Tale Of (King) Arthur Points To Comet Catastrophe

THE story of the death of King Arthur and its references to a wasteland may have been inspired by the apocalyptic effects of a giant comet bombarding the Earth in AD540, leading to the Dark Ages, a British scientist said yesterday.

The impacts filled the atmosphere with dust and debris; a long winter began. Crops failed, and there was famine, Dr Mike Baillie of Queen's University, Belfast, told the British Association for the Advancement of Science. There was now overwhelming evidence from studies of tree rings of a catastrophic climate change at that time, he said.

Dr Baillie, who is based at the university's school of archaeology and palaeoecology, said studies of Irish oaks showed that the climate suddenly became inhospitable around AD540. Other researchers had discovered the same narrow rings on trees in places such as Germany, Scandinavia, Siberia, North America and China. "For all these trees to show the same rings at the same time means it must have been a profoundly unpleasant event, a catastrophic environmental downturn, in AD540, which is in or at the beginning of the Dark Ages."

The tightly bound rings are consistent with fierce frosts that would have devastated agriculture and made a malnourished population more vulnerable to the plague of 542, which killed millions. Plague-carrying rats and pests would have been looking for sustenance, thus hastening the spread of the disease.

Dr Baillie said that there were several theories as to the explanation. One was that a vast volcano had erupted and pumped huge amounts of dust into the atmosphere. Yet such a volcano "would have been out of all proportion to ones we see in recent times", he said, adding that the geological records bore no trace of it.

The other theory, he said,was that huge fragments from a giant comet had hit the Earth, causing violent explosions and a dramatic cooling of the planet. "My view is that we had a cometary bombardment - not a full-blown comet, or we would not be here, but parts of a comet."

Dr Baillie said the hypothesis was supported by studies by astronomers and astrophysicists including Mark Bailey, of the Armagh Observatory, Victor Clube, of Oxford University, and Bill Napier, formerly of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. They had calculated that there was a strong likelihood that the Earth suffered a cometary bombardment between 400 and 600, based on records of high meteor shower activity. They had linked it with the break-up of the comet Biela.

It was hoped that scientists in Greenland would analyse ice cores for signs of cometary dust. They were soon to carry out chemical analysis for tree rings for similar clues.

Dr Baillie urged historians to examine the records for writings that may record the events. "You can read about the Justinian plague in conventional history books but you cannot read about the cometary bombardment. The trees single out an episode which can be best described as catastrophic, and it isn't there in written history."

There was, however, some support buried in mythological writings and other works. Roger of Wendover had referred in 540 or 541 to a "comet in Gaul so vast that the whole sky seemed on fire. In the same year there dropped real blood from the clouds . . . and a dreadful mortality ensued".

Dr Baillie also cited the death of King Arthur, which is dated to 537, 539 and 542 in various works, as establishing possible links with fire from the sky and destruction. Dr Baillie said that Arthur was linked in old Irish with CuChulainn, the sky god, who in turn was linked with the Celtic bright sky god Lugh variously described as "bright as the setting sun, comes up in the west, and of the mighty blows".

"The Arthurian stories with their Celtic antecedents of bright sky gods and 'wasteland' come with traditional dates for Arthur's death."

Dr Baillie said that the myths hinted strongly at a bombardment as the causes of an environmental downturn.

at that point in time i think in northern modern france you would have had a romano-gallic culture (speaking latin) being heavily repopulated by german tribes. While provincial romance did survive as the language, there is some speculation that the unusual vowel and consonant structure of french in north-western france (including paris) is related to moderately heavy germanic immigration in the late roman period and its impact on the spoken dialects of the language. It is unquestionable that french in that part of the country diverges in pronunciation patterns from romanish languages in portugal, spain, italy, romanish west switzerland, and southern france in some notable ways.

"Try this blam oldie but goodie."

It would seem that both volcanos and boloids can cause major earth distress. This is one reason why IMHO we really should make a conscientious effort not to overpopulate the earth. When bad sh** happens people mega-die. I have been studying this whole world disaster issue for a while, read Winchester's book Krakatoa (a good read, although I disagree with his 535 conclusion), and "Impact Earth: Asteroids, Comets and Meteoroids: the Growing Threat", by Austen Atkinson, and a number of others.

Regarding Krakatoa, Winchester quotes a prolific but somewhat questionable source who describes a great volcanic event in AD 416, which Winchester thinks was probably Krakatoa. Is there any correlation with this event and the movement of the West Goths in 417 and 419, and the Vandals in 420 who crossed the Pyrennes and moved across Spain to cross into North Africa in 427? With reference to 535, Winchester, without any historic record of a huge volcanic event conjectures that there was one because of the severe breakdown in civic society and lack of court records. This, of course, could just as easily have been cause by a major boloid event as recorded worldwide by tree rings, and not by evidence of the right kind of ash in Greenland ice cores.

Regarding the year 1628 BC, this correlates well with the destruction of Thera/Santorini. An event that I am trying to find more about is the 1500 BC, plus or minus 50 years major eruption of Mt. Etna. A huge bowl called the Valle de Bove was scouped out of the side of the mountain by this event. I wish I could narrow down the date.

The Tungusku boloid of 1908 is well known, but hardly anyone knows that in May 1931, a major boloid exploded over Brazil's Amazon forest, with the strength of 4-8 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, destroying 1,300 sq. K of forest. Only the presence of an educated Catholic priest kept the forest tribe whose world was decimated from committing suicide to appease the angry sky gods.

Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus, who was mentioned in another comment, was one of Rome's leading historians and essayists. About 534-536 he wrote "...who will not be disturbed, and deeply curious...if something mysterious and unusual seems to be coming on us from the stars? He continues, "How strange it is, I ask you, to see the principal star (the sun), and not its usual brightness; to gaze on the moon...shorn of its natural splendour? All of us are still observing...a blue-coloured sun...we marvel at bodies that cast no midday shadow...and this has not happened in the momentary loss of an eclipse, but has been going on equally through almost the entire year...whence can we hope for mild weather, when the months that once ripened the crops have been deadly sick under the northern blasts? For what will give fertility, if the soil does not grow warm in summer?" This paragraph and the one above it are both from "Impact Earth."

In 1783, Iceland experience a great effusion of Lava from the Laki Fissure. The resulting ash and fluorine gas destroyed 90% of the livestock and starved one fifth of the population. In europe a blue fog was experience for months and crops failed. Banjamin Franklin, who was our ambassador in Europe, commented on this at the time and attributed the problems in Europe to the Iceland event. In 1815 the great explosion of Tambora caused the "year with no summer" which was well recorded in several New England states, causing widespread crop failure.

So it would appear that both volano and boloid can really mess up ones day. Since both are quite unpredictable, it pays to be prepared.

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