currents and associated rapid global cooling, which some scientists blame for the extinction of multiple species of animals and the end of the Clovis Period, was itself the result of a bigger event. While generally accepted theory says glacial melting from the North American interior caused the shift in currents, the new proposal points to a large extraterrestrial object exploding above or even into the Laurentide Ice Sheet north of the Great Lakes. “Highest concentrations of extraterrestrial impact materials occur in the Great Lakes area and spread out from there,” Kennett said. “It would have had major effects on humans. Immediate effects would have been in the North and East, producing shockwaves, heat, flooding, wildfires, and a reduction and fragmentation of the human population.” Kennett said that 35 animal genera went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, with at least 15 clearly being wiped out close to 12,900 years ago. There would have been major ecological shifts, driving Clovis survivors into isolated groups in search of food and warmth. There is evidence, he said, that pockets of Clovis people survived in refugia, especially in the western United States. ◦ S.C. SITE KEY IN CLIMATE-CHANGING ANCIENT COMET THEORY According to the theory, a comet broke apart in the atmosphere above what is now eastern North America, producing massive, multiple explosions as its pieces slammed into the surface with more force than all the world’s nuclear weapons combined. The fallout from the explosions would have dusted the Earth with microscopic nanodiamonds, magnetic particles, iridium and black carbon. All of those substances have been found in a layer of soil, found continent-wide, dated to about 12,900 years ago. The explosions and resulting climate change could explain the sudden disappearance of large mammals, such as mammoths and mastodons, at that same time period. Also, it could explain the abrupt end in the archaeological records of the Clovis people, the first to populate North America. ◦ THE YOUNGER DRYAS Note: 13.18 kyr BP (during the Bolling/Allerod) ◦ SUPERNOVA STORM WIPED OUT MAMMOTHS? If their supernova theory gains acceptance, it could explain why dozens of species on the continent became extinct 13,000 years ago. Mammoths and mastodons, both relatives of today’s elephants, mysteriously died out then, as did giant ground sloths, a large-horned bison, a huge species of armadillo, saber-toothed cats, and many other animals and plants. Supernovas are rare and usually very far away. Cyclical comet swarms caused by other triggers may not be, as we may find out this century. ◦ FIRST FARMERS DISCOVERED The first farmers grew wheat and rye 13,000 years ago in Syria and were forced into cultivating crops by a terrible drought, according to UK archaeologists. What he found was evidence for a terrible drought: “It was very sharp and would certainly have been felt within a human lifetime, perhaps even in the space of 10 or so years.” Geologist call this period the Younger Dryas, a 1000-year spell of cold and dry weather with interrupted the planet’s gradual warming from the last ice age. ◦ MEGA-EXTINCTION? BLAME THE WEATHER Guthrie proposes instead that changes in the world climate at the end of the Ice Age 13,000 years ago altered the frigid landscape of the far north into a steppe covered with grasses, where mammoths, horses, and other grazers flourished for 1000 years. Just as humans first appear in the archaeological fossil record 12,000 years ago, the climate began to shift, turning the steppe grasses into plants toxic to grazers. Horses went extinct about 1000 years before the mammoths, which disappeared well after humans appeared on the scene in the far north, Guthrie reports. ◦Quick Rise In Temperature (13,000 Years Ago Shonw On Graph) Sir Fred Hoyle: ICE The Ultimate Human Catastrophe: Op. Cit.; pp. 26, 27, 160. From G. R. Coope in A. E. Wright & F. Moseley (eds.) Ice Ages, Ancient & Modern; Seel House Press, 1971. ◦ SOME CAROLINA BAYS ◦Swarm B:CL-2 – 12,729 YA or 12,679 BP ◦ EIGHTH YEAR REPORT 2009 CARBON SICENCE: PALEOCLIMATE Sigman’s group is also working to improve understanding of the mechanisms by which past ocean changes have interacted with conditions on land. As part of a long term collaboration with close colleague Gerald Haug, Professor in the Geological Institute at ETH Zurich, sediment from a German crater lake was used in a high resolution study of western European climate at the onset of the Younger Dryas cold period ~12,700 years ago. The Younger Dryas cold period was likely fundamentally driven by a sharp reduction in North Atlantic overturning circulation. However, previous climate model studies have suggested that the overturning circulation alone could not fully explain the degradation in European climate. Data from the lake indicate an abrupt increase in winter storminess at the onset of the cold period, occurring from one year to the next at 12,679 yr BP, providing one of the best dated records of this climate transition. The storminess change is best explained by an abrupt change in the North Atlantic westerlies towards a stronger and more zonal jet due to a cooling of the subpolar North Atlantic. The reconstructed wind shift may explain the temporal coincidence of the overturning decrease with European cooling, providing an important part of the missing link between ocean and land. Lamb 1977 reported a Global Climatic Boundary at 2760 BP. 12,679 BP – 2760 BP is 9919 years (supposedly two Vulcan orbital revolutions. The error uncertainty in the 2760 BP date is not known. Other data pinpoints two Vulcan orbital reolutions to be 9939 +/- 1.4 years and 9938 +/- 11.5 years (one sigma error). 9919 and 9938 or 9939 years differ by only about 20 years out of almost ten thousand years. ◦ HARSH CLIMATE CHANGE ONCE FELL SWIFTLY – Aug. 1, 2008 ow scientists believe they’ve pinpointed the exact time the northern hemisphere was plunged back into a deep freeze. Examining sediments preserved at the bottom of a remote lake in western Germany, they found that what’s known as the Younger Dryas cold period took just a year to sweep across the continent, starting in the autumn, 12,679 years ago. ◦ MINI ICE AGE TOOK HOLD OF EUROPE IN MONTHS – 11 November 2009 UST months – that’s how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age. Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or “Big Freeze”. It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years. Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues. The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached ◦LAST ICE AGE HAPPENED IN LESS THAN YEAR SAY SCIENTISTS THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned. Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said. Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago ?a very recent period on a geological scale. The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe ?and soon. ◦ THE YOUNGER DRYAS Note: 12.64 kyr BP aka YA (during the Younger Dryas) ◦ THE DRAGONSTORM PROJECT – Dennis Cox After the end of the last ice age a large, fragmented comet caused a continental scale, impact firestorm that killed most of the life on the continent of North America, and broke up the Laurentide Ice Sheet causing a return to ice age conditions that lasted another thousand years. But the comet’s fragments did far more than just melting some ice, setting things on fire, and killing everything. It rearranged the entire topography of the continent on a titanic, and stupendous, scale that defies the imagination. And all of the surface scars of that event, while dramatic and obvious, have been mistakenly identified as having been caused by something else entirely. It is the goal of The Dragonstorm Project to identify and document those mis-identified surface effects and scars. ◦ A DIFFERENT KIND OF CATASTROPHE – Dennis Cox – December 28, 2009 The ground effects, and blast effected materials I’ve noticed, and cataloged all point to something that happened around the end of the last Ice age. I never set out to explain the Younger Dryas events. Rather, when I learned of work on the Younger Dryas Boundary layer, I realized they confirmed some of what I had found. It confirmed, if nothing else, that an event of the level of destruction I was looking at did indeed happen. It turns out that the Tunguska object was only rare in that it arrived alone. And it was such a puny little thing. A large, highly fragmented comet consisting mostly of ices that are almost as violently explosive as hydrogen peroxide rocket fuel is a much more frightening kind of monster; and much more common. The form the planetary scaring takes is characterized as a non- volcanic melting event hot enough to make stone flow like water for a moment. And ballistic/kinetic shock has almost nothing to do with it. Ignimbrites, literally “fire cloud rock? or tuff as they’re more commonly called, in satellite images, have the look of wet, fast flowing, concrete, or lumpy mud. They are always formed in an explosive event. So, as a blast effected material, they are a clear, and direct signature of the motions of the explosive event they formed in, no proxy required Both are pretty extraordinary possibilities. The visual evidence is more supportive of the latter. But no matter what the source of the heat, and pressure; the more than 40,000 sq km of pristine, simultaneous, random- colliding-inter flowing, rivers of blast-generated ignimbrites, at the pinnacle of the stratigraphic column describes a geologically recent explosive event that was arguably the single most violent natural disaster in all of human existence. Yet, with the exception of a few prospectors looking for money rocks, it’s almost completely unstudied. The real event makes the scaryest hollywood disaster movie of hell on Earth look like a childrens bedtime story. D.THE 10,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm A’ – 12,600 YA ◦ RESEARCH RAISES FEAR OF DRAMATIC TEMEPRATURE CHANGE DURING WARMIND TREND – 2 October 1998 Ice core samples from Antarctica suggest that the warming trend that ended an ice age 12,500 years ago may have overtaken the Earth in only a few decades And White’s team said the Antarctica ice cores show a temperature increase of about 20 degrees F within a few decades. ◦ ICE CORE TIMELINE – 12,000 BP (before present) – Rapid Climate Change (9600 BC impact) As this graph shows, one such jump occurred about 12,000 years ago, as the last glacial period (the Pleistocene) was giving way to our current warm “interglacial” period (the Holocene). Suddenly, possibly in less than five years, average temperatures, which were slightly cooler than today’s, plunged by about 27°F, returning the world to near-glacial conditions. The Younger Dryas, as this freak period is known, lasted about 1,300 years before it returned–just as abruptly–to the temperatures typical of the period immediately preceding it. ◦Radiocarbon geochronological data indicates the Pleistocene/Holocene (the last glacial/inter-glacial) boundary at 10,300 +/- 200 radiocarbon years ago (or about 12,125 years ago) near a brief mini-glacial period. See: The New Encylopaedia Britannica; Encylopaedia Britannica Inc.; Chicago, 15 th edition – 1993; Vol. 19 (Geochronology – Nature of the Holocene record), pp. 860 – 870. E.THE 9,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm A – 11,600 YA ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike DANISH ARCTIC RESEARCH DATES ICE AGE The result of a Danish ice drilling project has become the international standard for the termination of the last glacial period. It ended precisely 11,711 years ago. “Our new, extremely detailed data from the examination of the ice cores shows that in the transition from the ice age to our current warm, interglacial period the climate shift is so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed? explains ice core researcher Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Centre for Ice and Climate at NBI at the University of Copenhagen. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike NBI NEWS: GOLDEN SPIKE IN ICE CORE – Video Ice Age ended exactly 11,703 years ago measured from 2000 AD. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 StrikeDETERMINATION OF END OF THE ICE AGE? To summarize, the term ice age is in the eye (or mind) of the beholder. In Denmark the ice age ended 11,703 years ago as arctic conditions vanished for good. Globally however, the ice age began to go away 18,000 years ago and was completely gone 8,000 or 9,000 years ago as the last pieces to the Scandinavian and Canadian ice sheets melted away. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 StrikeWHAT CAUSED THE END OF THE ICE AGE? The last cold ripple ended 11.711 years ago and as this ripple lies so close to the ice age’s general end, the ice age never returned and there have not been any ripples since. Fortunately. Because it takes circa 10.000 years for an ice age to gradually come to an end; but for a climate ripple (for example, the end of the Younger Dryas) the change in weather took, 25 years later, just one year, temperature wise. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike THE YOUNGER DRYAS Note: 11.81 kyr BP aka YA (during the Younger Dryas) 11.4 kyr BP aka YA (early Preboreal) ◦ COMET THAT LAUNCHED NOAH’S ARK Tollmann, a geology professor at the University of Vienna, compared the numerous great flood myths, recorded in almost every prehistoric civilization, with the geological evidence for a comet impact at about the same time. He used the two sources of information to date the flood to about 9,600 BC. ◦ GIANT COMET LAUNCHED NOAH’S ARK Two discoveries are central to his claim. One is the distribution of the splinters of molten rock thrown up by the impacts, known as tektites. There was, he said, a huge concentration of them in sediments laid down about 10,000 BC. Variations in the amounts in different parts of the world suggested Earth was hit by seven large fragments and many smaller ones. Tollmann’s findings are supported in principle by Clube. He has just published the results of 20 years research into comets and the way their paths through space intersect with the Earth’s. He concludes that many of the big events in history were a result of collisions with comets or their debris. ◦ DURHAM UNIVERSITY STUDIES CAUSES OF MAMMOTH EXTINCTION – Aug 18 2010 The decrease in productivity and extent of grassland is likely to have been the major contributor to the extinction of many large mammals across most of northern Eurasia and north-western North America by about 11,400 years ago, the onset of the present warm interglacial period. Although some species held on for several thousand years longer in very limited localities, their fate had effectively been sealed. ◦ ATLANTIS: THE SOUTH AMERICA CONNECTION? – Mar 28, 2013 ◦ ATHANASIUS KIRCHER’S ATLANTIS – Updated Map & Plato’s Dimensions – Feb 26, 2013 The Egyptians, Plato asserted, described Atlantis as an island comprising mostly mountains in the northern portions and along the shore, and encompassing a great plain of an oblong shape in the south “extending in one direction three thousand stadia [about 555 km; 345 mi], but across the center inland it was two thousand stadia [about 370 km; 230 mi] ◦ Do Ancient Hindu Texts Reveal Atlantis Location – Oct 21, 2012 Atlantis (in Greek, ???????? ?????, “island of Atlas”) is a legendary island first mentioned in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias, written about 360 BC. According to Plato, Atlantis was a naval power lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune”. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike THEORY SUPPORTING THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT FLOOD According to Plato, the island of Atlantis and the distant Mediterranean civilizations were completely destroyed in a single day and night of violent earthquakes and floods. They disappeared into the depths of the sea. And according to Plato, the Great Flood occurred around 11,400 years ago. Analysis of staghorn coral (a coral that always grows in shallow water) provides evidence that the ocean level rose 400 feet since the end of the last Ice Age and the Ice Age came to an abrupt end 11,650 years ago. This occurred when global temperatures rose approximately 7o C. ◦ DOES THE EARTH CHANGE ITS SHAPE ? It is known that there was a diminish of the geomagnetic field at 12,400 BP, which is regarded as 10,400BC. ◦ THE BIBLICAL FLOOD Alexander Tollmann, “a professor in the institute of geology at the University of Vienna, compared the numerous myths of a great flood, recorded in almost every prehistoric civilisation, with the geological evidence for a comet impact at about the same time. He used the two sources of information to date the flood very precisely, to around the year 9,600 BC. ◦ HISTORY hat this entailed at one point a great flooding of all coastal regions on the, what you call, Atlantic areas and all those areas within that region called Mediterranean is true. For a great surge was felt under the sea creating waves unlike any ever seen. This surge also pushed forth much debris called ash. For two volcanoes then erupted creating much darkness. That this was followed by several days of rain is true, but that was not the cause of the flooding. For rather did the tidal surge supply the flood. Note that a tidal surge, not a tsunami, is claimed. This implies a rapid crustal shift. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike ATLANTIS In Plato’s account, Atlantis was a naval power lying “in front of the Pillars of Hercules” that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean “in a single day and night of misfortune”. Solon Solon (ancient Greek:c. 638 BC ?58 BC) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. ◦ PLATO’S ATLANTIS Frequently Asked Questions Whatever the case, it is becoming abundantly clear scientifically that the end of the last Ice Age was anything but smooth and gradual. If Plato invented the story of Atlantis, he was unbelievably lucky to date its demise when he did, since he knew nothing of Ice Ages. Q. Since Plato lived circa. 350 B.C. and Atlantis sank circa. 