Posted on 06/07/2002 2:13:56 PM PDT by blam
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:50:36 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
ORTONA
(Excerpt) Read more at sun-sentinel.com ...
They must have been feeling a little sheepish about getting rambonkshus, don't ewe know.
Yes it was dark, and colder, crops failed, and it was worldwide. Check out the following for the most likely culprit. Were the Dark Ages Triggered by Volcano-Related Climate Changes in the 6th Century?
Friday, 8 September, 2000, 14:55 GMT 15:55 UK
Tree rings challenge history
By BBC News Online's Jonathan Amos
Could a comet hitting the Earth 1,500 years ago have triggered a global disaster in which millions of people lost their lives?
It is an old claim that historians say has little evidence in written records to support it, but now a tree ring expert has said the idea must be re-examined.
Mike Baillie, professor of palaeoecology at Queen's University in Belfast, UK, said it was very clear from the narrowness of growth rings in bog oaks and archaeological timbers that a great catastrophe struck the Earth in AD 540.
"The trees are unequivocal that something quite terrible happened," he told the British Association's Festival of Science. "Not only in Northern Ireland and Britain, but right across northern Siberia, North and South America - it is a global event of some kind."
Dark Ages
Professor Baillie favours the idea that cometary 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.
Professor Baillie said astronomers from Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland had published research 10 years ago in which they said the Earth would have been at risk from cometary bombardment between the years AD 400 and AD 600.
"This event is in AD 540, so it fits very nicely into the window," he said.
"We know from the tree rings to the year exactly when this event happened. And some archaeologists and historians are beginning to come round to the opinion that this was the date when the Dark Ages began in Northern Europe. It wasn't just when the Romans left."
Oral tradition
However, there are many more historians who believe that if such a major event had occurred there would be much clearer references to the disaster in written texts. But Professor Baillie urged them to go back and look again - "to read between the lines".
He said mythical stories certainly seemed to point to a comet striking the Earth at about the right time. He said King Arthur died in this period and some stories talk about long arms in the sky delivering mighty blows.
"Mythology tells you and history doesn't and that raises some very interesting questions because the implication is that you could suppress the written word but you couldn't suppress the oral tradition."
Professor Baillie said chemical analysis would be carried out on the tree rings to investigate the comet idea further. He hopes also to get access to ice cores to see if they record any interesting data that might support the comet theory.
(For more, read Mike Baillie's book, Exodus To Arthur)
That saves the archeologists from answering any questions
What a shock! To have arbitrarily divided up the Earth into 360o and then discover that the iron ore was not cooperating!
When the super-volcano Toba blew 70-75,000 years ago, some say as few as 5,000 humans worldwide survived. (It also created a DNA 'bottleneck.') We have a very catastrophic history.
By Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 04/11/2001)
SCIENTISTS have found the first evidence that a devastating meteor impact in the Middle East might have triggered the mysterious collapse of civilisations more than 4,000 years ago.
satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide impact crater caused by a meteor
Studies of satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide circular depression which scientists say bears all the hallmarks of an impact crater. If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs.
Today's crater lies on what would have been shallow sea 4,000 years ago, and any impact would have caused devastating fires and flooding.
The catastrophic effect of these could explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden decline around 2300 BC.(This is probably the event that is recorded in the tree ring data in 2354BC. This may have been a 'swarm' and other impact sites are yet undiscovered.(?))
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.
Until now, archaeologists have put forward a host of separate explanations for these events, from local wars to environmental changes. Recently, some astronomers have suggested that meteor impacts could explain such historical mysteries.
The crater's faint outline was found by Dr Sharad Master, a geologist at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, on satellite images of the Al 'Amarah region, about 10 miles north-west of the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates and home of the Marsh Arabs.
"It was a purely accidental discovery," Dr Master told The Telegraph last week. "I was reading a magazine article about the canal-building projects of Saddam Hussein, and there was a photograph showing lots of formations - one of which was very, very circular."
Detailed analysis of other satellite images taken since the mid-1980s showed that for many years the crater contained a small lake.
The draining of the region, as part of Saddam's campaign against the Marsh Arabs, has since caused the lake to recede, revealing a ring-like ridge inside the larger bowl-like depression - a classic feature of meteor impact craters.
The crater also appears to be, in geological terms, very recent. Dr Master said: "The sediments in this region are very young, so whatever caused the crater-like structure, it must have happened within the past 6,000 years."
Reporting his finding in the latest issue of the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, Dr Master suggests that a recent meteor impact is the most plausible explanation for the structure.
A survey of the crater itself could reveal tell-tale melted rock. "If we could find fragments of impact glass, we could date them using radioactive dating techniques," he said.
A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.
The discovery of the crater has sparked great interest among scientists.
Dr Benny Peiser, who lectures on the effects of meteor impacts at John Moores University, Liverpool, said it was one of the most significant discoveries in recent years and would corroborate research he and others have done.
He said that craters recently found in Argentina date from around the same period - suggesting that the Earth may have been hit by a shower of large meteors at about the same time.
They only counted coup, not money.
When their elders got old they threw them out, unlike the white devils.
They worshipped the Great Spirits... Wild Turkey, Mad Dog 20/20 and Night Train.
They killed eagles to make crude whistles and war bonnets.
Ho-ka-hey! ; > ()
Thats means a lot of beef jerky!
The sun probably didn't shine that day... or the next 20 years!
Thats means a lot of beef jerky!
The sun probably didn't shine that day... or the next 20 years!
Yup. The super-volcano at Yellowstone blew 600,000 years ago and left six feet of ash in Nebraska. BTW, it is on a 600,000 year cycle and is due any time. They have already detected the magma chamber rising on it. We are presently (probably) at the apex of human existence. Enjoy!!
I doubt it. As I understand it, Gilgamesh is the same individual as Noah. I think the great flood was an earlier event (consider the Black Sea flooding nearer to Ararat), but I would give a Lot more credence on this one explaining Sodom and Gamorrah.
Add the Mammoth caldera. Zang! Now we know why Mormons store two years worth of food. Maybe the Masons have something in those Zoroastrian ancient mysteries of theirs.
I(and the VRWC) am probaly going to get blamed for this too.
Atlantis is under the ice-cap in Antarctica... it was habitable before the pole change. That's why it has never been found.
The flood parable is consistent in all ancient cultures... it was no local “thing”.
I think that city recently found over a thousand feet under water off the coast of Cuba is a better candidate for Atlantis.
I agree. The flood stories all date (IMO) from the melting of the last Ice Age. I had a map (can't find it now) that reduced the world's oceans by 300ft. Very interesting, the Red (Reed Sea) Sea is landlocked(maybe reflooded at the Exodus), the Persian Gulf is completely dry and very interesting things begin to happen in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I have proposed a theory that allows for the Gulf Of Mexico to become blocked from the world's oceans and partically dry out. This allows for the underwater city off Cuba to have been built on dry land on a reduced water level Gulf Of Mexico (1/2 mile is a lot of subsidence), and then being flooded (like the Black Sea) when the barrier is broken.
Funny you say this. We're WASP's (my family), and we have a long history of storing (large amounts) of food for 'hard times.' This 'prepare for hard times' thing in my family predates the great depression era and I've often wondered if it's a 'hand-down' from earlier catastrophies. In fact, I presently have a sealed ,plastic five container of seeds in my deep freeze, along with a thousand canning jars and all the equipment to accomodate canning, given to me and at the insistence of my 85 year old mother. (every kind of edible food seed you can think of)
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