Slam, bang, thanks Saddam: new meteor theory

Ancient Apocalypse is a new BBC series that investigates the dramatic collapse of great civilisations.

Here, the series producer Jessica Cecil relates the climate disaster that struck the Egyptian Old Kingdom

All of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children

Four thousand two hundred years ago, the first great civilisation in Egypt collapsed.

The pharaohs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom had built the mightiest legacy of the ancient world - the pyramids at Giza. But after nearly a thousand years of stability, central authority disintegrated and the country collapsed into chaos for more than a 100 years.

What happened, and why, has remained a huge controversy. But Professor Fekri Hassan, from University College London, UK, wanted to solve the mystery, by gathering together scientific clues.

His inspiration was the little known tomb in southern Egypt of a regional governor, Ankhtifi. The hieroglyphs there reported "all of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children".

The Nile is at the heart of everything

Dismissed as exaggeration and fantasy by most other Egyptologists, Fekri was determined to prove the writings were true and accurate. He also had to find a culprit capable of producing such misery. (I think we may have found the culprit in the meteor.)

Stalactites and stalagmites

"My hunch from the beginning was that it had to do with the environment in which the Egyptians lived." Fekri felt sure the Nile, the river that has always been at the heart of Egyptian life, was implicated.

He studied the meticulous records, kept since the 7th Century, of Nile floods. He was amazed to see that there was a huge variation in the size of the annual Nile floods - the floods that were vital for irrigating the land.

But no records existed for 2,200BC. Then came a breakthrough - a new discovery in the hills of neighbouring Israel. Mira Bar-Matthews of the Geological Survey of Israel had found a unique record of past climates, locked in the stalactites and stalagmites of a cave near Tel Aviv.

What they show is a sudden and dramatic drop in rainfall, by 20%. It is the largest climate event in 5,000 years. And the date? 2,200 BC.
As Israel and Egypt are in different weather systems, Fekri needed evidence of some worldwide climate event to link this to the collapse of the Old Kingdom. And the evidence came out of the blue.

Geologist Gerard Bond, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, looks for climate evidence in the icebergs of Iceland. As they melt on their journey south, they leave shards of volcanic ash on the ocean floor.

Dry lake

How far they travelled before melting tells him how cold it was. Cores of mud from the ocean floor revealed to him regular periods of extreme cold - mini ice ages - in Europe every 1,500 years, and lasting 200 years. And one mini ice age occurred at 2,200 BC. Gerard's colleague, Peter deMenocal, looked at climate records for the rest of the world at exactly the same time. From pollen records to sand, the story was the same - a dramatic climate change from Indonesia to the Mediterranean, Greenland to North America.

Scientists were confirming everything Fekri believed - severe climate change causing widespread human misery 4,200 years ago, misery we are only now learning about for the first time.

Back in Egypt, Fekri wanted to put the last piece of the puzzle in place. He wanted direct evidence of this severe climate change in the Nile. And he found it drilling cores in a large lake that had been fed by a tributary of the Nile in ancient times.

He discovered in the critical period, as the Old Kingdom collapsed, the lake had dried up completely - the only time in the whole history of this lake that this had happened. At last, Fekri felt he had proved that the writings on Ankhtifi's tomb were really true. It was nature that had driven people to desperation.

The Ancient Apocalypse series begins on BBC Two on Thursday, 26 July, at 2100 BST

I think it very likely that this may be related to the biblical accounts of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the days of Abraham and Lot. Remember that Abraham had been born in, and urged by God to flee from, Ur of the Chaldees which lay very near this impact and would have been devastated by it.

Ussher, of sainted memory, said that the Sodom wipeout occurred in 1898 BC, but scholarship has long been putting this back in time: Sitchin (as I recall) is the latest now at 2023 BC, but I gave the date at 2123 a few months ago, and have since seen evidence the real date may be some 2153/4. Perhaps this crater find will help narrow it down, maybe push our (biblical scholars) dates back, and maybe their (Witwatersrand geologists) date around 2354 is TOO far back and could be brought forward...and thus help confirm the biblical time lines...