9,700 B.C. (a gap of over 9,000 years), how did he happen to know about Atlantis? Q. Did Plato ever use the words “continent,” or “lost continent” to describe the land of Atlantis? A. No. The word Plato uses to describe the landmass of Atlantis is nesos, the Greek word for “island”. Even though he calls it a “large island,” ◦ ATLANTIS EXPLAINED? YOU BE THE JUDGE. In the dialogues Plato makes a point of explaining how a myth such as Phaëthon’s ride can have a background in reality, reflecting meteorite impact events. He also gives an account of the paleogeography of Attika, and its geomorphologic evolution. The context of the tale of Atlantis is thus in talking about prehistory, and how memories are lost with time. A number of details in the tale regarding geography and prehistory have turned out to be true, although they were unknown at Plato’s time. In the last century we have learned very much about the events of the past, thanks to the developments of geology. Plato gave a date of 9600 BC for Atlantis. At that time the last ice age ended, the global sea level rose in the order of 125 m altogether, and the temperature rose in the order of 10ºC. The details of this development are still being investigated by earth scientists, and some very sudden events may still not have been identified ◦ THE SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS IN CUBA British historian Andrew Collins is the author of GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, which in 2000 proposed that Cuba was the flagship of Plato’s island empire. He reports on the recent discoveries of a lost city off Cuba, and its importance to the Atlantis legend. Readers will be aware of the discovery deep beneath the Yucatan Channel, off the coast of Guanahacabibes in western Cuba, of what is purportedly a lost city. Hi-tech sonar equipment aboard the ‘Ulises’, a vessel owned by Canadian firm Advanced Digital Communications (ADC), detected a several-kilometre square area of what appear to be roads, pyramids and other building structures at a depth of 2,200 feet. Yet it was not until July 2001 that Paulina Zelitsky, the Russian-born leader of the expedition, got a chance to view the site first-hand. The Carolina Bays Comet The presence of around 500,000 elliptical craters, ranging from a few hundred metres to 11 kilometres in size, across the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, from New Jersey down to Miami, is perhaps the greatest clue. Modern theories are that these so-called Carolina Bays (after the states in which they were first noted during aerial surveys in the 1920s) were caused by a comet which entered the earth’s atmosphere from the north-west over Alaska and disintegrated into millions of pieces that detonated above the ground, very much in the manner of the small comet which caused the Tunguska event in Siberia in June 1908. ◦ THE SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS IN CUBA – FINALLY, SOME ANSWERS!! – UPDATE – March 02, 2008 The Carolina Bays Comet The presence of around 500,000 elliptical craters, ranging from a few hundred metres to 11 kilometres in size, across the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, from New Jersey down to Miami, is perhaps the greatest clue. Modern theories are that these so-called Carolina Bays (after the states in which they were first noted during aerial surveys in the 1920s) were caused by a comet which entered the earth’s atmosphere from the north-west over Alaska and disintegrated into millions of pieces that detonated above the ground, very much in the manner of the small comet which caused the Tunguska event in Siberia in June 1908. ◦CAROLINA BAYS GOUGED INTO THE GROUND AT A MAGNETIC REVERSAL – 28 Jul 09 Is it just a coincidence that more than two million huge holes were gouged into the ground – all at the same time – about 12,000 years ago at a magnetic reversal? Today, the general consensus is that these massive elliptical scars were somehow created by a comet or meteorite exploding above the earth. ◦ CAROLINA BAY’S THE MYSTERY Carolina bay ecosystems are formed in elliptical depressions which occur abundantly across the surface of the earth. USA showered by a watery comet ~11,000 years ago, ending the Golden Age of man in America. Carolina Bays from the Polynesian Pathways By Peter Marsh From Andrew Collins book; “Gateway to Atlantis” we get the following interesting information. Many native American traditions tell of a moon fell out of the sky, onto the earth. During it’s passage through the sky it looked like a feiry snake, there were terrible earth quakes and the day turned into night, there was a gigantic flood and a formidable rain that lasted many days, many people died. This most likely describes the impact of the comet that created the Carolina Bays. Also from further south in the Carolinas we have the following very interesting tradition: “a star fell to the earth, and rain soon followed (oceanic impact, causing vast amounts of water to evaporate). Days and days of rain quenched the fire. Great holes burned in the earth by the fire were filled, forming a great in land sea. ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike GALACTIC ENCOUNTERS, APOLLO OBJECTS AND ATLANTIS: Ancient literature, impact results, possible location of Atlantis. The date given for the catastrophe, corresponding to circa 11.600 B.P. YA or 9,600 BC, fits well the commonly accepted starting time for the withdrawal of the global ices now estimated at 11,450 B.P. ◦ CORROBORATING EVIDENCE ON THE REALITY OF ATLANTIS Plato affirms that the demise of Atlantis took place “9,000 years before the times of Solon”. Now, Solon visited Egypt at about 600 BC, which adds to a total of about 11,600 BP (Before Present). Now, this is precisely the date of the cataclysmic ending of the Pleistocene Ice Age, as given by the geologic record. So, we are led to conclude that Plato’s date is correct, and that the Greek philosopher indeed knew what he was talking about. ◦ CUBA VERSUS HISPANIOLA ?THE ATLANTIS DEBATE CONTINUES Although the view that Hispaniola was ancient Atlantis has been given a boost again recently by Professor Emilio Spedicato of Bergamo University, I argue that the island of Atlantis described in Plato’s Timaeus and Critias is the neighbouring island of Cuba (see the TRUE LOCATION section of the website). Even Emilio, after reading GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, has admitted that Cuba is `a very good candidate’ for the title of Atlantis. He further adds that `only archaeological work will perhaps solve the riddle.’ Yet just as Plato describes, it was drowned beneath the waves following ‘earthquakes and floods’ of the sort proposed in connection with the Carolina Bays cometary impact of the ninth millennium BC (see GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS). ◦ IRELAND IS LOST ISLAND OF ATLANTIS, SAYS SCIENTIST ◦ LOST CITY OF ATLANTIS ‘FOUND’ OFF THE COAST OF CYPRUS ◦ ATLANTIS EXPEDITION REVEALS STRUCTURES OFF CYPRUS The sonar scans of manmade structures one mile below water off the southeast coast of Cyprus were presented here Thursday by Robert Sarmast, head of the Cyprus/Atlantis Expedition project for the first time. Announcing the results of last year’s expedition to find one of human kind’s greatest mysteries, the legendary Atlantis, Sarmast presented three dimension underwater side-scan sonar pictures of structures 1.5 km below sea level, 80 km off the southeast coast of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. He said it was no coincidence that his team discovered a 3km long straight wall intersected at right angles by another wall, adding that this will silence any remaining skepticism about his longstanding claims that modern Cyprus is what remains of a much larger and now partly sunken mass which fits Plato’s description of the ancient land of Atlantis. ◦ PERHAPS A TSUNAMI SANK ATLANTIS THERE occurred violent earthquakes and floods…the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea.” That was how Greek philosopher Plato described the destruction of the legendary city. Now new evidence suggests that he was writing about a devastating tsunami. Plato describes destruction in a single day and night – not over a week, not over a century – pointing to one catastrophic event. He talks about violent earthquakes and flooding, implying there was … ◦ TSUNAMI CLUE TO ‘ATLANTIS’ FOUND A submerged island that could be the source of the Atlantis myth was hit by a large earthquake and tsunami 12,000 years ago, a geologist has discovered. Spartel Island now lies 60m under the sea in the Straits of Gibraltar, but some think it once lay above water. ◦ ATLANTIS ‘OBVIOUSLY NEAR GIBRALTAR’ Jacques Collina-Girard, from the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en- Provence, says it could have been sited on an island close to the Strait of Gibraltar, and would have vanished below the waves about 11,000 years ago – just as Plato said it did. ◦ SEAFLOOR SURVEY BUOYS ATLANTIS CLAIM In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzan gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar. The top of this isle lies some 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, having plunged beneath the waves at the end of the most recent ice age as melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise. Geological evidence has shown that a large earthquake and a tsunami hit this island some 12,000 years ago, at roughly the location and time indicated in Plato’s writings. The conference in Greece came to no firm conclusions about the city’s existence. But researchers managed to agree on 24 criteria that a geographical area must satisfy in order to qualify as a site where Atlantis could have existed. The place must have accommodated such oddities as hot springs, northerly winds, elephants, enough people for an army of 10,000 chariots, and a ritual of bull sacrifice. At present there are half a dozen candidates for Atlantis’s location, each one with its own shortcomings. Some say that settling on a final answer may prove impossible. ◦ SEA LEVEL STUDY REVEALS ATLANTIS CANDIDATE Curiously, nobody has really taken seriously the most obvious location,” Collina-Girard adds. According to Plato, Atlantis lay just in front of the Pillars of Hercules – what we now call the Strait of Gibraltar – and disappeared around 9000 BC. ◦ATLANTIS 11,600 YA DATE. Considers different analyses for the location of Atlantis. ◦ THE TRUE HISTORY OF ATLANTIS ◦MAYA-MU-OLD-CIVILIZATIONS ◦ FORGET ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, WE ARE ONE STEP AWAY FROM EXTINCTION The impact in Hudson Bay sent up 200,000 cubic miles of the glacier, throwing off the icy debris that followed the pieces of the comet out across the continent. A rain of incandescent debris and chunks of steaming ice showered down across most of North America, Europe and Asia. Within minutes, the massive, low-flying clumps crashed into the Carolinas and the eastern seaboard, exploding into fireballs and gouging out the Carolina Bays, over 500,000 of them. Other lumps exploded across the plains from Nebraska and Kansas to Arizona. The oceans, too, were targets. Thousands of ice chunks and clouds of slushy water hit the Atlantic, exploding with colossal detonations. The multiple concussions triggered immense underwater landslides off the Carolinas and Virginia, releasing thousands of cubic miles of mud. In turn, the mud unleashed a 1,000 foot high tidal wave that raced away towards Europe and Africa at 500 miles an hour. ◦ ABSTRACTING ATLANTIS: SCIENTIST FIND EVIDENCE OF MAYAN UNDERWATER CITY – 03 Jun 2010 Today, we sit down with architectural historian and archaeologist Jes Alexander, who spearheaded the research team, to get the first-hand details of what could be a piece of real-life Atlantis. Well, we believe we have found the remains of an ancient city on the sea floor in the Western Caribbean. It is important to note that we have yet to be to the site, but what we believe we have found is the remains of an ancient city that was formerly above sea level, and perhaps as much as 4500- 8000 years old. This has nothing to do with another site, found almost 10 years ago by a Canadian/Russian team working to map the sea floor near the Yucatan Peninsula. Their site is nearly 2 miles below the sea floor. The site we are working with is much shallower – in between 40 and 70 feet of water. We initially found anomalous objects by mapping a grid and searching the sea floor using simple Google Earth technology. As we zeroed in on the site location, we sought out other satellite imagery and ocean floor maps to arrive at this hypothesis. In that part of the Caribbean, there could be several explanations. The most likely is very organic. During the end of the last Ice Age, it is known that as the polar ice caps melted, the ocean rose about 166 feet for every hundred years. If this city sat on the coastal plane, it is more likely that the sea lel rose to engulf the city than that the city sank to the sea floor. However, given the convergence of tectonic plates in the region, earthquakes can’t be discounted. Lastly, there is believed to have been a massive meteor in the Atlantic about 11,000 years ago. The resulting tsunami could have contributed to the demise of the city. ◦ FRENCH TEAM SAYS SATELLITE IMAGES REVEAL UNDERWATER CITY This new site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Zelitsky. According to the new team, “To be seen on satellite, our site is much shallower.” “You have to be careful working with satellite images in such a location. The digital matrix sometimes misinterprets its data, and shows ruins as solid masses. The thing is, we’ve found structure — what appears to be a tall, narrow pyramid; large platform structures with small buildings on them; we’ve even found standing parallel post and beam construction in the rubble of what appears to be a fallen building. You can’t have post and beam without human involvement.” — The Team’s principal investigator. “Whatever we’ve found does not belong to us. It belongs to the people of this island, and to the world at-large. If any pieces are brought to the surface, they belong in the hands of a museum.” — the Project Leader At least these new photos have scope and detail in them. In fact, they’re pretty amazing and suggest a metropolis. ◦ FRENCH TEAM SAYS SATELLITE IMAGES REVEAL UNDERWATER CITY About 12000 to 14000 years ago, the Earth had just encountered something that changed the climate dramatically. Soon after this mysterious event the ice caps started melting at both the North and South Poles. The oceans received this melting water and rose up to about where they are today. Geologists think that the “trigger event” may have been something from space — perhaps either an asteroid or comet that broke up and plunged into the ocean, causing atmospheric heating and huge tsunamis. The theory that these cities were submerged around this time is supported by traces of some kind of impact that is visible on the East coast of America. Thousands of elliptical craters called “Carolina Bays” cover parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Maryland. One age estimate for the craters is 10,500 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age. The consensus of the scientific community was that this was a large asteroid that broke apart and crashed into the earth and Atlantic Ocean with tremendous energy. The time for this event has been placed at about 9000 years BCE. STOP THE PRESSES! NEW EVIDENCE THIS IS A HOAX! ◦Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike SOME CAROLINA BAYS ◦Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike 4 ?1.5 °C ABRUPT WARMING 11,270 YR AGO IDENTIFIED FROM TRAPPED AIR IN GREENLAND ICE – 8 February 2008 Nitrogen and argon isotopes in air trapped in a Greenland ice core (GISP2) show two prominent peaks in the interval 11,800?0,800 B.P., which indicate two large abrupt warming events. The first abrupt warming (10 ?4 °C) is the widely documented event at the end of the Younger Dryas. Here, we report on the second abrupt warming (4 ?1.5 °C), which occurred at the end of a short lived cooler interval known as the Preboreal Oscillation (11,270 ?30 B.P – 11,320 YA). A rapid snow accumulation increase suggests that the climatic transition may have occurred within a few years. ◦Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike SUDDEN CLIMATE TRANSITIONS DURING THE QUATERNARY The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to- Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries. Various mechanisms, involving changes in ocean circulation, changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases or haze particles, and changes in snow and ice cover, have been invoked to explain these sudden regional and global transitions. We do not know whether such changes could occur in the near future as a result of human effects on climate. Phenomena such as the Younger Dryas and Heinrich events might only occur in a ‘glacial’ world with much larger ice sheets and more extensive sea ice cover. However, a major sudden cold event did probably occur under global climate conditions similar to those of the present, during the Eemian interglacial, around 122,000 years ago. Less intensive, but significant rapid climate changes also occurred during the present (Holocene) interglacial, with cold and dry phases occurring on a 1500- year cycle, and with climate transitions on a decade-to-century timescale. In the past few centuries, smaller transitions (such as the ending of the Little Ice Age at about 1650 AD) probably occurred over only a few decades at most. All the evidence indicates that most long-term climate change occurs in sudden jumps rather than incremental changes. A comet impact generating massive amounts of atmospheric dust will change Earth’s weather rapidly. Hoyle postulates that the oceans act as a buffer, limiting these changes to around a decade of so. F.THE 8,300 BC STRIKE- Swarm B’ – 10,300 YA ◦ THE CASE FOR SOLAR FORCING OF CLIMATE High-resolution analyses of an early Holocene climate event may imply decreased solar forcing as an important climate trigger. The authors assembled a wide range of lacustrine, tree-ring, ice-core and marine records that reveal a Northern Hemispheric – and possibly global – cooling event of less than 200 years duration with a 50-year cooling-peak centered at approximately 10,300 years BP. Just a couple more nudges and we should arrive at the seemingly inevitable conclusion that earth’s climate on sub-Milankovitch timescales is tightly coupled to variable solar activity. Like the ones caused by comet impacts? G.THE 7,800 BC STRIKE- Swarm B – 9,800 YA ◦Exact dating of the B swarm Impacts two Vulcan revolutions ago: In an email dated 12/08/09, Jørgen Peder Steffensen, Ph.D. Center for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. has provided the following data for major climatic changes about ten thousand years ago. ◾7946 BC Max counting error 82 (+/-41, two sigma) ◾DELTA 39 years +/- 1 year (two sigma) ◾7907 BC Max counting error 81 (+/-40.5, two sigma) ◾DELTA 29 years +/- 0 years (two sigma) ◾7878 BC Max counting error 81 (+/-40.5, two sigma). ◾DELTA 66 years +/- 2 years (two sigma) ◾7812 BC Max counting error 79 (+/-39.5, two sigma) ◾DELTA 15 years +/- 0 years (two sigma) ◾7797 BC Max counting error 79 (+/-39.5, two sigma) In an email from Jørgen Peder Steffensen dated 12/07/09 “I have been through our ECM record, which shows ice acidity. Unfortunately, we do not have sulfate measurements to substantiate whether these acid peaks are volcanic. In NGRIP ice core, continuous