Giant Meteorites Slammed Earth Around A.D. 500?

National Geographic News ^ | 03 Feb 2010 | Richard A. Lovett

[Palter]

ping

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

So, it was either Krakatoa exploding or two massive asteroid strikes that caused the Dark Ages? Cool!!!!

[Radagast the Fool]

Bush’s fault!!

[Palter]

Mount Tambora did create a year without summer.

[RexBeach]

I thought that was Barney Frank?

[CholeraJoe]

Meteorite iron was very much in demand during the Dark Ages. It was said that swords forged of iron from heaven were invincible in battle. Legend had it that Excalibur itself was forged from meteorite iron.

[Palter]

Crystals in meteorite harder than diamonds

Shrug. Makes ya wonder.

[wastedyears]

Uh, 11 miles is not a tiny difference. It’s like the difference between a .22 on a necklace and the 30mm Vulcan cannon.

[wastedyears]

Also, that finding about diamonds, if they can be manipulated, could lead to some more resilient earth drillers.

[PIF]

“So, it was either Krakatoa exploding or two massive asteroid strikes that caused the Dark Ages? Cool!!!!”

Neither had anything to do with the culture/civilizational crash in Europe. You may be thinking about the little ice age.

EARLY MIDDLE AGES
No one definitive event marks the end of antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Neither the sack of Rome by the Goths under Alaric I in 410 nor the deposition in 476 of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman emperor in the West, impressed their contemporaries as epoch-making catastrophes. Rather, by the end of the 5th century the culmination of several long-term trends—most notably a severe economic dislocation and the invasions and settlement of the various Germanic tribes within the borders of the Western Empire—had changed the face of Rome. For the next 300 years western Europe remained essentially a primitive culture, albeit one uniquely superimposed on the complex, elaborate culture of the Roman Empire, which was never entirely lost or forgotten.

http://www.history.com/marquee.do?content_type=Marquee_Generic&content_type_id=54711&display_order=1&marquee_id=53127

[LRS]

“Paging Velikosky. Paging Immanuel Velikovsky. This is your medium calling...”

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Ah, while the western Roman Empire indeed collapsed because of its own internal decay and due to unrelenting pressure from external barbarian populations, there is evidence to suggest that volcanic activity at Krakatoa helped it along...

Were the Dark Ages Triggered by Volcano-Related Climate Changes in the 6th Century?

[Tallguy]

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.

The only historical event that is more debated than "the Extinction of the Dinosaurs" is "the Fall of Rome". Sheesh!

[PIF]

According to those who keep track of these eruptions, the 5th century (416 AD) Karkatoa eruption VEI is unknown but certainly not very large - perhaps the equilivant of St Helens at best. These was no signifigant eruption again until 1883 AD.

see here:
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=0602-00=&volpage=erupt&format=expanded#E1883520

The guy you reference may be right and si.edu may not have updated. But, he seems alone in his opinion. So I’m not going with ‘could have’, ‘perhaps’, ‘global climate modelers’, ‘tree ring data’, and ‘hypothetical’.

These are the documented eruptions during a 90 year period when the “Dark Ages” could have been effected by volcanism:

450 A.D. – Ilopango (El Salvador) Erupts
Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) = 6

540 A.D. – Rabaul, Papua (New Guinea) Erupts
300 million tons of aerosols.
Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) = 6

Each of these is 10X greater than St Helens.

[Little Bill]

Your Territory.

[r9etb]

If a large impactor had broken up on its final approach to Earth, he said, the fragments would still have been very, very close together when they landed: "It essentially will behave as one piece," creating a single crater, Boslough said.

But if it had broken up slightly earlier -- due to solar heating, say, or gravitational stresses -- that argument loses its force.

[Ptarmigan]

The climate change took place around 535 AD, while the asteroid impact happened in 500 AD. Don’t know if there is any documented climate change around 500 AD.

[SunkenCiv]

Wowzo, thanks Palter!

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·

[SunkenCiv]

---

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic · subscribe ·

---

Gods
Graves
Glyphs

Thanks Palter.

Catastrophe: A Quest for the Origins of the Modern World by David Keys	Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets by Mike Baillie

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach

---

·Dogpile · Archaeologica · LiveScience · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society ·
· Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google ·
· The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

---