Posted on 01/03/2003 8:06:06 PM PST by ckilmer
Collected and commented by Timo Niroma, Helsinki, Finland Go to the
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Besides the most evident cosmic catastrophes ca. 2200 BC and 2345 BC there are other events during the Holocene that are so widely global and difficult to explain by only the Earth's own mechanisms that a cosmic explanation must evidently be taken into account.
The first so-called "Dark Age", meaning a period from which little is known despite much information before and after that period, occurred about 3100 BC to 3000 BC. For example in Mesopotamia this period is called Jemdet Nasr. About 3100 BC there was suddenly a change to more primitive ages compared to the preceding Uruk period. For example the numerical token system dwindled. 3000 BC however there was a sudden recovery. This is called the Early Dynasty, which can be described as the first known culture, that began to have some kind of a centralized system. And the tokens were not only numerated again, the basis for writing was born.
What happened 3100 BC, maybe right in 3114 BC? There is not any great crater on the continental areas, but 2/3 of the Earth's area is covered by water, and flood they speak of. In fact there are two small craters from about this time, but what seems more probable, is a huge meteorite swarm that both caused much damage on land, brought up tsunamis and blanketed with dust the atmosphere. It may have been a break-up of a great comet in the inner parts of the solar system. People were panic-stricken. The beginnings of civilizations, however, got despite of the immediate damage, a first great rise, after about a hundred years had gone. There was a great boomtime. that eventually led to the rise of the first great civilizations in the beginning of the third millennium BC.
What evidence is there then that something immemorable happened around 3100 BC than the Mayan year zero in 3114 BC? Dick Meehan has gathered some happenings around this time:
- Newgrange construction.
- Flood in paleoclimatic data.
- Stonehenge number one (the astronomical one, later versions are religious ones)
- The unification of Egypt as if a cooperation would be needed.
- Methane peak (fires).
- Cold time according to bristlecone pines.
- The coastal menhirs in Brittany.
Although anyone of these in itself would not be of any great concern, the timing of them in a frame of only 100 years, is the thing that makes us suspect that something unusual was going on. And actually beginning, the next 1000 years or so were very restless time globally.
Aftermath of this may be the 2807 BC ocean impact described by Bruce Masse in Peiser et al.: Natural Catastrophes (Oxford, 1998). If this is the great Flood Comet, as Masse seems to indicate, this explains why the Sumerian story of Flood, on which basis the Genesis Noachian Flood story is built, is combined with the story of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh reigned in the 27th century, 300-450 years before the two great cataclysms in late third millennium BC. Or was the comet or comets swarming and breaking up the whole period of 3114 BC to 2807 BC with diminishing frequency and damage ending temporarily in a great splash in the Atlantic?
The second Dark Age lasted from 2200 BC to 1900 BC. A third Dark Age seems to have followed the "tree ring event" (where the tree rings were very narrow) of 1159 BC (Baillie, A Slice through time). The Mycenean culture may be one of its victims.
Also, the end of Younger Dryas and with it the latest ice age 9700 BC seems to me too sudden and too dramatic a change to happen in an instant, as the Greenland ice cores seem to show, if we seek only terrestrial explanations. What the sudden change indicates is a mystery, but a rise by 15 degrees C in at most some decades, a rise that has remained permanent within some degrees during the last 11,700 years, indicates a catastrophe literally of cosmic dimensions.
The fourth Dark Age is Anno Domini. The beginning year is 536. That year there was reduced growth of trees in America. In China stars were not seen and a famine began. In Ireland there was "a failure of bread" for many years. Dry fog hovered globally. Mediterranean famine began 537 when the storages for food had been eated empty. The famine lasted at least two years. Socalled Justinian plague began 542. At this time the splendid but badly known culture of Moche in Peru came to a sudden end. May this 536 event also have given the Roman empire its last fatal blow? The Justinian's desperate offensive to restore the Roman empire which he launched 533 was doomed already in 537 when the Franks seized Provence.
Nile froze in 829 AD. Mayan from all lowlands disappeared in the first part of the ninth century. Vikings had easy access to almost uninhabited Western Europe islands and coast in ninth century? Were there again cosmic forces at work? Was there a tsunami in North Atlantic?