sulfate measurements began at 8,200 BC. ECM (electrical conductivity measurements) candidates: 7797 BC, 7812 BC, 7878 BC, 7907 BC and 7946 BC. All dates are based on the new chronology, GICC05 (Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005). Maximum counting error MCE is 80 years (equivalent to 2 x sigma).” In an email dated 12/09/09 Dr. Steffensen said: “I would not be surprised if we had to move the 11,703 b2k some 20 years up or down based on future data; but I would be very surprised if we had to move the 11,703 b2k transition more than 50 years.” There is still some quibbling about the exact meaning of sigma here. ◦ PLANETOPHYSICAL STATE OFTHE EARTH AND LIFE – January 8, 1998 Current PlanetoPhysical alterations of the Earth are becoming irreversible. Strong evidence exists that these transformations are being caused by highly charged material and energetic non-uniformity’s in anisotropic interstellar space which have broken into the interplanetary area of our Solar System. This “donation” of energy is producing hybrid processes and excited energy states in all planets, as well as the Sun. Effects here on Earth are to be found in the acceleration of the magnetic pole shift, in the vertical and horizontal ozone content distribution, and in the increased frequency and magnitude of significant catastrophic climatic events. There is growing probability that we are moving into a rapid temperature instability period similar to the one that took place 10,000 years ago. The adaptive responses of the biosphere, and humanity, to these new conditions may lead to a total global revision of the range of species and life on Earth. It is only through a deep understanding of the fundamental changes taking place in the natural environment surrounding us that politicians, and citizens a like, will be able to achieve balance with the renewing flow of PlanetoPhysical states and processes. ◦ PLANETOPHYSICAL STATE OF THE EARTH AND LIFE – By DR. ALEXEY N. DMITRIEV* – Published in Russian, IICA Transactions, Volume 4, 1997 Effects here on Earth are to be found in the acceleration of the magnetic pole shift, in the vertical and horizontal ozone content distribution, and in the increased frequency and magnitude of significant catastrophic climatic events. There is growing probability that we are moving into a rapid temperature instability period similar to the one that took place 10,000 years ago. The adaptive responses of the biosphere, and humanity, to these new conditions may lead to a total global revision of the range of species and life on Earth. CONCLUSIONS Our Planet Earth is now in the process of a dramatic transformation; by altering the electromagnetic skeleton through a shift of the geomagnetic field poles, and through compositional changes in the ozone, and hydrogen, saturation levels of its gas-plasma envelopes. These changes in the Earth’s physical state are being accompanied by resultant climatic/atmospheric, and biospheric, adaptation processes. These processes are becoming more and more intense, and frequent, as evidenced by the real time increase in “non- periodic transient events”; ie., catastrophes. There are reasons favoring, or pointing to, the fact that a growth in the ethical, or spiritual quality, of humanity would decrease the number and intensity of complex catastrophes. It has become vitally important that a world chart be prepared setting forth the favorable, and the catastrophic, regions on Earth taking into account the quality of the geologic-geophysical environment, the variety and intensity of cosmic influences, and the real level of spiritual-ethical development of the people occupying those areas. ◦ TOLLMANN’S HYPOTHETICAL BOLIDE ◦ DOGGERLAND – UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES DISCUSSION FORUMS – PAGE 31 Figure 8.9 plots the location of the seven impact sites derived from geological evidence and legends. Two of these sites, in the Tasman and North Seas, have been identified as having mega-tsunami events around this time. The North Sea impact centre corresponds with the location of the Storegga slides described in Chapter 6. Here, the main tsunami took place 7,950 ?90 years ago. One of the better dates comes from wood lying above tektites in a sand dune along the South Coast of Victoria, Australia. The tektites are associated with the Tasman Sea impact and date at 8,200 ?50 years before present. These dates place the Deluge Comet impact event–a term used by the Tollmanns–around 6200 BC. This event does not stand alone during the Holocene. It has been repeated in recent times–a fact supported by Maori and Aborigine legends from New Zealand and Australia. –Edward A. Byrant, from “More Recent Evidence from Legends and Myths”, a review of Deluge Comet Impact Event 8,200 ?200 years ago (Kristan-Tollmann and Tollmann, 1992) If this theory is anything close to what actually happened around 6100 BC, then there must have been a swarm of ‘bolides’ impacting on earth, creating havoc and destruction. Those comets or bolides were seen across the earth, and my theory is that it was a comet out gassing sideways – creating a huge spiral shape in the heavens – and accompanied with smaller bolides. These spiral shapes (or shapes depicted as concentric circles with a ‘tail’, and much later as circular labyrinths) were carved into rock by the people living back then, around 6100 BC. ◦ CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT AND ROBERT LOMAS URIEL’S MACHINE claims that the Book of Giants tells us that the Nephilim were witness to a cometary impact that involved the fragmentation of a comet nucleus which broke into seven pieces and careered into seven oceans of the world around 7545 BC. ◦ JAPAN’S MYSTERIOUS SUBMERGED STONE STRUCTURES: New evidence suggests they may have been used by Man Man-made, made by Nature, or did humankind finish what Nature started? These enigmatic, sunken stone structures off Okinawa, Japan, located 60 to 100 feet beneath the ocean surface, have the Japanese wondering if their homeland was once part of the lost continent of Mu. How to date these sites? A few possible scenarios have been suggested. The sites may have been submerged when sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age as the continental ice sheets melted. Or, as Japan sits on the Ring of Fire, tectonic activity might have caused subsidence of the land. Or perhaps a combination of subsidence and inundation from rising sea levels, or some catastrophic event, dropped it, intact and upright, into the ocean. Teruaki Ishii, a professor of geology at Tokyo University, believes the site is partly man-made, partly natural, and suggests a date of 8,000 B.C., contemporary to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Others have suggested a date of 12,000 years. ◦ A NEW VIEW OF NOAH’S FLOOD Using evidence from the archaeological record, they date the Ice Age comet impact at 7640 B.C. About that time, 10,000 species became extinct. Another high-energy series of comets seems to have impacted the planet in about 3150 B.C., and they speculate this caused Enoch’s/Noah’s flood. ◦ SELECTED GEOMORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES IN AUSTRIA AND IN THE ALPS TOLLMANN gives an interesting but controversial explanation for a series of landslides around Imst in the Tyrol. So an extraterrestrial body has possibly caused the landslide. The impact might have shaken the surrounding mountains, triggering other landslides that would have once happened anyway. TOLLMANN dates the comet as 7550 B.C. and, referring to rich but controversial evidence, he claims that it was one small of seven large and some small fragments of a comet. The large ones struck the sea Some scientists (e.g. PREISINGER) argue, that the evidence TOLLMANN refers to is not secure, in particular the dendrochronological, ice-core and radio-isotope data. ◦ MEETING HISTORY To me the most interesting piece of information in ‘Uriel’s Machine’ is an explanation of the flood that comes out of modern science rather than historical myth. It explains the persistence of race memory myths from all around the world and the dramatic decrease in biological and genetic diversity that occurred about 10,000 years ago. Contains Tollmann’s picture. ◦ SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF THE BIBLICAL FLOOD The Tollmans research provided them with seven likely areas for seven ocean impacts. More evidence comes from the study of dendrochronology. They discovered a blip in the radio-carbon calibration curve relative to the Tunguska explosion in 1908, so looked for one to fit in with their own findings, and they again found an anomoly, a pronounced peak around 9500BP,or around 7000-8000 BC. Further evidence came from ice cores, taken and tested in 1980, which show a huge peak of nitric acid around 7640 BC. Nitric acid forms as the comet, or asteroid, burns through the atmosphere, burning the nitrogen in the air, thus falling as rain. This may also be linked to biblical descriptions of the flood in which the descriptions of ‘bloody rainfall’ are used. ◦ DIE TOLLMANN-SINTFLUT Die Marke des … rund neuneinhalb Jahrtausende zurückliegenden Sintflut- Impaktes ergibt sich mit höchster Wahrscheinlichkeit in dem Horizont von 7640 +/- 170 Jahre v. Chr., der ALLE ÜBRIGEN SÄUREHORIZONTE DER GESAMTEN SERIE AN INTENSITÄT WEIT ÜBERTRIFFT.”[ 9 ] ◦ “VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE” or “VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE” Camp Century. Location Date BC. Cluster ◾Unknown ? 7090?60 79 50 ◾Unknown ? 7240?60 124 80 ◾Unknown ? 7500?60 51 35 ◾Unknown ? 7640?70 412 260: Note: Two means 7570 +/- 70 BC and 7165 +/75 BC and ◾Unknown ? 7710?70 69 45 B: ◾Unknown ? 7810?70 73 45 B: ◾Unknown ? 7910?70 95 60 B: Note: Mean 7810 +/- 100 BC This is as if members of the B swarm striking 7810 BC were caught in a few hundred year orbit, striking again ~215 and ~645 years later with the worst being around 7640 BC. ◦ COMETS, DRAGONS & PROPHETS OF DOOM If a giant comet swarm were thrown into a short-period, Earth-crossing orbit, its disintegration under the effect of sunlight would release a copious amount of dust into the inner planetary system. Ploughing through such dust, the Earth would acquire a reflective blanket and cool by up to about 5 degrees, possibly sliding into a new ice age. Even after this phase, brief, sharp climatic coolings would be expected during epochs when the Earth passed annually through the comet’s meteor stream. Precession of the cometary orbit, analogous to the slow wobble of a spinning top, is guaranteed to lead to epochs when the orbits of Earth and comet intersect. Passing through the ‘IRAS trail’, annual meteor storms of huge intensity would then be expected, with a correspondingly enhanced risk of a Tunguska-like impact, perhaps concentrated into brief but devastating swarms. Something like this likely happened about 9910 years ago forming Tollman’s series of impacts. Numerous prophecies of doom, from Zoroaster to the Book of Revelation, clearly show celestial impact motifs: the Persian prophet Zoroaster (c. 500 BC) predicts a world-end in which “Ahriman (Satan) will make a comet strike the Earth causing a huge conflagration”; the Book of Revelation describes a huge burning mountain falling from the sky, dropping hail and fire on the Earth, while the Sun and Moon are darkened by smoke pouring from the abyss; Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by a rain of fire from Heaven, and so on. Cometary as well as meteor motifs are also found in these myths (for example, Revelation has a huge, red, multiple-headed dragon in the sky) and were recognized as such by ancient writers. The concept that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs has seeped into popular culture over the past 15 years or so. Recently, the question: “Could it happen to us?,” has also become a matter of increasing public interest. H.THE 6,800 BC STRIKE- Swarm A’ – 8,800 YA ◦NONE I.THE 6,200 BC STRIKE- Swarm A – 8,200 YA ◦ NOW THE PENTAGON TELLS BUSH: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL DESTROY US ?Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war ?Britain will be ‘Siberian’ in less than 20 years ?Threat to the world is greater than terrorism Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 ‘catastrophic’ shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated. ◦ (1) ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTOPHES AND RECOVERY IN THE HOLOCENE The 8200 year BP event SEE COMING EVENT ◦ MORE RECENT EVIDENCE FROM LEGENDS AND MYTHS Deluge Comet Impact Event 8,200 ?200 years ago (2) NEW EVIDENCE FOR GLOBAL NATURAL DISASTER AT ~ 8200 BP – 6 Feburary 1998 About 8,200 years ago, the world climate suddenly got colder and stayed that way for a few hundred years before temperatures returned to normal, according to a team of paleoclimatologists. “This event, which we are calling the 8K event, was short compared to other, more distant events, ” says Anna Maria Agustsdottir, graduate student in geosciences, Penn State. “We see it in the Greenland ice cores as one of the biggest dips during the Holocene.” ◦ ANCIENT FLODO BROUGHT GULF STREAM TO A HALT Just over 8000 years ago, a huge glacial lake in Canada burst, and an estimated 100,000 cubic kilometres of fresh water rushed into the North Atlantic. Researchers now say they know for sure that this catastrophic event shut down the Gulf Stream and cooled parts of the northern hemisphere by several degrees for more than a hundred years. Lake Agassiz was a giant lake that formed at the end of the last ice age as the huge Laurentide ice sheet melted (see a simulation of the process). The lake occupied most of the modern-day Canadian Midwest between the Hudson Bay and the US border. ◦ “VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE” Camp Century. Location Date BC. Cluster ◾Unknown ? 6060?40 119 7 A: Cl – 1 ◾Unknown ? 6230?40 102 65 A: Cl – 2 Note: Mean 6145 +/- 85 BC ◦ NOAH’S ARK FLOOD SPURRED EUROPEAN FARMING An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah’s Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent’s earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday. Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes. “The flooding of the Black Sea was not well dated but we got it down to about 50 years,” said Chris Turney, a geologist at the University of Exeter, who led the study. “As soon as the flooding is done, farming goes crazy across Europe.” Noah’s flood occurred about 5200 years ago. This was another flood. J.THE 5,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm C – 7,600 YA ◦KAALI METEORITE CRATER FIELD About 7,500 years ago, a huge rock from space came hurtling toward the earth, faster than a speeding rocket. Several kilometers above the earth’s surface, the meteorite broke into pieces from the pressure and heat of the atmosphere. The resulting chunks collided into Saaremaa with the force of a small nuclear bomb, wreaking havoc on the landscape and possibly claiming numerous victims. The explosion left nine total craters, now known as the Kaali Meteorite Crater Field. Some of these craters are quite small: one measures only twelve meters across and one meter deep. But the most interesting of the group is the largest crater, a gently sloping bowl filled with stagnant, murky water. ◦ (8) MORE ON THE 4000 BP EVENT Climate became dry stepwise with an abrupt transition from one stage to another during the entire Holocene and became driest since about 4,200 BP. Maximum dry climate spells occurred at about 12,000-10,000 BP and after about 4,200 BP. A dry climate event also existed at about 7,600 BP. Notice the 3,400-year gap between the 4,200 and 7,600 BP. Are there two comet clusters separated by 700 – 800 years in the A swarm? ◦ THE CATASTROPHIC DELUGE WHICH ENTERED THE BLACK SEA, CIRCA 7,500 YEARS AGO Two senior scientists from Columbia University have proposed a theory that a massive transfer of water occurred about 5600 BCE – over seven and a half millennia ago. They wrote: “Ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls.” “The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days.” 60,000 square miles of land were inundated. 1 The Black Sea shoreline significantly expanded to the north and east. The lake’s its water level was raised many hundreds of feet. It changed from a fresh-water landlocked lake into a salt water lake connected to the world’s oceans. Circa 5650 to 5500 BCE: Warmth and rain returned once more. The New Euxine lake was still landlocked and fresh. But the Mediterranean Sea and Sea of Marmara had gradually risen to a level some 426 feet (130 meters) higher than the lake. It was held back only by a small rise of land at the Bosporus River — now the Bosporus Straight near present-day Istanbul, Turkey. K.THE 5,000 BC STRIKE- Swarm B’ – 7,000 YA ◦ THE MAGNITUDE AND FREQUENCY OF TSUNAMI ALONG THE SOUTH COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA The first event probably occurred concomitantly with the rise of Holocene sea- level near modern levels around 7000 BP. The latest event occurred around 800 years BP although there is sufficient evidence to suggest that one event may have occurred just before European settlement. The recurrence interval of tsunami is now approaching one event every 600 years. ◦ BIBLE ‘CLUE’ FOUND Scientists have uncovered ancient ruins under the Black Sea indicating that people lived in the area before a cataclysmic flood. Some scientists have linked the 7,000-year-old event, thought to have been caused by waters bursting through from the Mediterranean Sea, to the Biblical story of Noah. ◦ HOW 7,000-YEAR-OLD TEMPLES REVEAL THE ELABORATE CULTURE OF EUROPE ◦ FOUND: EUROPE’S OLDEST CIVILISATION More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. L.THE 4,500 BC STRIKE- Swarm B – 6,500 YA ◦NONE M.THE 3,500 BC STRIKE- Swarm A’ – 5,500 YA ◦ EVOLUTION – 1:2 “However, in 1971 it was studied through radiographs and discovered to be a complicated instrument having 30 gears, a planetarium that could determine the motions of the sun and the moon and determine their location in the past and where they would be in relation to the Earth in the future. Such complex instruments with differential gears did not appear in the West until 1575. Yet Ovid credited such an invention to Archimedes, the inventor and discoverer of the principle of gravity, in 300 B.C. The author of the article in ‘Omni’ observed: “The oldest societies with a written record – Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley – seem to have emerged without any cultural antecedents, between 3400 and 3100 B.C. Seemingly out of nowhere there suddenly appeared a uniform code of laws, the wheel, knowledge of astronomy and agriculture Is it mere coincidence that three centers of enlightenment should emerge simultaneously at widely separated locations?” We need to study all these ruins with a High Tech equipment for proof and understanding, to see if they were before, or after the Flood, . . . The World Before The Flood, they had all types of groupings as we have today, from High Tech to Primitive and this leaves the findings we are discovering today in our new Top Strata, which need to be qualified as: Before Flood (BF), and After Flood (AF). ◦ BEFORE THE STONES: STONEHENGE I AS A COMETARY CATASTROPHE PREDICTOR? By Duncan Steel It is suggested here that one such pair occurred in 3600-3500 and 3200-3100 BC, provoking the construction of the Great Cursus and Stonehenge I. ◦ A 5,500-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY EMERGES In the shadow of a much more recent war, a five-year excavation on the Syrian- Iraqi border has uncovered an ancient settlement of unexpected sophistication that was suddenly wiped out by invaders 5,500 years ago. N.THE 3,000 BC STRIKE (Noah’s Great Flood)- Swarm A – 5,000 YA ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike PIORA OSCILLATION The Piora Oscillation was an abrupt cold and wet period in the climate history of the Holocene Epoch; it is generally dated to the period of c. 3200 to 2900 BCE.