Owain Ddantgwyn - Seems a good candidate
And if he can be connected to Wroxeter (then known as Caer Guricon) which was extensively rebuilt c.500 - we have Camelot
Posted on 04/21/2006 4:39:40 PM PDT by blam
TALE OF ARTHUR POINTS TO COMET CATASTROPHE
From The Times, 9 September 2000
http://www.the-times.co.uk
BY NICK NUTTALL
Arthur: myth links him to fire from the sky
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.
Copyright 2000, The Times Newspapers Ltd.
I have always placed the death of Arthur closer to 500, myself. Counts what authority you listen to.
Beyond that, this sort of conflates the death of Arthur with Merlin's confrontation with Vortigern near the end of his reign, and also the fall of Uther, and several other tales that involve comets...very common in Celtic mythology. Buy a copy of the Mabinogeon and Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and see how many stories use comets as signs.
I have been ready since 1956 when they made us do the duck and cover in grammar school. Ready as I'm going to be, that is.
It's Bush's fault. FEMA was inept and could have avoided the Dark Ages according to Howard Dean.
http://www.britannia.com/history/docs/coggeshl.html
Margam Abbey Chronicle
The Discovery of King Arthur's Grave at Glastonbury
This entry from a chronicle of Margam Abbey is one of the accounts that have come down to us, detailing the discovery of King Arthur's body at Glastonbury Abbey. The date of composition is uncertain, but it is believed by some scholars to have been written within a decade or two of the original discovery in 1190. A much later date is likely, however, as we will see.
Margam is the only report that mentions the discovery of Mordred's tomb and is, on that account, suspect. The chronicle also mentions transferring the body of Arthur "with suitable honour and much pomp" to a marble tomb in the abbey church. The only reliable record of anything remotely like that happening is the account of the visit of Edward I to Glastonbury in 1278, when he transferred, with much pomp, the bones of Arthur and Guinevere to a marble tomb in the abbey church.
According to C.A. Ralegh Radford (the archaeologist whose excavations at Glastonbury have shown that the monks did, in fact, dig up a grave at about the right time), the relics of Arthur and Guinevere that had been exhumed, "lay in a treasure in the east range of the abbey" until the time when they were reinterred by Edward, some 88 years later. The Margam account could not contain the information that it does and still be written a decade or two after the discovery of the grave.
.............................................................
At Glastonbury the bones of the most famous Arthur, once King of Greater Britain, were found, hidden in a certain very ancient coffin. Two pyramids had been erected about them, in which certain letters were carved, but they could not be read because they were cut in a barbarous style and worn away. The bones were found on this occasion.
While they were digging a certain plot between the pyramids, in order to bury a certain monk who had begged and prayed the convent to be buried here, they found a certain coffin in which they saw a woman's bones with the hair still intact. When this was removed, they found another coffin below the first, containing a man's bones. This also being removed, they found a third below the first two, on which a lead cross was placed, on which was inscribed, "Here lies the famous king Arthur, buried in the isle of Avalon." For that place was once surrounded by marshes, and is called the isle of Avalon, that is "the isle of apples." For aval means, in British, an apple.
On opening the aforesaid coffin, they found the bones of the said prince, sturdy enough and large, which the monks transferred with suitable honour and much pomp into a marble tomb in their church. The first tomb was said to be that of Guinevere, wife of the same Arthur; the second, that of Mordred, his nephew; the third, that of the aforesaid prince.
Are you sure that's from Tunguska, and not the solar storm of 1859?
I'm kind of leaning towards a volcanic eruption, particularly when an alleged scientist proclaims "would have been out
of all proportion to ones we see in recent times".
This is now, that was then. Maybe Tambora erupted spectacularly a number of times in human history, before
the early 19th Century blast.
I'm recalling a written account, not certain of source but I'll look for it, regarding what had to be a near-miss by an asteroid. It was described as being "awesome in its blackness" and the noise was cause for great fear, as if the very "firmament" was being ripped away. This was in archaic English, but it could have been from the years immediately preceding the Black Death, in the 12th century.
"The first reports of a strange glow in the sky came from across Europe. Shortly after midnight on 1 July 1908, Londoners were intrigued to see a pink phosphorescent night sky over the capital. People who had retired awoke confused as the strange pink glow shone into their bedrooms. The same ruddy luminescence was reported over Belgium. The skies over Germany were curiously said to be bright green, while the heavens over Scotland were of an incredible intense whiteness which tricked the wildlife into believing it was dawn. Birdsong started and cocks crowed - at two o'clock in the morning. The skies over Moscow were so bright, photographs were taken of the streets without using a magnesium flash. A captain on a ship on the River Volga said he could see vessels on the river two miles away by the uncanny astral light. One golf game in England almost went on until four in the morning under the nocturnal glow, and in the following week The Times of London was inundated with letters from readers from all over the United Kingdom to report the curious 'false dawn'. A woman in Huntingdon wrote that she had been able to read a book in her bedroom solely by the peculiar rosy light."
Scientists were puzzled when the natives told them they could hear the meteor before it impacted/exploded. The Eskimos claim to be able to hear the Northern Lights too.
"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."
I have to put on my aluminum hat to read and understand this one!!
On my first visit to England in 1963 I remember being shown the ruins of a castle somewhere south of London and being told it was reputed to be the castle of King Arthur. It was up on a hill and not open to the public at that time.
I've heard that about the Northern Lights, too. Supposedly, it's a light jingling sound, sort of crystalline, if I'm remembering correctly. I may be imagining things, but I swear I've heard shooting stars, from a mountaintop in NC, while viewing the Perseids ... a very faint hiss.
I saw a program where some scientists tried everything to measure a sound of any kind without success.
See my post #40.
Maybe a high number of Eskimo people are synaesthetes, able to "hear" colors?
Owain Ddantgwyn - Seems a good candidate
And if he can be connected to Wroxeter (then known as Caer Guricon) which was extensively rebuilt c.500 - we have Camelot
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