So have cosmic forces let down Sumer, the most brilliant phase of Egypt, Indus with Mohenjo-Daro and Harappan, Babylon, Shang dynasty in China, Moche culture in Peru and I dare to ask, did they put a final end to the disintegration of Roman empire that had been going on already for 200 years? Not to speak of the Flyland (Escape Country) or Altland (Oldland) or Atland in 2194 BC when the survivors escaped to Crete and established there the Minoan culture.
The Mayans/Olmecs put their 0.0.0.0.0 date at Gregorian time 3114 BC. Stonehenge I (the original astronomical one) was built near 3100 BC, as was Newgrange. The civilization of Sumer had a downfall around 3100-3000 BC, but both Sumer and Egypt then blossomed into an unprecedented and subsequently never exceeded level. Was this the paradise period in Sumer? At least the period from 3000 BC to 2350 BC seems to have been much wetter in Mesopotamia, and the Nile more generous, than the extremely dry period beginning in 2200 BC.
"Stonehenge I was built as some sort of astronomical observatory
that did not include lunar observations ... and it was only later
that the people - of a quite different culture - realized that it
was a peculiarity of the location that the sight lines form a
rectangle ... pointed toward certain celestial phenomena, such as
the maximum and minimum azimuths of the Moon as it rises and sets.
... As Hoyle suggests, Stonehenge II and III are characterized by
ritual/numinous utility rather than novel astronomical observing;
what could have better convinced the people that this was a
sacrosanct site than the special properties that were revealed as
they watched the Sun and the Moon from there ..."
"Although we know that 5,000 years ago the Sun, the Moon, and the
planets were behaving as they do now, we cannot be sure that there
were not some additional celestial features that are no longer seen.
Quite apart from Stonehenge, many other megalithic sites seem to
have been constructed, starting around 3000 BC, by cultures spread
across the globe, having no communication with each other, but
watching a common sky. ... For example, a Neolithic passage grave at
Newgrange in Ireland has a gap in its roof through which the Sun
illuminates its main chamber at sunrise on Midwinter Day, or at
least it did so 5,000 years ago. ... Why were the ancients suddenly
so interested in the sky? Obviously, the special events happening in
the sky must have been short-lived phenomena (because the megalith-
building phase seems to have sprung up and then receded). ... The
precession of meteoroid streams leads to periods of activity only a
few centuries long. This gives us a clue."
Continuing with selections from "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" by Duncan Steel
"The outrageous suggestion that I am going to make is that the
Taurid Complex was producing phenomenal meteor storms between 4,500
and 5,000 years ago, accompanied by multiple Tunguska-class
atmospheric detonations, and that Stonehenge I was designed to allow
the (awestruck, terrified) culture of southern England to make
observations of the Phenomena and to perhaps predict their
recurrence. Peter Lancaster Brown, in his book on megalithic sites,
wrote that "Eclipses, comets and meteorites were astronomical
phenomena widely observed by the ancients. But probably only
eclipses were predictable." (Steel means to imply that Stonehenge I was
needed to make observations because meteorite falls are far more unpredictable, but
and at the same time may be long-lasting and recurring. - TN.)
Steel continues this theme in Peiser et al.: Natural Catastrophes (Oxford, 1998) by commenting that he sees no connection between the original Stonehenge I (built in 3100 BC) and the thousand year later Stonehenge II and Stonehenge III except the place. The original one was a scientific observatory, not for Sun, or Moon, or eclipses, but for watching dangerous meteorites, asteroids and comets. The later Stonehenges with their stones (the image of Stonehenge that we have of it today), was more that of a ritual and sanctuary than for any practical/scientific purpose. Of course it could be used for some trivial astronomical calculations (solstices, eclipses), but its original purpose was hardly known for the later builders. The world's first scientific astronomical observatory changed to a ritual place, because it was not anymore needed for its original purpose when the Taurids did not at that moment bother mankind, in fact the Taurids lived only in legends. Today the legends are coming part of a serious scientific study. What a change in paradigm!