[1]Some researchers associate the Piora Oscillation with the end of the Atlantic climate regime, and the start of the Sub-Boreal, in the Blytt- Sernander sequence of Holocene climates. ◦ RESEARCH POINTS TO ABRUPT AND WIDESPREAD CLIMATE SHIFT IN THE SAHARA 5,000 YEARS AGO – April 6, 2013 ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike WHAT ON EARTH HAPPENED IN 3200 BC? Stanford U. What was the climate like at the dawn of organized civilization, 5000 years ago? (3200 BC, or 5200 years BP, Before Present, the age of the unification of Egypt and Mesopotamia) This compilation of recent graphical representations of various paleoclimatic data from ice cores and other sources gives some clues. Sulfate concentration in Greenland ice. Notice the huge spike at 3200 years BC. What caused this? A comet? Volcano? Or just a local swamp? Scientists are still debating the question. There are indications that volcanoes can cause a great fog to envelop the world, lowering the temperature several degrees, leaving their marks on the ice cores of the north as well as methane producing vegatation at 3200 BC, followed by and explosive growth? ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike MAJOR CLIMATE CHANGE OCCURRED 5,200 YEARS AGO: EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT HISTORY COULD REPEAT ITSELF – 16.12.2004 A professor of geological sciences at Ohio State and a researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center, Thompson points to markers in numerous records suggesting that the climate was altered suddenly some 5,200 years ago with severe impacts. “Something happened back at this time and it was monumental”, Thompson said. “But it didn’t seem monumental to humans then because there were only approximately 250 million people occupying the planet, compared to the 6.4 billion we now have”. “The evidence clearly points back to this point in history and to some event that occurred. It also points to similar changes occurring in today’s climate as well, ” he said. “To me, these are things we really need to be concerned about.” Evidence shows that around 5,200 years ago, solar output first dropped precipitously and then surged over a short period. It is this huge solar energy oscillation that Thompson believes may have triggered the climate change he sees in all those records. “The climate system is remarkably sensitive to natural variability,” he said. ◦DID A COMET CAUSE THE GREAT FLOOD? Masse’s epiphany came while poring over Hawaiian oral histories regarding the goddess Pele and wondering what they might reveal about the lava flows that episodically destroy human settlements and create new tracts of land. He reasoned that even though the stories are often clouded by exaggerations and mystical explanations, many may refer to actual incidents. He tested his hypothesis by cross-checking carbon-14 ages for the lava flows against dates included in royal Hawaiian genealogies. The result: Several flows matched up with the specific reigns associated with them in the oral histories. Other myths, Masse theorizes, hold similar clues. Masse’s biggest idea is that some 5,000 years ago, a 3-mile-wide ball of rock and ice swung around the sun and smashed into the ocean off the coast of Madagascar. The ensuing cataclysm sent a series of 600-foot-high tsunamis crashing against the world’s coastlines and injected plumes of superheated water vapor and aerosol particulates into the atmosphere. Within hours, the infusion of heat and moisture blasted its way into jet streams and spawned super- hurricanes that pummeled the other side of the planet. For about a week, material ejected into the atmosphere plunged the world into darkness. All told, up to 80 percent of the world’s population may have perished, making it the single most lethal event in history. Kepler, Galileo, Newton (and especially his assistant Whiston) and Halley formalized the mathematics of celestial bodies and even realized the possible influence of comet strikes in causing Noah’s flood. The problem is that Burckle crater has not been dated, but Dr. Abbott estimates that it is 4,500 to 5,000 years old. Noah’s Great Flood is fairly firmly dated to 3195 BC based on tree ring data. ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike To give one final example, the next Irish oak “narrowest ring” event back in time before 2345 BC was at 3195 BC, where more than third of all available trees showed their narrowest rings in the range 3197-3190 – obviously a very bad set of conditions for Irish oaks by any standard. Figure 5 shows the Irish chronology together with evidence for a building pause in a Swiss lake-side settlement. Tercier et al. (1996) reported a change in village orientation at Montilier “Platzbunden” in the years just before a building pause from 3202-3187 BC. What is interesting here is that archaeological opinion suggests that a change of orientation is most likely associated with a change in prevailing wind direction. That in turn suggests a possible change in atmospheric circulation which in turn could be associated with something happening with ocean circulation. Interestingly hints of changes in sea level had already been deduced from the strange coincidence of oak chronologies starting just around 3200 BC in the low-lying areas of both eastern and western England (Baillie 1995). That suggestion is reflected in the observation of high sulphate in the Greenland GISP2 ice core between 3200-3100 BC, which Zielinski et al. (1994) interpreted as probably due to deposition of biogenic sulphate from open water in the permanent sea ice off the Greenland coast. Once again we see that the accumulation of evidence from different proxies spells out potentially important environmental stories of direct relevance to archaeologists, not least in this case because of a transition in the archaeological record in the British Isles around 3200 BC. – Mike Baillie; Dendrochronologia 2003 I wouldn’t rule out 3195 being an impact of some kind. Private communication with Dr. Mike Baillie 25 Feb. 2003 ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike (13) MORE EVIDENCE FOR ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE IN 3114 BCE or MAYAN DATES FOR THE COMET ENCOUNTER – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike ◾16 June, 3122 BCE – The First Maize Revealer Partitioner is born ◾7 December, 3121 BCE – Birth of Lady White (?) ◾13 August, 3114 BCE – Image made visible at Closed Sky, the First Three Stone Place; Event for The First Maize Revealed Partitioner ◾5 February, 3112 BCE – The First Maize Revealed Partitioner enters the sky, ◦ ESSAY: THE BOOK OF THE CELESTIAL COW- Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike “The Book of the Celestial Cow”, apparently a record of the cometary encounter and impact ca. 3114 BCE. 5114 YA) ◦ ALIEN AUTOPSY FACINATES YOU, HOW ABOUT TIME TRAVELER FROM 3,500 (5200?) YEARS AGO? – 1 Nov 2011 Ötzi the Ice Man was found near Hauslabjoch in the Ötzal Alps in September 1991 by two walkers. The Ice Man died approximately 5200 years ago. At death he was between 40 and 50 years old and suffered from a number of medical conditions. He turned into a mummy accidentally almost immediately by the freezing weather conditions that turned him into the Ice Man. Scientists believe that Ötzi was caught in a heavy snowfall, fell asleep, and froze to death. Scientists have concluded this because there were no signs of predator attacks. They believe that the body must have been covered with snow almost immediately. This weather change was from the comet impact that caused Noah’s Great Flood. ◦ (8) ICE CORES MAY YIELD CLUES TO 5,000-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY or ICE CORES MAY YIELD CLUES TO 5,000-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY – Swarm A: Cl – 1 Strike Something happened 5,200 years ago that was abrupt and very large-scale. Thompson and his research team are in a race against time to retrieve cores from these ice caps in order to preserve the thousands of years of climatic history trapped inside. And at the top of their agenda is solving the puzzle of what occurred 5,200 years ago. We know the climate was different then. Before that, the proportion of warm water flowing off the coast of Peru was much greater, he said, a key factor in fueling the El Nino/La Nina climate events affecting this part of the globe. We know that the Ice Man, a preserved Neolithic hunter exposed by a retreating glacier in the European Alps, was trapped by the ice around 5,200 years ago, he said, and that had to occur very abruptly. Earlier work by the Ohio State team on ice cores taken from Tanzanias Mount Kilimanjaro ice fields showed that a catastrophic drought had devastated the tropics around 5,200 years ago, a period of time when anthropologists believe THAT many people abandoned a nomadic lifestyle to form cities and social structures. ◦ DECODED: ‘THE CLAY TABLET THAT TELLS HOW AN ASTEROID DESTROYED SODOM 5,000 YEARS AGO – 15:46 31 March 2008 At its heart is a clay tablet called the Planisphere, discovered by the Victorian archaeologist Henry Layard in the remains of the library of the Royal Palace at Nineveh. Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, they have pinpointed the sighting described on the tablet – a 700BC copy of notes of the night sky as seen by a Sumerian astrologer in one of the world’s earliest-known civilisations – to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC. Half the tablet records planet positions and clouds, while the other half describes the movement of an object looking like a ‘stone bowl’ travelling quickly across the sky. The description matches a type of asteroid known as an Aten type, which orbits the Sun close to the Earth. Its trajectory would have put it on a collision course with the Otz Valley. ‘It came in at a very low angle – around six degrees – and then clipped a mountain called Gaskogel around 11km from Köfels,’ said Mr Hempsell. ‘This caused it to explode – and as it travelled down the valley it became a fireball. John Taylor, a retired expert in Near Eastern archaeology at the British Museum, said there was no evidence that the ancient Sumerians were able to make such accurate astronomical records, while our knowledge of Sumerian language was incomplete. This is not the right date for the Sodom event. ◦ WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT TSUNAMIS? When key phrases in the Bible’s account of Noah’s Flood¡¨ are properly translated they tell how a comet impact caused a tsunami, which in turn caused the Flood! Physical evidence for this event comes from the recent discovery of an 18-mile wide impact crater at the bottom of the Indian Ocean that dates back to the time of the Flood. This crater is called the Burckle Impact Crater. A 2008 History Channel documentary about the discovery of this crater concludes, ¡§The cause of the Biblical Great Flood may have been a massive three-mile wide comet that crashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago.¡¨ An impact this large would have caused an earthquake tens of thousands of times more powerful than the Japanese earthquake and waves about 1000 times higher. ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 2 Strike ‘BAND OF MISFITS’ THEORY: METEORS ARE NOT THAT RARE – HEALTH & SCIENCE – INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE – November 14, 2006 At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers more than 100 square kilometers with sediment hundreds of meters deep. On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep-ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction – toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 29 kilometers, or 18 miles, in diameter, lies 3,800 meters, or 12,500 feet, below the surface. Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the past 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to 1 million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years. When the chevrons all point in the same direction to open water, Dallas Abbott, an adjunct research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, uses a different satellite technology to look for oceanic craters. With increasing frequency, she finds them, including an especially large one dating back 4,800 years. ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 2 Strike TSUNAMIS, CHEVRONS AND OCEAN BASIN CRATERS CAUSED BY ASTEROIDS OR COMETS. At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high. When the chevrons all point in the same direction to open water, Dallas Abbott, an adjunct research scientist at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., uses a different satellite technology to look for oceanic craters. With increasing frequency, she finds them, including an especially large one dating back 4,800 years. “We’re not talking about any tsunami you’re ever seen,” Dr. Bryant said. “Aceh was a dimple. No tsunami in the modern world could have made these features. End-of-the-world movies do not capture the size of these waves. Submarine landslides can cause major tsunamis, but they are localized. These are deposited along whole coastlines.” For example, Dr. Bryant identified two chevrons found over four miles inland near Carpentaria in north central Australia. Both point north. When Dr. Abbott visited a year ago, he asked her to find the craters. “We think these two craters are 1,200 years old,” Dr. Abbott said. The chevrons are well preserved and date to about the same time. About 900 miles southeast from the Madagascar chevrons, in deep ocean, is Burckle crater, which Dr. Abbott discovered last year. Although its sediments have not been directly sampled, cores from the area contain high levels of nickel and magnetic components associated with impact ejecta. Burckle crater has not been dated, but Dr. Abbott estimates that it is 4,500 to 5,000 years old. ◦ – Swarm A: Cl – 2 Strike BURCKLE CRATER Burckle Crater is an undersea crater the Holocene Impact Working Group considered likely to have been formed by a very large scale and relatively recent (c. 2800-3000 BC) comet ormeteorite impact event. It is estimated to be about 30 km (18 mi) in diameter [1], hence about 25 times larger than Meteor Crater. It is located to the east of Madagascar and west of Western Australia in the southern Indian ocean. Its position was determined in 2006 by the same group using evidence of its existence from prehistoric chevron dune formations in Australia and Madagascar that allowed them totriangulate its location. Burckle Crater lies at 30.865°S 61.365°ECoordinates: 30.865°S 61.365°E in the Indian Ocean and is 12,500 feet (3,800 m) below the surface. ◦ A RECORD OF PLANETARY CATASTROPHE A recent study published in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found evidence of an abrupt climate shift on Earth about 5,000 years ago — the most dramatic evidence being the discovery of unfossilized wetland plants around the margin of the Quelccaya ice cap. ◦ HISTORY hat this entailed at one point a great flooding of all coastal regions on the, what you call, Atlantic areas and all those areas within that region called Mediterranean is true. For a great surge was felt under the sea creating waves unlike any ever seen. This surge also pushed forth much debris called ash. For two volcanoes then erupted creating much darkness. That this was followed by several days of rain is true, but that was not the cause of the flooding. For rather did the tidal surge supply the flood. Note that a tidal surge, not a tsunami, is claimed. This implies a rapid crustal shift. ◦ DOES THE EARTH CHANGE ITS SHAPE ?