Posted on 08/03/2007 11:29:34 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake
June 28, 2007
Comet theory collides with Clovis research, may explain disappearance of ancient people
A theory put forth by a group of 25 geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada, possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and pushing the earth into another ice age.
University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear said the theory may not be such "out-of-this-world" thinking based on his study of ancient stone-tool artifacts he and his team have excavated from the Topper dig site in Allendale, as well as ones found in Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
The tools, or fluted spear points, made by flaking and chipping flint, were used for hunting and made by the Clovis people, who lived 13,100 to 12,900 years ago, and from the Redstone people who emerged afterwards. The two points are distinctly different in appearance, with Redstone points more impressively long and steeple-shaped.
"I saw a tremendous drop-off of Redstone points after Clovis," said Goodyear. "When you see such a widespread decline or pattern like that, you really have to wonder whether there is a population decline to go with it."
For every Redstone point, Goodyear says, there are four or five Clovis points. His findings are leading archaeologists from across North America to reexamine their fluted points, and their inventories are yielding similar results: a widespread decline of post-Clovis points that suggests a possible widespread decline of humans.
"What is interesting is that Redstone people came after Clovis people and may have lasted as many centuries as Clovis did, probably even longer, but there are fewer of these Redstone points than Clovis ones," Goodyear said. "That is really odd, because if the Redstone culture simply came right after the Clovis culture you'd expect at least as many Redstone points as Clovis ones. We just don't see that, and the question is why, and what happened to the people who made these tools?"
Archaeologists have long known that the great beasts of the age – the wooly mammoth and mastodon – suddenly disappeared around the same time period (12,900 - 12, 800 years ), but little was known about their demise. It was thought to be the result of over-hunting by Clovis man or climate change associated with a new ice age.
The notion that a comet collided with Earth and caused these events was farfetched until recently, when the group of scientists began looking for evidence of a comet impact, which they call the Younger - Dryas Event. They turned to Goodyear and the pristine Clovis site of Topper.
In 2005, Arizona geophysicist Dr. Allen West and his team traveled to Topper in hopes of finding concentrations of iridium, an extra-terrestrial element found in comets, in the layer of Clovis-era sediment.
"They found iridium and plenty of it," said Goodyear. "The high concentrations were much higher than you would normally see in the background of the earth's crust. That tends to be an indicator of a terrestrial impact from outer space."
The researchers also found high iridium concentrations at six other Clovis sites throughout North America, as well as in and along the rims of the Carolina Bays, the elliptically shaped depressions that are home to an array of flora and fauna along South Carolina's coast.
The Younger- Dryas Event suggests that a large comet exploded above Canada, creating a storm of fiery fragments that rained over North America. The fragments could have easily killed the giant mammals of the day, as well as Clovis man.
"No one has ever had a really good explanation for the disappearance of mammoth and mastodon," Goodyear said. "The archaeological community is waking up to the Younger-Dryas Event. It doesn't prove that these Clovis people were affected by this comet, but it is consistent with the idea that something catastrophic happened to the Clovis people at the same time period."
The comet theory dominated the recent annual meetings of the American Geophysical Union held in Mexico. Goodyear's Clovis-Redstone point study and West's research on the comet were featured at the AGU meetings and by the journal, Nature. The comet will be the subject of documentaries featured on the National Geographic Channel and NOVA television late this fall and in early 2008.
The Topper story
Dr. Al Goodyear, who conducts research through the University of South Carolina's S.C. Institute of Anthropology and Archaeology, began excavating Clovis artifacts along the Savannah River in Allendale County in 1984. In 1998, with the hope of finding evidence of a pre-Clovis culture earlier than the accepted 13,100 years, Goodyear began a concerted digging effort on a site called Topper, located on the property of the Clariant Co.
His efforts paid off. Goodyear unearthed blades made of flint and chert that he believed to be the tools of an ice age culture back some 16,000 years or more. His findings, as well as similar ones yielded at other pre-Clovis sites in North America, sparked great change and debate in the scientific community.
Believing that if Clovis and Redstone people thrived near the banks of the Savannah River, Goodyear thought the area could haven been an ideal location for a more ancient culture. Acting on a hunch in 2004, Goodyear dug even deeper down into the Pleistocene Terrace and found more artifacts of a pre-Clovis type buried in a layer of sediment stained with charcoal deposits. Radio carbon dates of the burnt plant remains yielded dates of 50,000 years, which suggested man was in South Carolina long before the last ice age. Goodyear's finding not only captured international media attention, but it has put the archaeology field in flux, opening scientific minds to the possibility of an even earlier pre-Clovis occupation of the Americas.
