Clay tablet holds clue to asteroid mystery

The Telegraph ^ | 3/31/2008 | Nic Fleming

[blam]

Nördlingen

"Another tourist feature of this mediæval town is its 90m-steeple called "Daniel" being part of the Saint Georg's Church and made of an impact breccia called suevite containing shocked quartz."

[doug from upland]

I might make one of those clay tablets and sell it on ebay.

[bruinbirdman]

"I might make one of those clay tablets and sell it on ebay."

Keep the writing to 10 short declarative sentences.

yitbos

[ikka]

How much would have burned up before reaching ground level?

[Ka-leo-lani]

The scientists were a historian who thinks spaceships crash on earth, a managing director of a space propulsion company and a lecturer in astronautics? I am big large great brilliant enormous squatting scientist too!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks martin_fierro!

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[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks martin_fierro. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[Malsua]

A historian from Azerbaijan, who believes humans originally came to Earth from another planet, has interpreted it as a description of the arrival of a spaceship

That would be Zecharia Sitchin. I've read his books, they are interesting but I don't believe the same conclusions he comes to.

[AFreeBird]

3123 BC is too long before any known form of writing. Cuneiform included.

Writing systems were preceded by proto-writing, systems of ideographic and/or early mnemonic symbols. The best known examples are:

• Jiahu Script, symbols on tortoise shells in Jiahu, ca. 6600 BC

• Vinča script (Tărtăria tablets), ca. 4500 BC

• Early Indus script, ca. 3500 BC

The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 4th millennium BC. The Sumerian archaic cuneiform script and the Egyptian hieroglyphs are generally considered the earliest writing systems, both emerging out of their ancestral proto-literate symbol systems from 3400–3200 BC with earliest coherent texts from about 2600 BC.

The Chinese script likely developed independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around 1600 BC.

The pre-Columbian Mesoamerican writing systems (including among others Olmec and Maya scripts) are also generally believed to have had independent origins.

It is thought that the first true alphabetic writing appeared around 2000 BC, as a representation of language developed by Semitic workers in Egypt (see History of the alphabet). Most other alphabets in the world today either descended from this one innovation, many via the Phoenician alphabet, or were directly inspired by its design.

[AFreeBird]

That would be Zecharia Sitchin. I've read his books, they are interesting but I don't believe the same conclusions he comes to.

I've read them too; it's been a while though. Still, you gotta wonder how he (or I guess the Sumerian's) knew what Neptune & Uranus looked like before science did with the fly-by of Voyager 2.

[SuziQ]

That's the Ries Crater. It went undetected until David Shoemaker noticed the stones used to build the cathedral, and realized they included shocked quartz, which would only be present in rock as a result of a nuclear explosion (he found the stuff in the sand, after the test at Trinity) or from an asteroid impact. He and his colleague then realized that the entire valley in which this town and cathedral were located WAS the impact crater!

Have the scientist found shocked quartz at this impact site?

[AFreeBird]

I remember seeing that. History Channel wasn’t it?

[tarheelswamprat]

3123 BC is too long before any known form of writing. Cuneiform included.

It is always fascinating to observe in these types of threads how so many posters can't resist projecting their own preconceptions and biases into the sloppy texts of journalists' articles purporting to "explain" various scientific issues. They seem to automatically assume that the same media hacks who can't even report accurately on an event we all watched ourselves on live TV are somehow giving a precise and accurate description of what the scientists actually said or wrote... /grin

I would suggest to all my fellow self-assured Freepers who pontificate so emphatically about stuff they claim "just ain't so" that they try to remember that all of the surviving artifacts, writings, etc. upon which we base our claims to know what happened in remote antiquity are but a small fraction of what once existed but has now been lost in the mists of time. After all, a hundred and fifty years ago Troy and Ur were only myths, and if the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad had not been destroyed, our perceptions of "history" might be quite different.

[AFreeBird]

After all, a hundred and fifty years ago Troy and Ur were only myths, and if the libraries of Alexandria and Baghdad had not been destroyed, our perceptions of "history" might be quite different.

Indeed it would. So much history has been lost, and I'm particularly upset with the early Church's hand in destroying a great deal of it simply because it didn't conform to the church's belief system of the time. Or at least squirreling it away in hidden/off limits libraries/archives and whatever, for much the same reasons.

And then there's all the wars, and disasters... what the Taliban did to the ancient sites in Afghanistan...

[null and void]

I'm particularly upset with the early Church's hand in destroying a great deal of it simply because it didn't conform to the church's belief system of the time.

The one I'm most fascinated by is 'The New World Bible' which apparently was similar enough, yet different enough, from the Church's Bible that the Padrés feared it was a satanic mockery of the One True Word. To the best of my knowledge every copy was systematically tracked down and destroyed.

what the Taliban did to the ancient sites in Afghanistan...

Don't forget that we know so little of Ancient Egypt because when islam took over ALL hieroglyphic writings they could find were destroyed. The characters looked too much like representations of humans, something strictly forbidden by islam.

[SuziQ]

It was either History Channel, the Science Channel, or the Discovery channel, all of which we tend to watch a lot. ;o)

[SunkenCiv]

Asteroids: Deadly Impact National Geographic

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Eugene Shoemaker.

[SunkenCiv]

Nice post! Thanks.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1091680/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1357365/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1406892/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1875432/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations
by Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent

"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.

"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."