- Swarm A:Cl – 1 Strike Richard L. Meehan of Stanford university is doing intensive researches on the phenomena that happened around 3200 BC. Some of them from his report are shown below. ◾ Sulfate concentration in Greenland ice core shows a huge spike at 3200 BC. ◾ Atmospheric methane in Greenland ice core shows the lowest value at 3200 BC followed by abrupt increase. ◾ Dead Sea levels peak, which is 300 feet higher than today, in 3200 BC. ◾ Oxygen isotope in Greenland ice core shows big freeze-up in 3000 BC. ◾ Belfast oak tree ring chronology peaks about 3150 BC, suggesting major climate event. ◾ Heavy flooding in Navajo country, the American Southwest, based on paleoflooding studies. The peak at 5K yrs BP. ◾ More evidences ranging from climate changes to historical events and myths. There is a sharp drop of the geomagnetic strength during 3500 – 3000 BC. While there is a peak at around 500 AD, since then it has been decreasing. It is reported that the decease rate is 5% in 100 years, while some reports say that the latest value is 6%. ◦ CLIMATE, CULTURE, AND CATASTROPHE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD Links to geological and paleoclimatalogical data bearing on the remarkable events of 3000 BC, when urban/technological society began are offered. Most of the data comes from referenced scientific literature. A graph of scientific events around the Biblical Flood Period (3200 – 2800 BC) is also offered. A Stanford University project. ◦ WHAT CAUSED NOAH’S FLOOD? How Long Ago Did the Flood Occur? Most theologians accept a period between 6,000 to around 5,000 years ago. ◦ AN IMPACT EVENT IN 3114BC? The Beginning of a Turbulent Millennium. – Swarm A:Cl – 1 Strike ◦ A UNIVERSAL FLOOD: 3000 BC ◦ CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT AND ROBERT LOMAS- Swarm A:Cl – 1 Strike In their opinion, ancients witnessed a worldwide cometary impact in c. 7545 BC (later stated maybe to be 9800 – -9700 BC) and a later similar catastrophe, centered on the Mediterranean, c. 3100 BC (after the work of Clube and Napier, Duncan Steele, etc.). ◦ CULTURE RAINED OFF – 26 June 2001 El Niño events may have altered the course of prehistoric civilization. Around 3,000 years ago rainfall seems to have put paid to the Peruvian progress it kicked off 3,000 years earlier, US researchers now report.1 ◦ ADDING UP THE RISKS OF COSMIC IMPACT – Swarm A:Cl – 2 Strike Masse went on to say that at least some of the tales of a Great Flood, found in hundreds of cultures around the world, may relate to an oceanic impact that set off a tsunami. “The preliminary picture emerging from this analysis is that on or shortly after May 10 in 2807 B.C., the earth was struck by a cosmic impact in the deep waters between Africa and Antarctica. … These data indicate that the flood itself was the very real product of a combination of large tsunami and atmospheric rainout.Final report not located. ◦ CATASTROPHES: THE DILUVIAL EVIDENCE – Swarm A:Cl – 2 Strike Conclusion: “Whilst there is no geological evidence at any time for a worldwide flood on the scale described in Genesis, there are abundant indications of widespread floods and other catastrophes during the period humans have been living on the Earth, in particular during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition around 11,500 years ago, and near the beginning of the Late Holocene, around 2300 B.C.. There are a large number of unanswered questions about events at both of these times. Hopefully we shall not have to wait until the golden jubilee of the SIS in 2024 before we get satisfactory answers to them.” Note: When the British archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, excavated the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, between 1928 and 1934, he found a 3 metre thick layer of alluvial silt on top of the levels of the Ubaid Period (conventionally dated to around 4000 B.C.) and beneath the first traces of the succeeding Uruk Period. To some, including Woolley himself, this seemed like evidence for the flood of Noah. However, no other sites were found to show similar alluvial deposits during the Ubaid Period. On the other hand, at the nearby city of Shuruppak (the modern Fara), there was evidence of a flood during the Early Dynastic Period, around 2750 B.C., and an alluvial deposit dating from around the same time was found at another Sumerian site, the city of Kish. ◦ ANCIENT CRASH, EPIC WAVE – Swarm A: Cl – 2 Strike On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction ?toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface. The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world’s population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land. Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described “band of misfits” that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world’s shorelines and in the deep ocean. O.THE 2,350 BC STRIKE- Swarm C – 4,350 YA ◦ SODOM AND GOMORRAH ‘DESTROYED BY A COMET’, SAY ASTRONOMERS – 30 March 1997 Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed by debris from a comet, startling new archaeological and astronomical research suggests. Another bombardment from space may have brought on the Dark Ages. The research, to be presented to a conference at Cambridge University this summer, provides dramatic evidence for an extraterrestrial cause for the wholesale collapse of several civilisations around 2200BC. ◦ RESEARCHERS: ASTEROID DESTROYED SODOM AND GOMORRAH – April 01, 2008 A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123 B.C. ◦ CLAY TABLET IDENTIFIED AS ASTEROID THAT DESTROYED SODOM AND GOMORRAH A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness’s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across. Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC. The researchers say that the asteroid¡¦s impact would explain why at Kofels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 5km wide and 500m thick. COMMENT It’s true the surface of the ground is littered with fragments of brimstone in the area speculated to be Sodom & Gomorrah, it’s also true no one knows the date Sumerians or Pre- Sumerians began recording in cuneiform on clay tablets, but an Assyrian could read the Akkadian transcriptions of Sumerian at that date. ◦ COMET DESTROYED SODOM AND GOMORRAH – INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 30 March 1997 ◦ COMETS THROUGH TIME 2350 BC audio ◦ METEOR CLUE TO END OF MIDDLE EAST CIVILISATIONS Satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide impact crater caused by a meteor. The catastrophic effect of these could explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden decline around 2300 BC. They include the demise of the Akkad culture of central Iraq, with its mysterious semi-mythological emperor Sargon; the end of the fifth dynasty of Egypt’s Old Kingdom, following the building of the Great Pyramids and the sudden disappearance of hundreds of early settlements in the Holy Land. ◦ COMET-CAUSED COLLAPSE OF THIRD MILLENNIUM BC CIVILIZATIONS? Swarm C:Cl – 2 Strike Coincident with the previous appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 2213 BC, something singularly dreadful seems to have happened on our small fragile blue planet. Not only does it appear that both the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations totally collapsed for a century or more, there is evidence of a sudden catastrophic-but-temporary climate change at this time. Is there a “bad weather” connection? Should we be concerned with the connection if there is one? Swarm C:Cl – 2 Strike Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed by debris from a comet, startling new archaeological and astronomical research suggests. Another bombardment from space may have brought on the Dark Ages. The research, to be presented to a special conference at Cambridge University this summer, provides dramatic evidence for an extraterrestrial cause for the wholesale collapse of several civilisations around 2200 BC. [Experts believe that the Biblical account of the destruction of the 'Cities of the Plain' may be an early description of what happened.] ◦ PALEOENVIRONMENTAL DATA FOR ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE: Swarm C:Cl – 2 Strike My hypothesis is that there were two events, the first one around 2350 BC (2345 BC?), and the second one around 2200 BC (2193-2194 BC?), of similar cause, but possibly independent of each other. ◦ NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATIONS – 1997 Swarm C:Cl – 1 Strike The evidence of a great cataclysm between 2200 BC and 2190 BC is so compelling that on this basis we can’t dismiss it. On the other hand, Courty is right in her theory of a major occurrence which I would date between 2350 BC and 2340 BC. I suggest that there really were two disparate events, a local one in Near East 2200-2190 BC and 150 years later, 2200-2190 BC, (likely means 2350 – 2340 BC) a global one. ◦ EVIDENCE FOR MAJOR IMPACT EVENTS IN THE LATE THIRD MILLENNIUM BC Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike Mesopotamia and other above-mentioned places were not the only victims of the 2200 BC event. As far away as in China, the Hongsan culture fell in pieces at this same time. This, if not anything else, is an indication of the mighty character of the event, and bolsters us to consider it as global. ◦ SODOM AND GOMORRAH Swarm C:Cl – 2 Strike It seems that there was a great catastrophe around 2200 BC that has destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. The Earth was hit in 2194 or 2193 BC by a comet which had spread into many parts, as did Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which hit Jupiter in 1994 AD. The Dead Sea lies at latitude 31 degrees N, and the badly devastated Mohenjo-Daro on the shores of Indus had a latitude of 28 degrees N. China’s Yangtze area has a latitude of around 30 degrees. N. (Impact latitude is stable, longitude varies, such as it did for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.) This latitude is also the latitude between Canary Islands and Madeira. Swarm C:Cl – 1 Strike The incidence of 2345-2344 BC may have been an Anatolian event, destroying most badly the area from Troy (IIg) to Tell Leilan. The incidence of 2194-2193 BC surely had a global frame. Mahabharata may describe what happened at Mohenjodara, Indus. Edda may describe what happened in the Atlantic Ocean. ◦ FROM JEWISH CHRONICLE – 6 March 1998 According to Israeli born social anthropologist Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, such biblical catastrophes as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the flood may well record the havoc wrought by heavenly bodies. The Talmud records the tradition that God caused the flood by taking two stars and casting them to earth, says Dr Peiser. “Before, we did not know of any phenomenon that could trigger such a massive flood disaster,” he adds. “Now, recent research on ocean impacts shows that a large body hitting one of the world’s oceans could trigger the kind of massive tsunamis capable of wiping out coastal cities.” ◦ CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE – 25/05/1998 Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike Evidence is growing that a huge comet smashed into the Earth about 4,000 years ago. Scientists are pointing to studies of tree-rings in Ireland which have revealed that about 2,354-2,345 BC there was an abrupt change to a colder climate. ◦ METEOR SHOWERS BLOTTED OUT MAN’S FIRST CIVILISATIONS – 15 December 1997 Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike A CATACLYSMIC shower of giant meteors destroyed the great Bronze Age civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece by provoking a series of natural disasters. New archeological and astronomical evidence indicates that a huge number of extraterrestrial bodies caused famine, flooding and bushfires thousands of miles wide that led to the collapse of the world’s first sophisticated civilisations. The findings could solve the puzzle of why successful empires from across the globe all apparently collapsed at roughly the same time in about 2350BC, despite the fact that they were independent of each other and all flourishing until their sudden demise. ◦ ADDING UP THE RISKS OF COSMIC IMPACT Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist with Los Alamos National Laboratory, has tried to untangle other astronomical observations from ancient tales told from the Middle East to Hawaii. He referred to an impact event in the Rio Cuarto region of northern Argentina, in which an asteroid 100 to 300 yards (or meters) in diameter apparently broke up as it zoomed through the atmosphere, leaving a trail of craters. This event, which has been dated to around 2000 B.C., may square with tales told of a catastrophic “Great Fire?by cultures in a large region around the impact site, Masse said. ◦ (2) THIRD MILLENNIUM BC CLIMATE CHANGE & OLD WORLD COLLAPSE From: JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE 25,2 (1998), pp. 185-86 Swarm C:Cl – 1 Strike The present volume could be viewed as an exposition on exactly these concepts. However, it is also important to know that new evidence, deduced since the volume was produced, has actually made these points even more emphatically. It is known that an abrupt downturn in Irish oaks at 2354-2345 BC (Baillie 1995) falls close to the Icelandic Hekla 4 tephra horizon dated to 2310+/-20 CalBC by the wiggle-matching of high precision radiocarbon dates (Hall et al. 1994). Courty (1997) has now revised the dating of the original c.2200 BC abrupt environmental event seen at Tell Leilan, in Syria, to c.2350 BC! Thus this volume of papers has now to be seen against the existence of what may well be a very dramatic and widespread environmental downturn – a classic point event – the nature of which is hinted at by the report of both tephra and glass spherules at and around the destruction layer at Tell Leilan. ◦ CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE -May 1998 Swarm C:Cl – 1 Strike Evidence is growing that a huge comet smashed into the Earth about 4,000 years ago. Scientists are pointing to studies of tree-rings in Ireland which have revealed that about 2,354-2,345 BC there was an abrupt change to a colder climate. ◦ THIRD MILLENNIUM BC CLIMATE CHANGE AND OLD WORLD COLLAPSE – June 1998 Dalfes, G Kukla, H Weiss. Springer/NATO ISBN 3-540-61892-9 hb – Book Review ◦ CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE – 5 November 2001 Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike Evidence is growing that a huge comet smashed into the Earth about 4,000 years ago. Scientists are pointing to studies of tree-rings in Ireland which have revealed that about 2,354-2,345 BC there was an abrupt change to a colder climate. They have also highlighted discoveries by archaeologists in northern Syria of a catastrophic environmental event at about the same time. This is also about the time that Bronze Age civilizations collapsed. ◦ CULTURE RAINED OFF 26 June 2001 Swarm C: Cl – 2 Strike Climate-related rise and fall of civilizations has been seen elsewhere. In 1993, Harvey Weiss, of Yale University, and his colleagues claimed that abrupt climate change about 4,200 years ago caused a prolonged drought in the Middle East, affecting civilizations from the Aegean Sea to the Indus River and leading to the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the Euphrates valley. ◦ CUNEIFORM DOCUMENT LIBRARY HITS WEB The Associated Press, Fri 17 May 2002 “We are hoping to bring the richness of Mesopotamian culture to anyone who works on anything. We have agriculture texts, magic texts and medical, legal and religious texts. This is a treasure trove that has not been exploited,” Tinney said. ◦ POSSIBLE CRATER DISCOVERY IN IRAQ – 16 November 2001 Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike Master regards the structure as a possible meteorite impact crater, in a paper presented in September at the Meteoritical Society meeting at the Vatican City. Master, in an abstract in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, also speculated on a possible link between this structure, if it turns out to be in impact crater, and the account of the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates from the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Now other scientists, including archaeologists and astronomers, have seized on this discovery to explain the puzzling demise of a number of Bronze Age sites in the Ancient Near East around 2,300 BC. ◦ (1) NEW EVIDENCE FOR 4000 BP NATURAL DISASTER & CIVILISATION COLLAPSE – 24 May 2000 Swarm C: Cl – 2 Strike Archeological evidence has shown that this highly developed civilization collapsed abruptly near 4170 +/- 150 calendar yr B.P., perhaps related to a shift to more arid conditions. Geochemical correlation of volcanic ash shards between the archeological site and marine sediment record establishes a direct temporal link between Mesopotamian aridification and social collapse, implicating a sudden shift to more arid conditions as a key factor contributing to the collapse of the Akkadian empire. ◦ COMET CATASTROPHE Corroboration comes from Mesopotamia. Something brought down the Akkadian civilization. Around 2200 BC – give or take at least a decade in the approximate dating and close enough to the comet’s last appearance to raise questions – civilization collapsed. P.THE 1,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm B’ – 3,600 YA ◦MINOAN CULTURE SURVIVED ANCIENT VOLCANO, EVIDENCE SHOWS A LONGSTANDING theory of archeology, linking a devastating volcanic eruption to the sudden collapse of the Minoan civilization at its peak of splendor, has apparently been demolished by new excavations on a tiny island off the north coast of Crete. They uncovered architectural and ceramic remains indicating instead that the civilization continued to flourish for some 150 years after the eruption in about 1600 B.C. Radio carbon dating of seeds and wood found in the volcanic ash at Santorini led scientists from the University of Pennsylvania to push back the time of the eruption to no later than 1600 B.C. Ash preserved in ice cores from Greenland seems to confirm the new date, Danish and French scientists said last year. Dr. Marinatos himself was forced to revise his thesis by explaining that there were probably several different earthquakes and eruptions, culminating in the decisive disaster between 1470 and 1450 B.C. ◦ (7) A FEW COMMENTS ON McBEATH’S VIEWS ON THE HISTORICITY OF THE JOSHUA IMPACT EVENT – 12 February 2002 Swarm B’: Cl – 2 Strike Sure enough, after the ca 1586 BCE Joshuaevent these now defenseless people are conquered by Achaeans ca 1580 BCE. . . . The only question that remains is whether this event ca 1586 BCE involved “stones” or “hailstones”. This date is amazingly close to “channeled” data. See: CS – early/94: This comet cluster passed through the solar system 3582 years ago. ◦ (6) BRONZE AGE CITIES MAY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY COMET Swarm B’: Cl – 1 Strike A SERIES of natural disasters which befell Bronze Age civilisations in many parts of the world may have been the result of comets or meteorites smashing into the Earth. The most exciting new evidence comes from Dr Marie-Agnes Courty, a French expert in the microscopic study of soils and sediments. The original evidence was gathered by the French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer and published almost half a century ago. He found that Bronze Age sites over a huge area of the near and Middle East showed evidence of four destructive episodes, the three most prominent at 2,300 BC, 1,650 BC, and 1,200 BC. ◦ NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILISATIONS: Archaeological, Geological and Astronomical Perspectives. ◦ COMETS MAY HAVE CAUSED EARTH’S GREAT EMPIRES TO FALL – 17 August 1999 Swarm B’: Cl – 1 Strike In a forthcoming book, Catastrophe, the Day the Sun Went Out, British historian David Keys describes a 2-year-long winter that began in A.D. 535. Trees from California to Ireland to Siberia stopped growing. Crops failed. Plague and famine decimated Italy, China and the Middle East. Researchers say similar environmental calamities occurred around 3200 B.C., 2300 B.C., 1628 B.C. and 1159 B.C. Each led to the collapse of urban societies in widely scattered portions of the globe. ◦ ICE AGE END NEAR 1500 B.C. AND GENESIS Submarine megalithic structures off the coasts of Malta, Egypt, Lebanon, India, China, and Japan in waters up to 70 meters deep were evidently submerged when the Ice Age ended and sea-level rose about 100 meters because of runoff from the melting of the Ice Age ice-packs. Many of these megaliths were astronomical measuring devices, which indicates that their Ice Age constructors had map- making capabilities and sailed the seas, as demonstrated by a commonality of the architectural motifs of the megaliths worldwide, and as demonstrated by Turkish navigational maps which were sourced from ancient Phoenician maps and show coastlines of