Since 2004, Goodyear has continued his Clovis and pre-Clovis excavations at Topper. With support of Clariant Corp. and SCANA, plus numerous individual donors, a massive shelter and viewing deck now sit above the dig site to allow Goodyear and his team of graduate students and community volunteers to dig free from the heat and rain and to protect what may be the most significant early-man dig in America.
Conservatives are surly curmudgeons who prefer to be left alone.That's crazy, and, just for that, I'm gonna sit over there. ;')
The idea came from someone here in Michigan, but they’ve since had a falling out (even before the book). The idea has been developed into a series of bombardments by different kinds of crud, which arrive at different times because of their mass and velocity — but all of it coming from a sort of nearby star blowing up. The idea of mass extinction events coming from novae and supernovae isn’t new, there was a book by some other guy maybe ten years ago. I think I’ve got something about that on the drive...
Kinda like 1968 when they went too far with the "Great Society" welfare state or 1980 when they were surrendering to our enemies.I'd probably quibble with that -- 1968 marked the rehabilitation of Nixon and repudiation of LBJ's idiotic mismanagement of a war he got us into; it represented the revulsion felt by much of America toward the mayhem going on at the various campuses and inner cities. The welfare state wasn't dismantled, SALT II got started instead, and Apollo abandoned. But yeah, I'd agree that 1980 was a repudiation of withdrawal, surrender, and appeasement -- and gross incompetence -- of the Carter wing of the Dhimmicratic Party. IMHO.
The idea of an impact event at the beginning of the Holocene has been around for awhile. If they are finding Iridium at Clovis sites this may pinpoint the time and the reason for the Younger Dryas, which was world wide and should be able to be confirmed from sites out side of North America.
Heh.
Mark Twain Corollary: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
I liken the relationship of leftists towards society as something akin to adolescents vs parents. Sortof a love/hate thing. They don't really know what they want, they're just rebellious because that's the nature of pre-adults. Irresistable force meets immovable object? A little growing up would do them, and us, a world of good.
Firestone presumably had the goods to back it up, no?
There is supporting data in the form of ET particles embedded in mammoth ivory and such.
The ice man found on the border of austria/italy, now known to be a murder victim. Now this : forensic archeology...
The problem as I see it, with conservatives resisting, is that conservatives are generally people who simply want to go about their lives. As long as government leaves them alone, they’re content. They work hard and keep their noses to the grind stone.
What we have here is the old (hate to use it again) frog in the boiling pot syndrome. Government creep is so incremental yet peristant that they don’t seem to notice for the most part.
Today people are just busy busy busy. And that’s the way the government likes it.
IMO college kids and the under employed are those who have a lot of time to participate in driving the environmental whack-job nonsense. Their professors and those who fancy themselves “the protectors” are also a major driving force. There’s a lot of young and middle-aged people who were looking for a cause out of college, and they were either active in college or came into contact with someone who was.
It’s amazing to me how many conservatives actually think there is major cause for concern regarding the environment though. It’s sortof like turning your back on Bambie. You know it’s only make believe, but boy wouldn’t it be bad IF it were real. Can’t have that...
I agree, all that contributed to Nixon's election. I do think his election was a repudiation of the Great Society as well, but also have to agree Nixon did almost nothing to dismantle it. If anything, he reinforced it and made things worse with economic bungles like price controls. While he viewed himself as a conservative, he seemed to have an incoherent philosophy of government.
In fact, probably encourages same. From Wikipedia:
"Bread and circuses" has come to be a derogatory phrase that can criticize either government policies to pacify the citizenry, or the shallow, decadent desires of that same citizenry. In both cases, it refers to low-cost, low-quality, high-availability food and entertainment that have become the sole concern of the People, to the exclusion of matters that the speaker considers more important: e.g. the Arts, public works projects, human rights, or democracy itself. The phrase is commonly used to refer to short-term government palliatives offered in place of a solution for significant, long-term problems.
The more things change, the more they stay the same...