Rogue Asteroids: "Comet Encke is associated with the Taurid Complex. If we follow
the orbit of P/Encke backward, we find that it intersected that of
the Earth around 1,800 and 5,000 years ago (ascending) and 2,100 and
4,700 years ago (descending)."
The Taurid complex is a comet/meteor swarm complex, whose main body
is the periodic comet Encke with an unknown number of meteoroid
swarms plus possibly some small body pieces. When the Taurid complex intersected Earth 5000 years ago, maybe around 3100 BC, it may have caused a 100 year long period of tunguskans and mini-tunguskans.
Clube and Napier have already in their legendary "The Cosmic Winter" (Oxford (UK), Cambridge (US), 1990) told the Taurid story:
"It seems clear that we are looking at debris from the breakup of an extremely large object. The disintegration, or sequence of disintegrations, must have taken place within the past twenty or thirty thousand years as otherwise the asteroids would have spread around the inner planetary system and be no longer recognizable as a stream.
"The second discovery, due mainly to the Czechoslovakian astronomer Stohl, is that enveloping the Taurids, Comet Encke and these particular asteroids is a broad tube of meteoric debris. ... The Stohl stream is apparently double due probably to an exceptional fragmentation... The mass of the meteoric material within the Stohl stream is 10 or 20 billion tonnes. ... Adding in the mass of gas and very fine dust ... we find that the original body must have been about 100 kilometres across. ... Backtracking the orbits of Encke and Oljato, we find that 9500 years ago their orbits were nearly identical. It is possible there was a major disintegration of the prime body then, with much debris created of which Comet Encke and Oljato are the largest known bodies ... Oljato itself is in an orbit which brought it virtually into the Earth's orbital plane for some centuries around 3000-3500 BC."
Was it Oljato's tail that swarmed Earth around 3100 BC? Did it have a partner or is Swift-Tuttle a part of a parent body of both or did the parent body disintgrate into three parts: Oljate, Swift-Tuttle and a third part that rained on Earth 13 August 3114 BC, the Mayan day zero?
Darwin was not wrong while saying that evolution is the survival of the fittest, but today we must add that evolution is the survival of the fittest of the luckiest.
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Reading about these world-wide catastrophes, can't help but wonder if they're not recounted biblically in the 7 year famine during Joseph's rise to power in Egypt, and the famine that occurred during the time of Elijah.
the Sumerian story of Flood, on which basis the Genesis Noachian Flood story is built
I get really tired of the claim that the Israelites stole these stories from other cultures. I have a theory about why all these similar stories exist--because the event really happened.
Before writing occurred, history was handed down as oral tradition. So, in the telling of the tale, minor changes would occur over time much like that game where a group of poeple start a saying at one end of a line and by the time it gets to the last person it no longer resembles the original statement.
Here, I fixed the title. Gotta be politically correct now. 
Catastrophes, tree-rings and climateIf this seems a long time ago, then remember that in 1908 an impact equivalent to a ten-megaton explosion left a 1.2km crater in Tunguska (Siberia), and that events of this magnitude probably occur with a frequency of between once a century and once a millennium. Worth searching for in the tree-rings. Mike Baillie is a leading dendrocatastrophist who believes he had found them. There are certainly some dramatic and widespread anomalies in tree-ring thicknesses, though many may be associated with volcanic eruptions rather than impacts. Sadly, the hard evidence does not yet make a story. Undeterred, Baillie recruits an amazing mixture of historical records for various kinds of unusual phenomena and their associated mythologies, in a way which goes far beyond any credibility as serious science... but a serious idea still awaits investigation.
by Andrew Sherratt
Exodus to Arthur:
Catastrophic Encounters with Comets
by Mike Baillie
Thanks, I have this excellent book by Professor Mike Baillie.
Asteroids:
Deadly Impact
National GeographicShoemaker:
The Man Who Made An Impact
by David H. LevyRestless Earth Collection
National Geographic
Yup, I've already crossed that bridge...I've spent a life time with it, I'm not changing now.
I couldn't well get past this glaring syntaxical stumbling block though I tried.
This is quite poorly written.
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