". . . and from heaven a great star shall fall on the dread ocean and burn up the deep sea, with Babylon itself and the land of Italy, by reason of which many of the Hebrews perished,

. . . Be afraid, ye Indians and high-hearted Ethiopians: for when the fiery wheel of the ecliptic(?) . . . and Capricorn . . . and Taurus among the Twins encircles the mid-heaven, when the Virgin ascending and the Sun fastening the girdle round his forehead dominates the whole firmament; there shall be a great conflagration from the sky, falling on the earth;"

Lines from the Sibylline Oracles.

A meteor impact,or multiple impacts,makes sense to me as a trigger for climate change,and social upheaval as a result. I can't remember where I read this,but if memory serves,the string of revolutions in Europe in the 1840's were,to an extent,aggravated(or maybe even precipitated)by a volcanic eruption in the Pacific. The eruption threw enough dust into the atmosphere to affect the length of the growing season,and the crops suffered. As the story goes,the shortened growing season led to food shortages,and the food shortages led to civil unrest.

Here's some wild conjecture on my part: another poster on this thread mentioned high salinity levels in the soil,due to over irrigating. Another thought comes to mind,though-what if at least some of the high salinity levels in the topsoil were caused by large amounts of seawater falling back to the surface?(I'm playing the,"Let's Just Say" game,here,so please bear with me). What if the Iraq crater was formed at a time when the area was a shallow saltwater sea? A lot of saltwater would have been thrown up by a meteor impact,and fallen again-maybe enough to affect the salinity levels in the soil for a pretty fair sized area?

"As the story goes,the shortened growing season led to food shortages,and the food shortages led to civil unrest."

A number of people subscribe to this theory especially as it relates to the Chinese dynasties.

"A lot of saltwater would have been thrown up by a meteor impact,and fallen again-maybe enough to affect the salinity levels in the soil for a pretty fair sized area?"

A possibility, However, I believe it would have run off and would have been cleansed by the next rain. Something to think about: During the ice age when the oceans were 300-500 feet lower than they are now, the river valleys would have been much deeper, something akin to the Grand Canyon. All the land that is now Basra(Iraq) and Alexanderia(Egypt) was only deposited there within the last 10-12,000 years.

Good point about the runoff. Guess the best way to find out what happened is to go there and dig around to see what can be found. Isn't there a fair sized impact crater in Saudi Arabia?-seems like I remember hearing that somewhere. A very recent one,if memory serves.

Look at that map again in #12. There are some little images that look like perhaps some smaller meteors landed in the general area. But the two larger ones - what are they? The one to the right looks like a bird.

Good point.......where is the written record of BOOM? BTW......is there a record in Egypt of the plagues of Moses? I've wondered about that too.

"BTW......is there a record in Egypt of the plagues of Moses? I've wondered about that too."

Some scientists blame the explosion of the Thera/Akatori volcano for the plagues you mentioned. It exploded in 1628BC and is also recorded in the 10k year tree ring data.

"There are some little images that look like perhaps some smaller meteors landed in the general area. But the two larger ones - what are they? The one to the right looks like a bird."

I saw those, maybe part of the same meteor swarm, huh? There is a manmade shark shaped lake somewhere, can't remember where right now. (SW US?)

"Maybe we can pray for a big fat meteor to fall smack on those Taliban caves."

Could they tell that from a big ol' nuke? Great is the power of prayer.

This is twice as big as Meteor Crater in the western US.

But puny compared to chixulub in the Yucatan peninsula.
And much smaller that many scattered worldwide.

Just adding this to the GGG catalog, not sending a general distribution.

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Evidence for Major Impact Events in the late Third Millennium BC
Evidence of Astronomical Aspects of Mankind's Past and Recent Climate Homepage
FR Post 9-4-2 | Timo Niroma
Posted on 09/04/2002 4:48:54 PM PDT by vannrox
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/744698/posts

Meteor Clue To End Of Middle East Civilisations
The Telegraph (UK) | 11-04-2001 | Robert Matthews
Posted on 01/03/2002 10:50:09 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/601395/posts

Could they tell that from a big ol' nuke? Great is the power of prayer.

Yes, they could. Metor's don't leave a radioactive crater, and no one in the world has that big a nuke anyway.

Now you could just drop a big rock (asteroid) on them, but we aren't quite up to doing that either, although the theoretical aspects are solid.

