[Sam Cree]

I think you have referenced this, haven't you, blam?

[pabianice]

Big deal. Anyone who watches "Stargate SG-1" knows this.

[ClearCase_guy]

The book "Catastophe" by David Keys is quite interesting. He blames it on a volcano. Whatever, it sure seems like something effected the climate and civilizations around the globe at around 536 AD.

[Fitzcarraldo]

If there was this much dust in the atmosphere and it settled out there should be a soil layer that can be analyzed. Problem is where is the best place to look.

[Muleteam1]

Without evidence of deposition from the comet's ash that corresponds to the timing of the Dark Ages, it seems like a huge leap in logic to go from evidence of cool summers, crop losses, and plague to a comet exploding in the earth's atmosphere.

Muleteam1

[The Great RJ]

No, no it was Republicans and SUV's that caused this climate disaster--Al Gore told me so.

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[Ben Ficklin]

This is at Cardiff U, and the head of the dept. is Chandra Wickramasinghe, as in Hoyle and Wickramasinghe.

[Mamzelle]

There have been other "summerless" years--one in particular in 1819, if I remember correctly--and I believe one documented in Europe in the late Renaissance.

[Carry_Okie]

More evidence for why NASA should be applying SDI technology to deflecting deep space objects than bothering with going to Mars.

Bush misses again.

[msdrby]

ping

[marsh2]

I am told that during some of our larger regional forest fires, scientists studied the effects as similar to a nuclear winter. I know that it is considerably darker and the smoke modifies the usual extremes of our 100 degree plus summer weather.

[blam]

Moses’ Comet

Mike Baillie
Discovering Archeology, July/August 1999

Moses called down a host of calamities upon Egypt until the pharaoh finally freed the Israelites. Perhaps he had the help of a comet impact coupled with a volcano. A volcano destroyed the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea (between today's Greece and Turkey) around the middle of the second millennium B.C. Researchers Val LaMarche and Kathy Hirschboeck suggest the volcano might be associated with tree-ring evidence for several years of intense cold beginning in 1627 B.C. Could that form the basis for strange meteorological phenomena recorded in the biblical book of Exodus?

In the book of Exodus, which describes events a few hundred kilometers from Santorini, we read of a pillar of cloud and fire, a lingering darkness, and the parting of the Red Sea. An enormous column of ash must have hung in the sky over the eruption (the Israelites’ “pillar of cloud by day and fire by night?”), and the volcano doubtless caused a tsunami, or tidal wave (which could have drowned a pharaoh's army). The Exodus story is traditionally dated to either the thirteenth or fifteenth century B.C. Those dates, however, depend ultimately on identifying the “Pharaoh of the Oppression,” and historians have never proven to which ruler that infamous title referred. Many biblical scholars will disagree, but I suggest that a seventeenth-century B.C. date is not impossible.

The argument can be bolstered. Equally catastrophic meteorological conditions are recorded in the Bible for the time of King David. Psalm 18, in reference to David, speaks of terrifying events: “Earth shook and trembled. The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken. ... Smoke ... fire ... darkness ... dark waters ... thick clouds of the skies ... hailstones and coals of fire.” On some chronologies, David is placed 470 years after the Exodus. The spacing between the two disastrous events recorded in Irish tree rings at 1628 and 1159 B.C. is 469 years. The Exodus story includes dust, several days of darkness, hail, dead fish, undrinkable water, cattle killed by hail, water breaking out of rocks, the earth opening, the sea parting as in a tsunami, and so on. Someone looking at the Exodus story and knowing descriptions of other distant volcanic effects might offer the possibility that the Israelites escaped from Egypt under the cover of a major natural catastrophe. There may be veiled references to comets in the biblical narrative, leading to the possibility that the Santorini eruption itself may have been triggered by a bolide (comet or asteroid) impact.

David Levy, co-discoverer of the comet that bears his and Jean Shoemaker's names, has argued that the description of the “angel of the Lord in the sky over Jerusalem with a drawn sword” (1 Chronicles 21) could be a reference to a comet. The Angel of the Lord was, of course, also present at the Exodus, as it was “traveling in front of Israel's army.” Further, there are indications that as the Israelites left Egypt, the night was as bright as midday. The nights over Europe were reported to have been daytime-bright after the only known modern bolide impact, the Tunguska explosion over Siberia in 1908.

These stories raise the question of whether comets recorded by the Chinese at the start and end of the Shang Dynasty, at very near the same dates, were the same as the comets that may be recorded in the Old Testament. I believe that we know the answer: In the last five millennia, several dynastic changes and dark ages have been the direct result of impacts and/or volcanoes. The consequences of such events must have been devastating, leading to apocalyptic imagery in religious writing and predictions of the end of the world. Zachariah of Mitylene lived through the environmental disaster that began about 540 A.D. In the mid-550s, he wrote in his twelve-volume records of the trials the world had survived: “In addition to all the fearful things described above, the earthquakes and famines and wars, ... there has also been fulfilled against us the curse of Moses in Deuteronomy."“ The curse included pestilence, consumption, fever, fiery blasts from the skies, mildew, a rain of powder and dust, and darkness. The curse of Moses must have seemed an appropriate description of life after the impact of a piece of a comet.

[djf]

There are probably a half dozen possible causes for what happened. Without some physical evidence or historical literary descriptions, these guys are blowing smoke, heck, many of us freepers could propose such a theory, and not get any print out of it. Is there such a thing as irresponsible science?

[Antoninus]

The timing coincides with the Justinian Plague, widely believed to be the first appearance of the Black Death in Europe. It is possible that the plague was so rampant and took hold so quickly because the population was already weakened by starvation.

Interesting, but I'm not buying it. Procopius reports the Black Death originating out of Africa, spreading through Persia and later to the Roman Empire. Besides, the 540s AD were not the "Dark Ages" yet. Indeed, it was a period of renewal--the last gasp of the Roman Empire.

[fella]

enveloped the earth in soot and ash

So it was a comet made of carbon? Or did it wipe-out a uge forest?

[blam]

March bump.

[TheLion]

So the "Dark Ages" may have been dark after all. Must have been one hell of a winter during this time!

Issac Asimov wrote a great Sci-Fi story called "Nightfall" about a world that had six suns and one was always shining. Every 2000 years there was a total eclipse and civilization collapsed leaving no record.

I have often wondered if we hadn't been almost advanced as we are today and maybe even more advanced. Maybe we left those faces on Mars in the past.

If you think about it, we should have been further advanced by now. Being derailed every so often is a very logical conclusion, especially with all the evidence.

Thanks for the interesting reading....truly fascinating!

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[SunkenCiv]