I spent last week at the World Congress of Soil Scientists meeting in Philadelphia. In one of the Soil Micromorphology sessions, we were treated to a remarkable presentation by a French scientist named Marie-Agnes Courty. She has spent about 20 years looking at shocked quartz (and other shocked minerals) and charcoal in soils around the Mediterranean. Her work strongly supports that of Mike Baillie (of Exodus to Arthur fame); she finds a soil layer dating to approximately 2350BC that is full of evidence of meteorite impact and resultant wildfires. She has identified an impact site on the edge of Antarctica just south of South Africa, but from the scatter of shocked minerals, it is apparent that there was also an impact site somewhere in the Mediterranean area.
She has also studied minerals and charcoal from Mousterian culture sites in Spain. Her findings from this study astounded me. Working in sites that showed more-or-less continuous habitation by Neanderthals, she found that charcoal deposits in caves (from hearths) were sporadic, and occurred only during times where there was evidence of forest fire in the surrounding open areas. From this, she infers that Neanderthals WERE NOT ABLE TO MAKE FIRE, BUT COULD ONLY COLLECT IT WHEN IT OCCURRED NATURALLY. If her assumption is correct, it would go a long way in explaining why Neanderthals were outcompeted by modern humans!!
Courty (in the paper below, from circa 1997) winds up refuting a volcanic origin for the evidence, and prematurely dismisses a catastrophic cause for the "Curse of Agade". Just a few years later an impact crater was found...The Neandertal EnigmaFrayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]
by James Shreeve
Shouldn't that be "toast"? ;')Causes And Effects Of TheOccurrence in a previously recorded thick tephra deposit of particles identical to some of the mysterious layer and resemblance of its original pseudo-sand fabric with the exploded one of the mysterious layer confirms that the later is contemporaneous with the tephra deposit It has been however impossible to find typical tephra shards in sites located at a few km around the one with the tephra deposit The restricted occurrence of the later suggests that the massive tephra accumulation can no longer be considered as a typical fallout derived from the dispersion of material from a terrestrial volcanic explosion.
2350 BC Middle East Anomaly
Evidenced By Micro-debris Fallout,
Surface Combustion And Soil Explosion
by Marie-Agnès Courty
circa 1997Meteor clue to end of Middle East civilisations"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."
by Robert Matthews, Science Correspondent
2001Comets, Meteors and Myth: New Evidence for Toppled Civilizations and Biblical TalesBiblical stories, apocalyptic visions, ancient art and scientific data all seem to intersect at around 2350 B.C., when one or more catastrophic events wiped out several advanced societies in Europe, Asia and Africa. Increasingly, some scientists suspect comets and their associated meteor storms were the cause. History and culture provide clues: Icons and myths surrounding the alleged cataclysms persist in cults and religions today and even fuel terrorism. And a newly found 2-mile-wide crater in Iraq, spotted serendipitously in a perusal of satellite images, could provide a smoking gun. The crater's discovery, which was announced in a recent issue of the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science, is a preliminary finding. Scientists stress that a ground expedition is needed to determine if the landform was actually carved out by an impact... Archeological findings show that in the space of a few centuries, many of the first sophisticated civilizations disappeared. The Old Kingdom in Egypt fell into ruin. The Akkadian culture of Iraq, thought to be the world's first empire, collapsed. The settlements of ancient Israel, gone. Mesopotamia, Earth's original breadbasket, dust.
by Robert Roy Britt
13 November 2001
Excellent book and has influenced my thinking.
"From this, she infers that Neanderthals WERE NOT ABLE TO MAKE FIRE, BUT COULD ONLY COLLECT IT WHEN IT OCCURRED NATURALLY. If her assumption is correct, it would go a long way in explaining why Neanderthals were outcompeted by modern humans!!"
I would also consider that they showed up to scavenge the animals killed in the fire.