Just as long as *we* are the ones doing it, and it's not followed by pygmy elephants in pink platform shoes raining down from the sky in hang gliders. :) ("See Niven and Pournelle's, "Footfall"

LOL. How did you find that post? Did you see the date on it?

I knew we could tell, but could they? Radioactive asteroid? Put a good dose of iridium in the nuke for conversational purposes.

So we don't have a nuke big enough. My mother always told me to make do with what you've got. ;)

LOL. How did you find that post? Did you see the date on it?

Yea I saw the date, but later posts than that one had a much later date than much of the thread, so I figured "What the heck". Found the thread linked from another new thread which mentioned the crater.

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This is the earliest one found in the keyword:

http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/curseofagade/index

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3707787/posts?page=41#41

"Curse of Agade" keyword, sorted:

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How climate change caused the world's first empire to collapse [01/07/2019]
Evidence of Sodom? Meteor blast cause of biblical destruction, say scientists [11/22/2018]
Welcome to the Meghalayan Age - a new phase in history [07/19/2018]
The Best Radiocarbon-dated Site in Recent Iberian Prehistory [sudden end] [07/15/2018]
4,000-year-old Sumerian port found in southern Iraq [03/22/2018]
Did Egypt's Old Kingdom Die -- or Simply Fade Away? [12/28/2015]
Have archaeologists discovered the biblical city of Sodom? [10/14/2015]
Archaeologists Claim to Have Found Ancient City of Sodom (and Gomorrah) [10/11/2015]
Archaeologist Believes Remains of Sodom's Fiery Destruction Have Been Found [10/07/2015]
Archaeologists discover possible ruins of ancient Sodom in the Holy Land [10/03/2015]
Possible site of ancient Sodom yields more finds [09/29/2015]
Archeologists Explain Historical Climate Change 4,000 Years Ago [06/17/2015]
Ancient megadrought entombed dodos in poisonous fecal cocktail [04/30/2015]
New Thoughts on the Impact of Climate Change in Neolithic China [01/12/2015]
Climate change caused empire's fall, tree rings reveal [05/31/2014]
The Ghost Empire - Climate Change, Global Warming, Drought and Desertification [06/09/2013]
Drought May Have Killed Sumerian Language [12/05/2012]
200-year-long drought may have killed Sumerian language [12/05/2012]
Climate and Drought Lessons from Ancient Egypt [08/18/2012]
Ancient Egypt was destroyed by drought, discover Scottish experts [08/04/2011]
Ancient City Mysteriously Survived Mideast Civilization Collapse [07/30/2011]
Clay tablet holds clue to asteroid mystery [03/30/2008]
Comets And Disaster In The Bronze Age [04/30/2007]
Climate Key To Sphinx's Riddle [01/08/2007]
Charcoal reveals wildfire history [07/16/2006]
Jordan site may be Biblical city of Sodom [05/10/2006]
The Roots Of Civilization Trace Back To ... Roots [09/19/2005]
Ancestors Of Turks Came To Anatolia In 2000s BC [08/27/2004]
Mesopotamian Climate Change (8,000 Years Ago) [02/15/2004]
Drought That Destroyed A Civilisation [11/16/2003]
The Dark Ages: Were They Darker Than We Imagined? [06/08/2003]
Meteor Clue To End Of Middle East Civilisations [06/08/2003]
Dawn Of American Religion Found (2,250 BC) [04/14/2003]
An Impact Event in 3114BC? The beginning of a Turbulent Millennium. [01/03/2003]
Evidence for Major Impact Events in the [09/04/2002]
The Law Code of Hammurabi. (Complete Translation) [08/27/2002]
Comets,Meteors & Myth: New Evidence For Toppled Civilizations And Bibical Tales [08/11/2002]
Deconstructing the Walls of Jerico [06/22/2002]
Archaeologists Unearth 1,700 Year-Old Canal System Near Lake Okeechobee (Florida) [06/07/2002]
Meteor Clue To End Of Middle East Civilisations [01/03/2002]
Disaster That Struck The Ancients [12/08/2001]
Comets, Meteors & Myth: New Evidence for Toppled Civilizations and Biblical Tales [11/13/2001]