[blam]

"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.

[sawsalimb]

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.

[JudyB1938]

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.