Nixon was a New Deal liberal of a sort; when asked by David Frost about his intellectual role models or whatever, included Adlai Stevenson in his list. Pat Buchanan claimed that Nixon gave a thumbs-down sign when asked by PB what the long term prospects for Israel were — and yet Nixon ordered “anything that will fly” to airlift crucial supplies, and at least once (just to show off) a whole tank. The US out-airlifted the USSR during the 1973 war, despite having to fly much farther and (mostly) over open ocean.
OPECs reaction to US support for Israel — and the terrible defeat of pan-Arab pan-Moslem forces — was to quadruple and even quintuple the price of crude. The resulting worldwide economic cratering took years to recover from. Nixon’s “phases” and Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” were symbolic rather than substantive.
And the inflation from the embargo until Ford left office in 1977 were the Good Ol’ Days compared with the disaster of Jimmy Carter’s administration, with the 20 per cent interest rate peak, his “moral equivalent of war” energy speech, in which he set heavy crude exploitation and gasoline rationing as needed goals.
And then the Iranians seized the hostages.
Nixon’s foreign policy was carried out skillfully, and largely consisted of cleaning up LBJ’s mess. His trip to China was a master stroke. Detente with the USSR helped pave the way for the downfall of the it. Nixon’s China policy will eventually lead to the same end for the PRC.
Nixon wasn’t incoherent, merely eccentric and pragmatic (nothing is more eccentric than a pragmatic eccentric). :’)
Agreed. Foreign policy was where Nixon excelled.
Nixon stood by Israel, although he always had a problem with Jews and Ivy Leaguers. The Arabs failed to appreciate Nixon and Kissinger engineered the outcome of the 1973 war by persuading Israel to stop short of defeating the Egyptian army, which left Sadat with a colorable claim to have done better than any Arab army against Israel, which gave him the maneuver room to cut a peace deal for Sinai. Sadat was way ahead of the others, who were still stuck on the three no's. Sadat was also savvy enough to flip to the U.S. side, long before it became apparent to the rest of the world we would best the Sov's.
They could have gotten inflation under control much sooner had they recognized it's a monetary problem, but that didn't happen until hard money Paul Volker was appointed.
I served in the Carter military and it was just plain awful. We were short of people and money and our equipment was falling apart. Carter had even less economic sense than his predecessors with his energy regulation policies making matters worse.
Still, I give Carter credit for two things: there was a modest increase for defense in his last budget (although nothing like Reagan was to do) and he appointed Volker, which along with the Iranian hostage crisis and Ted Kennedy's primary challenge insured his doom in 1980. But those two things just save him from my vote for all time worst President. All in all Jimmuh was a dreadful President.
Nixon and Kissinger engineered the outcome of the 1973 war by persuading Israel to stop short of defeating the Egyptian army, which left Sadat with a colorable claim to have done better than any Arab army against Israel, which gave him the maneuver room to cut a peace deal for Sinai. Sadat was way ahead of the others, who were still stuck on the three no's. Sadat was also savvy enough to flip to the U.S. side, long before it became apparent to the rest of the world we would best the Sov's.It's interesting that Sadat was the mastermind of this; he was covertly talking directly with Kissinger, and yet without K's knowledge planned the '73 war carefully to achieve limited objectives, namely establishing Egyptian control of just a few miles of the western Sinai, thus the entire Suez Canal. Despite massive superiority, Egypt stopped at a prearranged point, within the anti-aircraft missile umbrella, and wouldn't move the umbrella forward over the canal. The plan almost went under when Israel managed to launch the counterattack, build a bridgehead, and cross over into Africa.
Back in 1981 or so, I got started watching the PBS Nightly Business Report. Paul Kangas referred to Henry Kaufman as “Doctor Doom”, and referred to Paul Volcker as “Tall Paul”. :’) Alan Greenspan went directly from (among other things) a weekly commentary gig on NBR to being Fed chairman. IMHO, AG was one of the most significant figures of the late 20th century.
True, the IDF could have cut off Egypt's forces in Sinai, defeated the supporting units on the Africa side and marched on Cairo, had they wanted. Nixon's strong support for Israel gave him the credibility and influence to persuade them to stop.
Syria came close, IMHO. The tank battles on the northern front are some of the most amazing ever - the Israelis defeated incredible odds, tank to tank. And we studied those battles in the 1970's as a blueprint how we might defeat a Soviet "breakthrough" attack in Germany.
Sadat was a brilliant man, achieving all Egypt's goals, for which he was murdered. The Assad dynasty stayed on the throne, but got 30+ years of frustration.
Yes. Now, if he could just explain to the rest of us how he did it? :-))
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