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.
Human history cannot be separate from natural history.
I agree with your post, right down to the tagline. :')
Knights who say, "ni" ping.
The other one is in a slightly earlier message in this thread. :')
Bring out yer dead... bang! Bring out yer dead... clang! ... rwaaaarrr!
I'm not quite dead yet!!
It sounds as though what would pass for the French at the time were even then subjugated to the Germans to some degree. It's no wonder the Germans clung to expansionist sentiment in the area well into the 20th Century.
I'm of German ancestry myself (Hannover area & Hinter-Pommern). The family arrived in America in May, 1854 and set up shop in Chicago. My main concern online is genealogy research and I've been trying to get some idea of exactly where (in those areas noted) they came from, but so far I've been stymied. The same is true to some degree in local research. The Great Chicago Fire played havoc with genealogical research; most of the records from before that catastrophe having been lost. My family lived just a little West and South of where the fire originated so they came through all right, the fire spreading East and North due to the prevailing winds.
Thanks for the information. I love history (American) and constantly have a book going. Right now it's Shelby Foote's third volume of 'The Civil War a Narrative'.
Best regards!
Eskimos are not the only people to claim to hear the Northern Lights.
A "dendrochronology" ping.
If there's a vote, I like this one.(61)
So now we know why they were called the "Dark Ages".
(63)
need coffeeeeeeeeeee
(1) all societal events are not caused by environmental change. Greens, get a life and learn even the tiniest bit of history.
(2) Arthur is a legend, not an historical figure. The first tales about him date from around the 8th century, and the full story appears only in the 11th. Many elements are identifiably Norman in the later versions.
(3) The wasteland and rebirth of it stuff is all pagan theology not history. It is tied to tales of great kings because the original function of kings was magical-mystical, not military-political. The specific rites involved have been traced back to first millenia BC central and eastern Europe, and cannot possibly have originated 750 years later on the other side of the continent. For that matter, in their eastern European forms they are probably imports from the near east reflecting much older - thousands of years older - stuff also seen in the high civilizations (Egypt, Babylon, etc).
(4) The dark ages were already well under way long before 540 AD. Adrianople, when the Goths achieved military ascendency over the Roman armies, was in 378 AD. (For that matter, the "Roman" army had been becoming progressively more German in actual composition for nearly 200 years at that point). Alaric's sack of Rome was in 410. Major political events have major historical, civilizational effects, without any sky is falling horsefeathers.
Interesting.
"I think she's dead."
"No I'm not."
Ahh, jeez. Does that mean we're going to need another volcano to get rid of them?
I posted a link to an article about this (#194) on the thread
Former Military Air Traffic Controller Claims Comet Collision with Earth on May 25, 2006
I'm not buying that loons theory (it's space aliens sending the comet to punish Bush), but I found speculation on Space.COM that there could, just could, be debris from this new one close enough to cause a spectacular meteor shower in mid May. That article specifically mentions Comet Biela, the same one as in this article on King Arthur. It says that Biela caused successive meteor storms of "3,000 to 15,000 meteors per hour" in "1872, 1885 and 1892." The annual Lyrid meteor shower, which coincidentally peaked this morning, averages 5 to 20 meteors per hour.
'Neath sea the land sinketh, the sun dimmeth,
From the heavens fall the fair bright stars;
Gusheth forth stream and gutting fire,
To very heaven soar the hurtling flames.
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1734/volueng.htm
'Among the clouds over his head were visible the virulent pouring showers and sparks of ruddy fire which the seething of his savage wrath caused to mount up above him. His hair became tangled about his head, as it had been branches of a red thorn-bush stuffed into a strongly fenced gap to block it; over the which though a prime apple-tree had been shaken, yet may we surmise that never an apple of them would have reached the ground, but rather that all would have been held impaled each on an individual hair as it bristled on him for fury. His hero's paroxysm projected itself out of his forehead, and showed longer than the whet-stone of a first-rate man-at-arms. Taller, thicker, more rigid, longer than mast of a great ship was the perpendicular jet of dusky blood which out of his scalp's very central point shot upwards and then was scattered to the four cardinal points; whereby was formed a magic mist of gloom resembling the smoky pall that drapes a regal dwelling, what time a king at night-fall of a winter's day draws near to it.'
Stories, Myths and legends about Cúchulainn (snip)
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