the Ice Age world with accuracies of latitude and longitude to not be matched until modern times. Q.THE 1,200 BC STRIKE- Swarm B – 3,200 YA ◦Swarm B:Cl – 1 Strike 3159 YA ◦ (4) MOSES’ COMET – 7 July 1999 An Impact, Plus a Volcano, May Have Battered Biblical Egypt Moses called down a host of calamities upon Egypt until the pharaoh finally freed the Israelites. Perhaps he had the help of a comet impact coupled with a volcano. The Exodus story is traditionally dated to either the thirteenth or fifteenth century B.C. The Exodus story includes dust, several days of darkness, hail, dead fish, undrinkable water, cattle killed by hail, water breaking out of rocks, the earth opening, the sea parting as in a tsunami, and so on. ◦ 12TH CENTURY BC. WHY THE GLOBAL CATASTROPHY? ◦ 12TH CENTURY BC. WHY THE GLOBAL CATASTROPHY?, HISTORICAL QUERIE , PUZZLE The diffusion of ironworking technology was at least partially responsible for the collapse of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Hittite civilisations around 1200 BCE, as these advanced peoples lost their technological lead to their barbarian neighbours. ◦ COMET SWARM THAT PASSED EARTH 3200 YEARS AGO TO RETURN ◦COMET PHAETHON’S RIDE dates it to 1159 B.C.E., or 3159 YA A period of celestial “comet” activity is noted, suggesting multiple comet cluster passing throught the inner solar system. ◾Though definitive dating of protohistoric impact events can only come from careful stratigraphic work, there are some rather strong indicators that a nasty encounter such as suggested here occurred about 1159 B.C.E This is not an arbitrary date for it marks the beginning of a sharp decline in the annual growth of Irish bog oak which lasted almost two decades and for that reason stands out in the over seven thousand year long dendrochronological record based on this species of tree ◾This “warring period” (given as 1148-1122 B.C.E. by N. Koss 1979) is the subject of a later historical novel (Feng-Shen Yen-I) which contends that the war between Shang and Chow groups was not caused by human factors but by the predestined investiture of the gods (see S.H. Chang 1990 pp. 169-70). In the Shoo King (book of history) there are several mentions of heaven sending down calamities during this time period. This 26 year long swarm is the same that is anticipated to arrive soon again, this time between 2006 and 2012 (or 2016) AD. Two primary swarms are envisioned, but there may be more. ◦COMETS AND THE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE results from the last pass of the threatening comet swarm (Swarm B) about 3200 YA (years ago). During a close approach to a massive object like our planet a comet would be gravitationally disrupted (Phaethon’s disentegrating chariot) independent fragments would then further break to pieces as they entered Earth’s atmosphere. This debris, of various shapes and sizes, would scatter widely along the path of the fall, each piece harboring energy in proportion to its mass. The “footprint” of this event could have included some of: southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Northern Africa. Damage, however, would not be uniform throughout this area. If the disintegrating objects were traveling south of east, as the Phaethon story implies, the more massive fragments would travel farther and release their greater energy, explosively, lower in the atmosphere toward the southeast end of the elliptical area directly affected by the fall. In other words, the Near East would be more heavily damaged than southern Europe. A survey scaling intensity of site destruction might reflect this aspect, i.e., vitrification of soil and building materials might occur below lower altitude multi-megaton blasts . Secondary effects of a large impact event would include: a spottily enhanced C- 14 environment, making this means of dating unreliable to confirm or refute simultaneous destruction of disparate sites; a large production of oxides of nitrogen yielding dangerous ozone depletion, perhaps giving a survival advantage to darker skinned people in the aftermath, particularly in equatorial regions; acidic precipitation from the above-mentioned atmospheric chemistry; and, in the higher latitudes, impact winter, caused by suspended dust and soot. ◦ (5) WHEN CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED: DEATH OF THE BRONZE AGE – 11 October 2001 From the time of Ramesses III (c. 1182-1151 B.C.E.) through that of Ramesses VII (c. 1133-1127 B.C.E.), the price of emmer wheat in Egypt gradually rose to eight (or, for a time, 24) times its earlier price. Not until the reign of Ramesses X (c. 1108-1098 B.C.E.) did the price drop, but even then it remained twice what it had been at the beginning of the 12th century. During this period, the government also sometimes failed to pay grain and other food rations owed to artisans who cut and decorated the royal tombs. The craftsmen staged strikes at least six times between about 1154 B.C.E. and 1106 B.C.E. because their grain allotments were months in arrears. ◦ TROY VII AND THE HISTORICITY OF THE TROJAN WAR In any consideration of the historicity of the Trojan War, the fundamental questions to be addressed are: (1) Where did it take place? Necessarily at Hisarlik or possibly elsewhere? (2) When did it take place? Is there a time within the range of dates established by later Greek tradition for the war (1334-1184 B.C.) when the Mycenaeans could have undertaken the sort of joint military venture described by Homer, of which the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 of the Iliad may be a genuine Bronze Age roster? (3) If a destruction level caused by human agency at a likely site at a date within the time-span assigned by Greek tradition to the Trojan War can be identified, was the destruction in question the product of Mycenaean attackers? The date of Troy VIIa’s destruction probably lies within the half-century ca. 1230-1180 B.C., although Blegen ultimately placed it a generation or so earlier and Podzuweit has recently suggested that it should be set a good deal later. This suggests that the termination of Trojan war may have been co-incident or near co-incident with a comet impact. ◦ ANCIENT CITY IN TROAS, NORTHWESTERN ANATOLIA. Whether the site is the actual city of these works is still debated, but the archaeological evidence indicates that a city (Troy VIIa) was destroyed at that location c. 1260?0 BC and likely was the Homeric Troy. The ruins were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1998. ◦ HELEN AND HER IMPACT ON GREEK ART AND CULTURE The peoples of Greece are even known as the Hellenic peoples, suggesting that Helen of Troy was of great consequence to the Oversoul ◦ MEET HELEN OF TROY: BALD-HEADED, BARE-BREASTED AND BLOODTHIRSTY – 9 October 2005 For centuries, Helen of Troy has been portrayed as a woman whose beauty was so great that it caused a war. Revered for her flowing hair and breathtaking features, she eloped with Paris, sparking the siege of Troy after her husband raised an army to take her back. It seems more than coincidental that ‘Paris’ has also become synonymous with the ‘City of Love’. But, more than 3,000 years after events described in The Iliad, Helen is to undergo a dramatic historical reappraisal. According to a controversial new book, she was more likely to have been a shaven- headed, bare-breasted warrior princess whose appetite for sex was matched only by her insatiable bloodlust. The author, the historian Bettany Hughes, claims that the real Helen was a powerful Bronze Age princess, living in the Greek city- state of Sparta around 1250BC. Basing her argument on extensive archaeological research, as well as surviving friezes from the period, Hughes conjures a picture of Helen as a dominant woman who would have worn a handful of snake-like strands of hair over an otherwise shaven, and perhaps brightly dyed, head. Her breasts would almost certainly have been exposed to reinforce her power and sexuality, and she would have been a fit, trained fighter. Her claims, published in Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore, come as excavations at Sparta have sparked speculation that Helen’s long-lost palace may be about to emerge from the hillside. Bronze Age remains there, long thought to have been part of a modest house, have been identified by the British team in charge of the digs as merely the storage areas of a much larger palace complex. A nearby temple ” called the Menelaion ” has been matched to early Greek sources which refer to it as ‘Helen’s Shrine’. It is more than interesting that the names of ‘Paris’ and ‘Helen of Troy’ are so well known, implying that they may have been ‘Essence Twins’; see Table H-7. ◦Swarm B: Cl – 2 Strike (2785 to 2838) YA ◦ BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL CLIMATE – Lamb 1977 Global Climatic Boundary at 2760 BP or about 810 BC ◦ COMPILATION OF NON-ANNUALLY RESOLVED HOLOCENE PROXY CLIMATE RECORDS: STACKED HOLOCENE PEATLAND PALAEO-WATER TABLE RECONSTRUCTIONS FROM NORTHERN BRITAIN he stacked record for northern Britain indicates pronounced changes to wet conditions at 3600, 2760 and 1600 cal yr BP with more minor changes at 3060, 2050, 1260, 860, 550 and 260 cal yr BP. The main wet phases are highly correlated with mid-European lake highstands, wider North Atlantic climate change inferred from ocean and ice core records, and solar variability. Tuning and stacking of non-annual terrestrial palaeoclimate records is a new approach to the compilation and reconciliation of individual records within coherent climatic regions and provides a tool for upscaling of palaeoclimate records for climate model-data comparisons. 2760 appears to be in radiocarbon dated years implying (2735 to 2788) cal.yr BP ◦ LATE QUATERNARY DEGLACIAL HISTORY OF THE ME´rIDA ANDES, VENEZUELA This latter MS drop was AMS radiocarbon dated at 2760 (2735 to 2788) cal.yr BP. Between 105 and ca. 50cm the MS,dry density and clastic sediment maintain their low values. R.THE 200 BC STRIKE- Swarm A’ – 2,200 YA ◦ ROMAN COMET 5,000 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN A-BOMB Swarm A’:Cl – 2 Strike This discovery, together with evidence from ancient tree rings and Roman reports of ‘stones falling from the sky’, has led researchers to conclude that the impact happened in about 200BC. ◦ (1) FIRE, FLOOD AND COMET – New Scientist, 9 January 1999, p. 42 Swarm A’: Cl – 2 Strike The tree-ring record points to global environmental traumas between 2354 and 2345 BC, 1628 and 1623 BC, 1159 and 1141 BC, 208 and 204 BC and AD 536 and 545. Baillie argues that the tree rings are recording first the biblical flood, then the disasters that befell Egypt at the Exodus, famines at the end of King David’s reign, a famine in China that ended the Ch’in (sic) dynasty, and finally, the death of King Arthur and Merlin and the onset of the Dark Ages across the whole of what is now Britain. ◦ “VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE” Swarm A’: Cl – 2 Strike Camp Century. Location Date BC. Cluster ◾Unknown ? 210?0 72 45 A’:Cl – 2 ◾Unknown ? 260?0 54 35 A’:Cl – 2 Note: Mean 235 +/- 30 BC ◦ DID THE CELTS SEE A COMET IMPACT IN 200 B.C.? A new-found field of impact craters may mark the site of a recent comet strike. We have identified an exceptional field of meteorites and impact craters stretching from the town of Altötting to the area around Lake Chiemsee in southeastern Bavaria, Germany. While there are many meteorite “strewnfields” known around the world, few contain significant craters. The Chiemgau field, which falls within an ellipse 36 miles long and 17 miles (58 by 27 kilometers) wide, holds at least 81 impact craters ranging from 10 to 1,215 feet (3 to 370 meters) in size. Many more craters may lie hidden in heavily forested areas within the ellipse, and farming activities in the region may have destroyed others. ◦ SCIENTISTS SAY COMET SMASHED INTO SOUTHERN GERMANY IN 200 BC The biggest crater is now a circular lake called Tuettensee, measuring 370 metres (1,200 feet) across. Scores of smaller craters and other meteorite impacts can be spotted in an elliptical field, inflicted by other debris. The figure may be fine-tuned to around 200 BC, thanks to tree-ring evidence from preserved Irish oaks, which show a slowing in growth around 207 BC. In addition, Roman authors at about the same time wrote about showers of stones falling from the skies and terrifying the populace. The object is more likely to have been a comet than an asteroid, given the length of the ellipse and scattered debris, the report says. ◦Swarm A’:Cl – 1 Strike As to 430 BC, I don’t know what caused it but there does seem to be a widespread downturn from 430 to 420 or 410 BC, the coincidence of the start of this downturn with the Plague of Athens is interesting. Private comunication with Dr. Mike Baillie 25 Feb. 2003 A’:Cl – 1 ◦ [DER HOLOZÄNE TÜTTENSEE-METEORITENKRATER IN SÜDOSTDEUTSCHLAND] Swarm A’:Cl – 1 Strike ◦ THE HOLOCENE TÜTTENSEE METEORITE IMPACT CRATER IN SOUTHEAST GERMANY Swarm A’: Cl – 1 Strike In Greek mythology there exists one story that has repeatedly been interpreted to describe the fall of a celestial body: the story of Phaethon, who undertakes a disastrous drive with the sun-chariot of his father Helios. First, the article presents the arguments given by ancient authors for interpreting this story as the reflection of a natural phenomenon. Then details given in the old descriptions of Phaethon’s fall are compared with nowadays knowledge of impact phenomena. Furthermore the texts are examined for clues to the time and the location of the hypothesised impact. These considerations substantiate the suggestion that the myth of Phaethon reflects a concrete strike of a meteorite, the so-called Chiemgau Impact. That impact struck the south-east of Bavaria/Germany at some time during the Celtic period and left an extended crater-strewnfield of about 100 craters. A conspicuous intersection between the tradition of the Phaethon-story and the up to now known time-frame for the Chiemgau Impact gives new clues for dating the Chiemgau Impact to the time between 600 and 428 BC. ◦ METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS: DAMAGES, DISASTERS, INJURIES, DEATHS, AND VERY CLOSE CALLS Swarm A’: Cl – 1 Strike Other ancient reports in the West are found in the writings of Pausanius, Plutarch, Livy, Pindar, Valerius Maximus, Caesar, and many others. The report of a great fall of black dust at Constantinople in 472 BC, perhaps the result of a high-altitude airburst, is documented by Procopius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Theophanes, and others. “580 AD in Louraine, one morning before the dawning of the day, a great light was seen crossing the heavens, falling toward the east. A sound like that of a tree crashing down was heard over all the countryside, but it could surely not have been any tree, since it was heard more than fifty miles away… the city of Bordeaux was badly shaken by an earthquake … a supernatural fire burned down villages about Bordeaux. It took hold so rapidly that houses and even threshing- floors with all their grain were burned to ashes. Since there was absolutely no other visible cause of the fire, it must have happened by divine will. The city of Orleans also burned with so great a fire that even the rich lost almost everything.” Astronomers who have sought documentary evidence of ancient astronomical phenomena (eclipses, comets, fireballs, etc.) have found that East Asian records are far superior to European records for many centuries. Kevin Yau has searched Chinese records and found many reports of deaths and injuries (Yau et al., 1994). The Chinese records of lethal impact events include the death of 10 victims from a meteorite fall in 616 AD, S.THE 500 AD STRIKES- Swarm A – 1,500 YA ◦ 236 AD Exact tree ring date ¨C Dr. Mike Baillie. Swarm A:Cl – 1 Strike ◦THERE IS STRONG HISTORICAL AND DENDROCHRONOLOGICAL (TREE RING) EVIDENCE OF A COMET IMPACTS 440 and 534 AD. Swarm A:Cl – 2 Strike The 440 AD (1560 YA) strike? appears to have been in Britain. According to a TV production aired on KQED 9:00PM 16 May 2000 report, Celtic tales of Arthur record the fiery destruction of Camelot and the hands of the Sun god (tails of comets) reaching upwards. The 534 AD (1466 YA) strike seems to have caused 70 – 80% of China’s population to die. The KQED production reports atmospheric sulfur increased around this date, also suggesting a volcanic eruption. See also Baillie’s “A Slice of Time” or “Exodus to Arthur”. Note: the three-body situation involved result in quasi-periodic, not periodic, comet strikes. ◦HISTORIANS LOCATE KING ARTHUR’S ROUND TABLE – 11 Jul 2010 Mr Gidlow said: “In the 6th Century, a monk named Gildas, who wrote the earliest account of Arthur’s life, referred to both the City of Legions and to a martyr’s shrine within it. ◦EXODUS TO ARTHUR: CATASTROPHIC ENCOUNTERS WITH COMETS – A Book. ◦ (4) THE DAY THE SKY FELL IN: ASTEROID IMPACT AND THE FALL OF ROME Swarm A: Cl – 2 Strike The data indicate that the crater was formed in about 412 AD, with an uncertainty of 40 years in either direction. Additional sampling may allow this spread to be reduced, but it is clear that the event occurred close to the fall of Rome: some time between 370 AD and 450 AD, when the city was again under attack, this time by the Vandals. ◦ THE DAY THE SKY FELL IN February 6, 2003 Swarm A: Cl – 2 Strike A metallic asteroid may have coincided with the fall of Rome, says Duncan Steel. A small metallic asteroid descended from the sky, making a hypervelocity impact in an Apennine valley just 60 miles east of the city. This bus-sized lump of cosmic detritus vaporised as it hit the ground. In doing so, it released energy equivalent to around 200 kilotonnes of TNT: around 15 times the power of the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima in 1945. The data indicate that the crater was formed in about 412 AD, with an uncertainty of 40 years in either direction. ◦ DID AN ASTEROID STRIKE IN AUSTRALIA PLUNGE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND INTO A MINI ICE-AGE? – 04th February 2010 A giant meteorite that broke in two as it crashed off Australia, could have been responsible for a mini-ice age that engulfed Britain in 535AD. The claim was made by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last month. She found evidence of two substantial impact craters in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern Australian coast. Until now scientists were divided as to whether the dust cloud was caused by a huge volcanic eruption like Krakatoa or a meteorite slamming into Earth. The eruption theory has many supporters due to sulphate deposits found in ice cores from that period. However, Dr Abbott’s research suggests the alternative theory. She found satellite measurements of sea levels pointed to two significant craters off Australia, which were 11miles and 7.4miles wide. According to National Geographic, she was led to the site by large v-shaped dunes along the coast, which she believes are evidence of a great tsunami triggered by a giant impact. Dr Abbott calculated that the original object must have been 2,000ft across. She also found that core samples from the area revealed material likely to have been melted and then blasted into the sky. This could fit quite neatly with a 2004 paper in the journal of Astronomy and Geophysics, which suggested an object around 2,000ft across could have caused a cooling event on the scale of AD535. He added that Dr Abbott and others had found ‘evidence’ of more impact events than astronomer’s believe are possible. Vulcan’s existence means there are many more impacts than astronomers would normally expect. ◦ Giant METEORITES SLAMMED EARTH AROUND A.D. 500? – 03 Feb 2010 It’s even possible the impact had eyewitnesses: Aboriginal rock art from the region seems to have recorded the event, although the researchers examining this art declined to discuss details until after their paper has been published. Still, Duane Hamacher, a Ph.D. student at Macquarie University in Sydney not involved with the rock-art work, recently demonstrated that Aboriginal stories can be used to locate meteorite craters. “Numerous examples of fiery stars falling from the sky and striking the earth, causing death and destruction, are found throughout Aboriginal Dreamings [spiritual folk stories] across Australia,” Hamacher wrote on his blog. “The descriptions seem to indicate that the events were witnessed, not simply ‘made-up.’” In findings yet to be published, Hamacher used one set of Aboriginal stories, along with images in Google Earth, to locate a 919-foot-wide (280-meter-wide) impact crater in Palm Valley, in Australia’s Northern Territory. ◦ (3) THE DAY THE SUN WENT OUT Swarm Volcanic Strike In 535 AD, nature literally came to standstill. Winter gripped the earth for two years. Startling new evidence shows that trees all over the world – from Ireland to Siberia, California to Finland – stopped growing during the mid-sixth century. Eyewitness accounts describe what we might now call a ‘nuclear winter.’ According to the Syrian Bishop, John of Ephesus “The sun became dark …Each day it shone for about four hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow.” An ancient chronicle from Southern China states that: “Yellow dust rained like snow. It could be scooped up in handfuls.” Famine and plague followed, killing millions and altering the course of history. ◦ A DARK AGE MYSTERY UNRAVELLED Scientists at Cardiff University, UK, believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago. The answer? A comet colliding with Earth. The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. ◦ SCIENTISTS: COMET CAUSED DARK AGE FROSTS Using evidence from tree rings, the scientists at the School of Physics and Astronomy determined that Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 A.D. because a comet hit the planet and exploded in the upper atmosphere. ◦ COLLISION WITH COMET MAY HAVE HASTENED FIRST PLAGUE EPIDEMIC Studies of tree rings – from preserved oaks retrieved from Irish bogs to ancient American pine trees – have shown that plant growth around the world almost stopped between about 536 AD to 545 AD. Chinese records from this time refer to a “dust veil” obscuring the skies. Mediterranean historians record a “dry fog” that blocked out much of the sun’s heat for more than a year. One idea is that a super-volcano erupted, but neither the volcano nor its acidic deposits have been identified. The other proposal involved a collision with a big asteroid or comet, but there was no direct evidence such as a crater. However, some believe a much smaller comet which exploded in the atmosphere could easily have generated the dust and debris in the 6th century catastrophe. The surprising result of these calculations is just how small a comet fragment we have estimated was needed to cause the observed effects. The comet plunges into the upper atmosphere leaving an effectively hollow tube behind it, where it has been, and into which the surrounding air has not yet had time to diffuse. This tube then acts rather like a gun barrel, focusing much of the energy of the airburst explosion along the tube and carrying with it much of the comet debris, the scientists (Dr Ward-Thompson, Mel Symonds and Emma Rigby) write in the journal Astronomy and Physics. As a result, the plume would have spread around the world in a massive fountain of debris. ◦ ASTRONOMERS UNRAVEL A MYSTERY FROM THE DARK AGES Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. The scientists believe this was caused by a comet hitting the earth and exploding in the upper atmosphere. This work shows that even a comet of only half a kilometre in size could have global consequences. The comet impact caused crop failures and wide-spread starvation among the sixth century population. Nostradamus Quatrain I/69 envisions a 474 meter diameter comet impact. ◦ (7) 6TH CENTURY CATASTROPHE: WELSH DRAGONS PROBABLY COMETS Swarm Volcanic Strike ◦ A.D. 536 AND ITS AFTERMATH-THE YEARS WITHOUT SUMMER – June 1998 Swarm Volcanic Strike A book by Joel D. Gunn, Department of Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514 Global Climate Change in the First Millennium A.D. Part II presents the convincing, even overwhelming, historical evidence from literate societies that A.D. 536cal was a watershed moment in the history of the world. A search for a plausible boundary between Classical and Modern times has been a subject of debate for much of the twentieth century. Young argues that A.D. 536cal was the breakline between classical and modern times. ◦ (3) MODERN GLOBAL EFFECTS OF AN AD 536 EVENT Swarm Volcanic Strike There were successive crop failures in China and the British Isles seem to have been devastated. There is good suggestive data that multiple Tunguska events were involved, at least, and there is no evidence for major volcanic eruptions at that time (which argues strongly for a cosmic vector with the Taurid stream a most likely source). ◦ (1) THE MERLIN ‘VISION’ AND THE 6th CENTURY ‘EVENT’ – 28 October 1998 Swarm Volcanic Strike Interestingly the battle of Arfderydd is recorded in the oldest text of the “Annales Cambriae” as having occurred in the year AD 573, and this in turn reminded me of an earlier post to the CCNet by Joel D. Gunn regarding the AD 536 ‘event’ and the upheaval of the 6th century. Could this tale of the ‘vision’ by the Merlin figure be a recollection of a fragmenting comet/asteroid ‘event’, with the ‘tremendous din’ being of a tunguska-like airburst? It made me wonder about the mention in that post, which I then looked up in the CCNet archive: Referring to the 440 AD strike? ◦TREE RINGS CHALLENGE HISTORY – 08/09/2000 Swarm Volcanic Strike Mike Baillie (Queen’s University in Belfast, UK) said growth rings in bog oaks and archaeological timbers indicated that a great catastrophe struck the Earth in AD 540. Professor Baillie favors the idea that comet fragments smashed into the atmosphere throwing up dust and gas that blocked out the Sun. This, in turn, led to crop failures, famine and even plague among the weakened peoples of the world. ◦ MYSTERY CLOUD OF AD 536 Swarm Volcanic Strike The densest and most persistent dry fog on record was observed in Europe and the Middle East during AD 536 and 537. There is sufficient detailed information to estimate the optical depth and mass of this remarkable stratospheric dust cloud. Its importance resides in the fact that its mass and its climatic consequences appear to exceed those of any other volcanic cloud of the past three millennia. ◦ (8) MORE ON THE AD 540 EVENT – June 1998 Swarm Volcanic Strike Surely, if a volcanic vector were a major player in the AD 540 event, this activity would have registered in Greenland, as the AD 79 eruption did if the signal at AD 77 (off due to counting error) is the result of Vesuvius. To the best of my knowledge, every known major eruption above 10 degrees S. latitude in the past 2000 years has registered in the Greenland ice. It is hard to imagine a volcanic vector for the AD 540 event (not) to have registered there, too. ◦ (5) MORE ON THE AD 536 EVENT – June 1998 Swarm Volcanic Strike Univ. North Carolina reports on a recent conference dedicated to the A.D. 536 marker event as a global phenomenon. The cause for this climate plunge seems to be undetermined as between volcanic and cosmic. ◦A COMET IMPACT IN AD 536? Swarm Volcanic Strike ◦ (11) DOUBTS ABOUT VOLCANIC CATASTROPHE AD 536 6 April 2000 Swarm Volcanic Strike ◦ (12) DRAGONS, BEOWULF, & FIRE FROM THE SKY – 14 March 2000 Swarm Volcanic Strike The interesting point being that Chinese stories note dragons wrestling in ponds in 503 and 524 while in the West Beowulf wrestles Grendel’s mother in a pond in a context which has independently suggested dates between 495 and 533. Why would two such similar concepts appear at almost exactly the same times so far apart? Here the Chinese context helps by telling us that their dragons are associated with fireballs. But better still they tell us that where the dragons passed “all the trees were broken” which could have a Tunguska type ring to it. Surprisingly, in Beowulf as Grendel’s mother takes off across the moors “They followed the (her) tracks along forest paths…” which sounds remarkably similar to the Chinese version. In Heaney’s recent translation he says “The forest paths were marked all over with the monster’s tracks…”. – Mike Baillie ◦ “THE DARK AGES: WERE THEY DARKER THAN WE IMAGINED?” Swarm B The twelfth century BC is associated with the “Greek Dark Ages”, the end of the Hittite civilization in the Near East, the end of Bronze Age Israel, and the end of the Bronze Age Shang dynasty in China. Ancient Chinese history has the notion of “mandate from heaven”, where the rulers were essentially subject to the whims of the sky above. Strange sights in the sky would not be seen as good news for Chinese Emperors. Indeed, around this time, Chinese records speak of: Swarm Volcanic Strike “…many gods and spirits were annihilated in this battle, and several stellar dignitaries were replaced by newcomers to the celestial domains.” Chinese historical records of AD 540 say: “Dragons fought in the pond of the K’uh o. They went westward…. In the places they passed, all the trees were broken.” Ben Rudder, an anthropologist who reviewed in New Scientist magazine a recently published book by Baillie on the subject, wrote: “If Baillie is right, history has overlooked probably the single most important explanation for the intermittent progress of civilization. Worse, our modern confidence in benign skies is foolhardy, and our failure to appreciate the constant danger of comet “swarms” is the result of a myopic trust in a mere 200 years of “scientific” records.” Baillie himself notes that: “There is, I feel, a strong case for the contention that we do not inhabit a benign planet. This planet is bombarded relatively often. If this story is correct, we have been bombarded at least three times – and probably five times – since the birth of civilization some 5,000 years ago. And each time, the world was changed.” Note, 5000 divided by 3 intervals is 1633 years. This Vulcan web site suggests the quasi-periodic average is 1677 years. ◦ GIANT METEORITES SLAMMED EARTH AROUND A.D. 500? – February 3, 2010 Double impact may have caused tsunami, global cooling The new work is the latest among several clues linking a major impact event to an episode of global cooling that affected crop harvests from A.D. 536 to 545, Abbott contends. According to the theory, material thrown high into the atmosphere by the Carpentaria strike probably triggered the cooling, which has been pinpointed in tree-ring data from Asia and Europe. What’s more, around the same time the Roman Empire was falling apart in Europe, Aborigines in Australia may have witnessed and recorded the double impact, she said. T.THE 1,000 AD STRIKE- Swarm C – 1,000 YA ◦ (9) THE CATASTROPHIC YEARS AROUND 850 AD – 10 January 2001 Swarm C:Cl – 1 Strike Could the comet, or comets, possibly causing the traumas around 850AD actually have been seen? The excellent essay by James Palmer and Trevor Palmer (CCNet, 5th.Dec.,2000) is supported by Barry Hetherington (1) who points out comets seen in 836, 837 (Halley), two in 838, 840 (two, accompanied by a report of a meteor shower in the same year(2)), 841 (two), 842, 844, 852, 853, 855, 857, 858, two in 864 (one observed as yellowish), 866 ( noted as “comets appeared in the spring”), 867, 868 (three, one seen near Venus, another in January, and a third in February), and 869. Most of these were recorded by Chinese observers, but some by European. Although none of these comets are reported as particularly spectacular, which one would have thought would be a requirement of a giant, and possibly close-approaching, comet capable of causing such devastation, at least they are evident. The culprit, such as it may be, would certainly have been visible. ◦ NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR BETWEEN 986 AND 1030 AD Swarm C:Cl – 1 Strike ~1000: The climate of northern Europe is warming. Drift ice is rare south of the Arctic Circle. This warm period continues until about the year 1200. Drastic changes in the Earth’s climate can occur within decades. Due to comet or meteorite strike ◦ THE NORSE HISTORY OF GREENLAND 982-1500 Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike ◾982-985 Erik the Red explores and names Greenland, after being outlawed for three years on account of manslaughter in Iceland. ◾986 Southern Greenland is settled by Erik the Red as he leads the first settlers from Iceland. Erik the Red settles in Brattahlid (today’s Qassiarsuk) which becomes the center of the Eastern Settlement. ◾1408 A wedding is held at Hvalsey Church. This is the last written record of Greenland’s Norse population. Could the comet of swarm C have struck in the water warming the Earth as Hoyle suggests? ◦ (2) WAS THERE AN OCEANIC IMPACT IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE IN 1178? – 29 April 1998 Swarm C:Cl – 2 Strike ◦ COLD SNAP DROVE VIKINGS FROM GREENLAND, STUDY SUGGESTS – 31 May 2011 Ice cores from Greenland’s lakes show that a cold snap — called the “Little Ice Age” — preceded the departure of the Norse Vikings from their settlements. The lowered temperatures are the most likely explanation of their rapid departure from the area. The cooling started around the year 1100, dropping 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) in 80 years. The change could have shortened the crop growing season and increased sea-ice levels, making trade and sailing difficult. “Suddenly year after year, you go into this cooling trend, and the summers are getting shorter and colder and you can’t make as much hay. You can imagine how that particular lifestyle may not be able to make it,” D’Andrea said. The colder weather might have ousted the Norse from their settlements, which were set up in the 980s. Their disappearance could also be due to other factors, including their dependence on trade, combative relationships with their neighbors and sedentary lifestyle, the researchers said. ◦ (1) OCEANIC IMPACT MIGHT HAVE INSPIRED ABORIGINAL LEGEND – April 1998 Swarm C:Cl – 2 Strike Geologist Professor Ted Bryant believes the legend of a “white wave” that wiped out Aboriginal culture more than 200 years ago tells of a natural disaster that devastated the south coast of NSW after a comet strike in the Tasman Sea. The Wollongong University geologist estimates the tsunami was moving at about 350kmh when it hit the coast. He believes the earlier tsunami, which struck about 850 years ago 1150 AD, was probably even bigger. ◦CLIMATE CHANGE HELPED THE INCAS BUILD CIVILISATION – 27 Jul 2009 Their warfare, building and agricultural skills may have been impressive but, according to scientists in Peru, the Incas would have been nothing without good weather induced by climate change. New research has revealed that a prolonged period of warm weather between AD1100 and 1533 cleared large areas of mountain land to be used for farming, helping the Incas to spread their influence from Colombia to the central plains of Chile. With the tree line moving steadily higher up the mountains, the Incas carved terraces into the mountainside to grow potatoes and maize, and developed a system of canals to irrigate the land. The climate remained dry but melting glacial ice provided a constant supply of water, resulting in a surplus of crops to feed the population. The men freed up from agricultural duties were then able to focus on other activities, among them constructing roads and buildings such as the Incas’ 3,250-mile Royal Road through the highlands, the 2,520-mile Coastal Road and Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas. ◦ VIEW OF EASTER ISLAND DISASTER ALL WRONG, RESEARCHERS SAY The first settlers on Easter Island didn’t arrive until 1200 AD, up to 800 years later than previously thought, a new study suggests. The finding challenges the widely held notion that Easter Island’s civilization experienced a sudden collapse after centuries of slow growth. If correct, the finding would mean that the island’s irreversible deforestation and construction of its famous Moai statues began almost immediately after Polynesian settlers first set foot on the island. “There may not have actually been any collapse,” Lipo told LiveScience. “With only 500 years, there’s no reason to believe there had to have been a huge [population] growth.” ◦ THE EVIDENCE OFANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL BURNING Swarm C: Cl – 2 Strike 1.1.2.9: The Medieval Warm Period – the Little Optimum (1150-1320 AD). .. “from around 1150-1300 a much warmer climate was experienced throughout the temperate latitudes.”; “1100-1300AD medieval warm period.”; “This warmer epoch (1150-1300) is now usually referred to as the Little optimum.”; “Between 900- 1300ad the world basked in temperatures about a degree warmer than today’s.”; “By 1200 Europeans has cut and ploughed their way across the continent with such thoroughness that they threatened to create a treeless desert. With a few great exceptions, Europe’s great forests date from the late Middle Ages.”; “Around 1,000 years ago came several centuries during which northern latitudes were perhaps a few degrees warmer than today.”Water Strike Wrms Earth – Hoyle 1.1.2.10: The Little Ice Age (1320-1850). “By 1320 all northwest europe was in the grip of the little ice age. .. but the little ice age did not finally end until the middle of the 19thc.”; “1520-1850 ad little ice age.” “There is widespread evidence for cooling during what is generally recognized as the ‘Little Ice Age?of the fourteenth to the early 19C.”; “The period 1550-1750 was the coldest this millennium ..” ◦ EUROPE’S CHILL LINKED TO DISEASE Europe’s “Little Ice Age” may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study. Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The team found an increase in cereal pollen from 1200 onwards (reflecting agricultural expansion), followed by a sudden dive around 1347, linked to the agricultural crisis caused by the arrival of the Black Death, most probably a bacterial disease spread by rat fleas. ◦ GLOBAL COOLING – MINI-ICE AGE Swarm C: Cl – 1 Strike It was AD 986. Erik the Red, ousted from Iceland for manslaughter, set sail with a hardy group of Vikings for a faraway land. Erik called it Greenland, a place ordinarily hostile to humans with its mile-thick ice cap. What Erik could not have known was that his adventure, like other Viking exploration a thousand years ago, was greatly aided by a long-term change in the weather. For about 400 years, much of the earth’s climate inexplicably warmed up – a time now known as the Medieval Warm Period. 986 AD – 400 = 586 AD, close to 536 AD impact date. Swarm C: Cl – 2 Strike Then a chill set in. Slowly at first. People didn’t want to believe it. Farmers were reluctant to give up their new fields. Settlers on Greenland held on for as long as possible. But the steadily expanding cold was irresistible by the 1200s. Unspeakable hardships began to take hold in much of the world. In Iceland, extensive grasslands that had supported sheep, goats, and cattle from AD 874 had receded by 1200. 1.1.2.11: The Climatic Oscillations during the Little Ice Age. “Following the medieval cold of the 1400s the weather seemed to oscillate wildly. There were some very warm summers and some appallingly wet ones producing floods and failed harvests. The early 1500s were generally warm, but around the middle of the century the so-called little ice age set in – another bitterly cold epoch.”; “The period 1550-1750 was the coldest this millennium, although the climate wildly fluctuated and the mid-1660s were so warm drought struck in the summer.”Comet fragment struck circa 1680 AD? U.THE 1,500 AD STRIKE – Swarm B’ – 500 YA ◦ LITTLE ICE AGE BEGAN WITH A BANG – February 3rd, 2012 Frozen moss suggests climate cooling kicked off fast, possibly with help from volcanoes ◦WHAT CAUSED THE LITTLE ICE AGE? – 2012/02/01 ◦ LAND PLANTS SET OFF A SERIES OF ICE AGES ON EARTH – February 01, 2012 ◦ (1) A BLAST FROM HEAVEN? MAJOR IMPACT DISASTER 500 YEARS AGO? or A BLAST FROM HEAVEN? Swarm B’:Cl – 1 Strike But what may be a geologic smoking gun has now turned up in 1,000 feet of water just south of New Zealand. Columbia University geologist Dallas Abbott has found what appears to be an impact crater 13 miles across, implying that something enormous, maybe half a mile wide, smashed into the crust there. ◦ MAHUIKA CRATER However, the 1422 A.D. date, as argued by Menzies, of this impact is disputed by Abbott et al. (2005). Based on elemental anomalies, fossils, and minerals, which are interpreted to be derived from the impact, found in an ice core from the Siple Dome in Antarctica, Abbott et al. (2005) argues that the impact, which created the Mahuika crater occurred in 1443 A.D. ◦CHAPTER 22 – TRAGEDY ON THE HIGH SEAS: ZHENG HE’S FLEETS DESTROYED BY A TSUNAMI Swarm B’: Cl – 1 Strike When Cedric Bell returned to New Zealand in 2004 he found yet more startling evidence – not least that wrecked junks were to be found impaled upside down high up on the cliffs of South Island. Some wrecks were charred; some were upside down and tilted as if a giant had hammered them into the cliffs, some lay nearly one hundred feet above the sea. The only feasible explanation for such widespread destruction was a huge tsunami. As New Zealand lies on a fault line, the tsunami and forest fires could have been caused by a seismic event but an earthquake would not explain how the wrecks had been turned to charcoal before being impaled in the cliffs. Aborigines in Australia and the Maoris in New Zealand both reported a comet being the cause of the ‘mystic fires? Then in November 2003 researchers announced they had found that a comet had impacted the sea between Campbell Island and New Zealand South Island, blasting a crater twenty kilometres across. Then in November 2003 researchers announced they had found that a comet had impacted the sea between Campbell Island and New Zealand South Island, blasting a crater twenty kilometres across. The comet, named Mahuika for the Maori God of Fire, hit the ocean some sixty miles south of the combined fleet. Gigantic waves, more than six hundred feet high, toss the ships about like matchsticks, the masts and rigging are afire, fanned by four hundred mile an hour winds. Why did all the civilisations of South America, save for the Incas, collapse in the 1440’s and four decades after that? In my view the Mahuika tsunami was responsible ?besides destroying the Chinese fleet, it wrecked the rich cities of the coast, leaving the mountain peoples, the Incas, to take over. ◦MEGA-TSUNAMI HIT SOUTHEAST ASIA 700 YEARS AGO – 29 Oct 2008 Researchers in Thailand and Indonesia wrote in two articles in Nature magazine that the tsunami hit around 1400, long before historical records of earthquakes in the region began ◦ (2) ASTEROID TSUNAMI IN 1500 AD? or ASTEROID TSUNAMI Swarm B’: Cl – 1 Strike ◦ WHAT DAMAGE HAVE IMPACTS DONE TO HUMANS IN RECORDED HISTORY? – May 11, 2001 Swarm B’: Cl – 1 Strike The most incredible Chinese report is that of the Chíing-yang Meteorite Shower of 1490. Supposedly, tens of thousands of people were killed during the shower in the Shansi province. Yau et al. tell us that “[t]he Chíing-yang incident seems rather implausible in terms of the total number of casualties and the narrow size distribution of the meteorite fragments (Yau et al. 1994),” but they also point out its similarities to the Tunguska event, which would have devastated a populated area. ◦ ADDING UP THE RISKS OF COSMIC IMPACT Swarm B’: Cl – 1 Strike HISTORICAL RECORD How does this square with human history? Here, scientists may review records left in the language of folklore. For example, in China’s Shanxi Province, 10,000 people were said to have been killed in the year 1490 by a hail of “falling stones that some astronomers surmise may have been triggered by the breakup of a large asteroid. Strike killed many people, but maybe did not change weather much. ◦WARMING OR COOLING? – 12/01/2000 Swarm B’: Cl – 2 Strike The Thames River at London froze frequently in the 1600s. “Frost fairs” atop the Thames became common in the 1700s, and in 1820 it was so cold the river ice was reported as five feet thick. By 1700, Iceland was surrounded with sea ice that made commerce with the rest of the world hazardous. And in faraway China, citrus groves that had survived for centuries froze in Jiangxi province. ◦ METEOR FALLS AND OTHER NATURAL PHENOMENA BETWEEN 1392-1863 Table I shows the distribution of the records of abnormal phenomena I examined, divided roughly into 50-year periods. Looking at Table I shows that the records of unusual phenomena were concentrated from Period 3 to Period 7, or the period from 1501-1750. This 250-year period comprises 63% of the total period examined, yet it accounts for 80% of the recorded phenomena. Therefore, it seems safe to assume that there was a high frequency of abnormal natural phenomena concentrated during this period. ◦ LACK OF SUNSPOTS MAY HAVE AIDED ‘LITTLE ICE AGE’ – 6/6/2011 Study suggests Earth cooled dramatically when the solar dimming began Past studies had mulled over whether the decreased solar activity seen during the Maunder Minimum might have helped cause the little ice age. Although sunspots are cool, dark regions on the sun, their absence suggests there was less solar activity in general. Now scientists suggest there might have been fewer intensely bright spots known as faculae on the sun as well during that time, potentially reducing its brightness enough to cool the Earth. More cool dark regions . . . there might have been fewer bright spots? Where is their evidence for this ridiculous possibility? How about just old fashion meteor/comet fragment’s (fireball) dust blocking some of the sunlight, and cooling the Earth. ◦ ‘LITTLE ICE AGE’ RESULTED FROM MORE THAN JUST SOLAR CALM – April 13, 2011 B’:Cl-2 The researchers argue that the Maunder Minimum probably had levels of magnetic activity and TSI similar to 2008-2009 values, and therefore factors other than low solar irradiance resulting from low sunspot activity must have contributed to the Little Ice Age. ◦ THE LOST CITIES and A NEW LIGHT ON EASTER ISLAND B’:Cl-2 These works examine the thesis that a group of ancient cities in the American southwest were destroyed by the impact a comet, and that this same comet, specifically a fragment of the great comet of 1680, brought and end to the statue building culture on Easter Island. ◦ (1) AN IMPACT TRIGGERED MEGA-TSUNAMI IN 1700? Based on Japanese records, scientists were able to pinpoint a date – Jan. 26, 1700 – and estimate that the rupture of a long stretch of seafloor had caused a magnitude 9 quake, which would be the largest known temblor to strike what is now the contiguous United States. ◦ (1) OCEANIC IMPACT MIGHT HAVE INSPIRED ABORIGINAL LEGEND – April 1998 B’:Cl-2 Geologist Professor Ted Bryant believes the legend of a “white wave” that wiped out Aboriginal culture more than 200 years ago tells of a natural disaster that devastated the south coast of NSW after a comet strike in the Tasman Sea. Most historians had assumed the legend referred to the coming of white men to Sydney Cove in January, 1788. Prof. Bryant told a major international research conference in Melbourne this week that the tidal wave was one of two giant tsunamis that hit the NSW coast in the past 1000 years. ◦ THE LITTLE ICE AGE Grain growing in Iceland was given up in the 14th century. In 1695 sea ice completely surrounded Iceland except for one port. Even from the highest mountains, open water could not be seen in all directions (Figure 1h) (Lamb 1977, p. 453). This and later sea ice flows resulted in the island getting its present name. Glacial advances in North America occurred from 1711-1724 and 1835-1849 (Lamb 1977, p. 453). Increase in the amount of Arctic sea ice resulting from calving of more northern glaciers also was observed. Once-productive Icelandic farms were covered by advancing glaciers. So serious was the climatic change experienced by Icelanders that Denmark, the parent country, considered evacuating all the islanders and re-settling them in Europe. ◦ VOLCANO ‘DROVE UP UK DEATH TOLL’ Central England temperature data shows the summer of 1783 was particularly hot and that the first months of 1784 were amongst the coldest on record. In Iceland alone, some 9,000 people – about a quarter of the population – were killed. ◦ LANDSCAPE FEATURES OF ICELAND You might wonder now about real ages. ◾350 to 200 thousand years ago: second-last major glacial period (by name: the Saale/Riss/Illinoian period) ◾120 to 25 thousand years ago: last major glacial period (by name: the Weichsel/Würm/Wisconsin period) ◾11 thousand years ago: short but severe cold period (short ice age; not to be confused with relative recent colder periods – sometimes called “mini-ice ages” e.g. 17th century in Europe – which weren’t ice ages at all.) Major impacts caused the real ice ages. Minor impacts caused the mini-ice ages. ◦ (9) 1680 COMET – 1 February 2002 At the beginning of December, ASTRA had an excellent lecture from Martin Lunn, MBE, on ‘The Great Comets’. He brought a range of books with him and among others I bought Gale B. Christianson’s “Edwin Hubble, Mariner of the Nebulae” (Institute of Physics Publishing, 1995). On page 55 I’ve just found the following: A second comet tracked by Edmond Halley in 1680… it was William Whiston, a disciple of the great Isaac Newton and his successor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, who believed that the comet of 1680 had literally grazed the earth after the fall of Eden, triggering the Noachian Deluge in 2346 BC – ‘the year of sin’. ◦ WILLIAM WHISTON AND THE DELUGE The years 1680 and 1682 were years of unusually bright comets. Many pamphlets were printed, especially in Germany, on the imminent end of the world; at the very least, great catastrophes were expected. ◦THE LITTLE ICE AGE : How Climate Made History 1300-1850 V.CHICAGO AND OTHER RECENT IMPACT RELATED FIRES – Swarm B? ◦ OCTOBER 8, 1871: THE NIGHT AMERICA BURNED – Mar 29, 2012 ◦ COMET BIELA AND MRS. O’LEARY’S COW – 03 Feb 2008 ◦ FROM “BIELA’S COMET”, HUMBOLDT (AN 1887 CHICAGO DOCUMENT): On the 27th day of February, 1826, (to begin as M. Dumas would commence one of his novels,) M. Biela, an Austrian officer, residing at Josephstadt, in Bohemia, discovered a comet in the constellation Aries, which, at that time, was seen as a small round speck of filmy cloud. Its course was watched during the following month by M. Gambart at Marseilles and by M. Clausen at Altona, and those observers assigned to it an elliptical orbit, with a period of six years and three quarters for its revolution. M. Damoiseau subsequently calculated its path, and announced that on its next return the comet would cross the orbit of he earth, within twenty thousand miles of its track, and but about one month before the earth would have arrived at the same spot! This was shooting close to the bull’s-eye! He estimated that it would lose nearly ten days on its return trip, through the retarding influence of Jupiter and Saturn; but, if it lost forty days instead of ten, what then? But the comet came up to time in 1832, and the earth missed it by one month. And it returned in like fashion in 1839 and 1846. But here a surprising thing occurred. Its proximity to the earth had split it in two; each half had a head and tail of its own; each had set up a separate government for itself; and they were whirling through space, side by side, like a couple of race-horses, about sixteen thousand miles apart, or about twice as wide apart as the diameter of the earth. “The puzzled astronomers were left in a state of tantalizing uncertainty as to what had become of it. At the beginning of the year 1866 this feeling of bewilderment gained expression in the Annual Report of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society. The matter continued, nevertheless, in the same state of provoking uncertainty for another six years. The third period of the perihelion passage had then passed, and nothing had been seen of the missing luminary. But on the night of November 27, 1872, night-watchers were startled by a sudden and a very magnificent display of falling stars or meteors, of which there had been no previous forecast… Now, we have seen that Biela’s comets lost their tails. What became of them?… Did anything out of the usual order occur on the face of the earth about this time? Yes. In the year 1871, on Sunday, the 8th of October, at half past nine o’clock in the evening, events occurred which attracted the attention of the whole world, which caused the death of hundreds of human beings, and the destruction of millions of property, and which involved three different States of the Union in the wildest alarm and terror. ◦ COULD A METEORITE OR COMET CAUSE ALL THE FIRES OF 1871? In 1871, fire erupted in Chicago, Wisconsin and northern Michigan at the same time. Some believe a meteorite or comet was to blame. Consider a statement by the Detroit Post on Oct. 10, 1871: “In all parts of the state, as will be noticed by our correspondence during the past few days and also today, there are numerous fires in the wood, in many places approaching so near to towns as to endanger the towns themselves.” In Holland, fire destroyed the city, in Lansing flames threatened the agricultural college and in the Thumb, farmers trying to establish homesteads soon would be diving into shallow wells to escape an inferno some newspapers dubbed: “The Fiery Fiend.” Many did not escape. Fires threatened Muskegon, South Haven, Grand Rapids, Wayland and reached the outskirts of Big Rapids. A steamship passing the Manitou Islands reported they were on fire. ◦ THE COMET AND THE CHICAGO FIRE – Part 1 Contrary to popular folklore, the Chicago fire is not the worst in U.S. history. It was not even the worst to occur on October 8 that year. The same evening — in fact, at the same time, about 9:30 — a fierce wildfire struck in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, over 200 miles to the north of Chicago, destroying the town and a dozen other villages. Estimates of those killed range upward from 1200 to 2500 in a single night. It was not the Chicago fire but the simultaneous “Peshtigo Fire” that was the deadliest in U.S. history. And there is more. On the same evening, across Lake Michigan, another fire also wreaked havoc. Though smaller fires had been burning for some time — not unusual under the reported conditions — the most intense outburst appears to have erupted simultaneously with the Chicago and Peshtigo fires. The blaze is said to have then burned for over a month, consuming over 2,000,000 acres and killing at least 200. ◦ THE COMET AND THE CHICAGO FIRE – Part 2 ◦ (13) IMPACT PROBABILITIES: WHAT ABOUT COMETS? The Peshtigo Comet story (and its relationship to the Chicago Fire of 1871) remains as an example of puzzling circumstances. Has Comet Biela been definitely ruled out by astronomers as a vector? Some of the reports read like ionized plasma was involved. ◦ CHICAGO DEVASTATED BY COMET IMPACT Great Fire of 1871 Wood speculates the main body of the comet crashed into Lake Michigan ◦ 1883: THE YEAR THE WORLD ALMOST ENDED BY A COMET IMPACT – NOVEMBER 25, 2012 ◦ REVEALED: THE MASSIVE COMET THAT CAME WITHIN 5,000 MILES OF HITTING THE EARTH IN 1883 – WITH ENOUGH FORCE TO DESTROY MANKIND – 17th October 2011 Comet could have passed as close as 335 miles Mass up to eight times that of Halley’s comet ‘Fragmented’ comet passed earth in 447 pieces When this photograph was taken in 1883 it was heralded as the first photographic evidence of UFOs. But now scientists from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México believe it could have been a massive comet that came close to hitting the Earth – with a similar mass to the object that killed the dinosaurs. Mexican astronomer José Banilla took the image, which appears to show something passing in front of the sun, on August 12 1883. When it was released publicly in 1886 in the magazine L’Astronomie it was dubbed the first photo of a UFO – a series of 447 objects that looked ‘misty’ and ‘left behind a similar misty trace.’ ◦ BILLION-TON COMET MAY HAVE MISSED EARTH BY A FEW HUNDRED KILOMETERS IN 1883 – 10/17/2011 A reanalysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago. On 12th and 13th August 1883, an astronomer at a small observatory in Zacatecas in Mexico made an extraordinary observation. José Bonilla counted some 450 objects, each surrounded by a kind of mist, passing across the face of the Sun