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The Cold Snap That Civilised The World
The Telegraph (UK) ^
| 2-22-2002
| David Derbyshire
Posted on 02/23/2002 2:33:42 PM PST by blam
The cold snap that civilised the world
By David Derbyshire, Science Correspondent
(Filed: 22/02/2002)
A SUDDEN drop in temperatures 5,000 years ago ushered in the modern climate and may have encouraged the development of complex civilisations around the world.
Researchers studying ancient fish bones off the coast of Peru say the temperature fall heralded El Nino, the periodical warming of the Pacific which brings unusual weather patterns every two to seven years.
The rapidly changing weather, which followed several thousand years of post-Ice Age stability, triggered a new temple building culture in South America. Elsewhere, it may have forced Stone Age people to innovate, generating a period of development and the formation of large cities.
Scientists at the University of Georgia and the University of Maine looked at otoliths, tiny sensory structures in the inner ears of fish that grow in alternating opaque and translucent bands by amounts that reflect sea temperatures.
They report in Science that, before 5,000 years ago, sea temperatures off Peru were around four degrees warmer than they are today.
Suddenly, sea temperatures fell and the cycle of El Nino appeared. In normal years, prevailing winds push warmer surface waters to the Australian side of the Pacific. Cold water from the deeps rises to the surface off Peru. The Americas are dry, while monsoons hit southern Asia.
During El Nino years, however, severe floods and storms hit the west coast of America, while Asia suffers drought.
Although El Nino's arrival made the climate unstable, cooler weather in the intervening years increased the number of small fish and shellfish off America.
The effects of this may have been dramatic, triggering people living on the coast of Peru to build large temples and develop a more complex culture. The same spurt of climate-related development may have taken place across the world.
In Egypt, the drying of southern Egypt west of the Nile may have forced herders to move into the Nile valley, where the ancient Egyptian civilisation emerged a few hundred years later.
Dr Elizabeth Reitz, of the University of Georgia, said: "A change in El Nino frequency and the related increase in upwelling about 5,000 years ago may be related to changes in fishing resources and increased cultural complexity."
Dr Fred Andrus, of the University of Georgia, said: "Our data strengthen the argument that El Nino as we know it began relatively recently, since 5,000 years ago.
"This is more evidence that climate change is the norm, and climate stability is the exception in the Earth's history, even in relatively recent times.
"Given the enormous global impact of El Nino, it is important to understand that climate is a naturally variable system."
TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: agriculture; animalhusbandry; archaeology; catastrophism; dietandcuisine; elnino; ggg; globalwarminghoax; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; history; huntergatherers; paleoclimatology
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To: blam
Just checked out your fascinating map link in #21.
Most interesting.
81
posted on
11/06/2003 8:35:26 AM PST
by
headsonpikes
(Spirit of '76 bttt!)
To: headsonpikes
"Just checked out your fascinating map link in #21." That's with the world's oceans reduced about 300ft, imagine 500 ft as some think.
82
posted on
11/06/2003 8:46:48 AM PST
by
blam
Just adding this to the GGG homepage, not sending a general distribution. Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
83
posted on
09/10/2004 11:00:47 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Unlike some people, I have a profile. Okay, maybe it's a little large...)
To: Chani
84
posted on
12/02/2004 7:32:31 PM PST
by
Chani
(bookmark girl)
To: blam; FairOpinion; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach
85
posted on
12/30/2005 9:00:35 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
("In silence, and at night, the Conscience feels that life should soar to nobler ends than Power.")
To: blam
#2. The same for the Gulf Of Mexico? I don't think so.
86
posted on
08/09/2006 11:14:30 PM PDT
by
Mike Darancette
(I'll have the duck with mango salsa.)
To: SunkenCiv
Another data point from about the same period
The Burckle impact crater in the Indian Ocean created gigantic tsunami waves , that pushed megatons of seafloor up onto Madagascar that left chevron dunes in their wake. The vaporized ocean probably made it rain for weeks far away from the crater. Anyone close to the Indian Ocean would have been killed, and many people would have perished in the weather that followed the impact.
IMPACT CRATERS AS SOURCES OF MEGATSUNAMI GENERATED CHEVRON DUNES
Chevron dunes are not formed by wind. Chevron dunes are not oriented in the direction of the prevailing wind, they can form where there are no beaches, and they contain grains larger than 2 mm in diameter. Chevrons are produced by megatsunamis originating from point sources, i.e. landslides, impact craters, and volcanic explosions. We have assembled data on chevrons worldwide. Most are best explained as the result of tsunami generated from large impact cratering events. We now have data confirming an impact origin of two chevron sources. In the Indian ocean, chevron dunes in Western Australia, India, and Madagascar point towards the 29 km Burckle Crater at 30.865S, 61.365E. The impact ejecta from Burckle crater contain meteorite fragments, impact glass, oceanic mantle fragments, and impact spherules. The impact spherules are >200 microns in diameter, consistent with a 29 km crater. The impact glasses have no K and cannot be continental in origin. In the Gulf of Carpentaria, we found impact ejecta that contain impact glass and meteoritic material: merrillite, high Ni metal, and probable melted carbonaceous chondrite [1]. We also found abundant magnetite impact spherules with a bimodal size distribution [2]. This implies two source craters for the chevrons: the 18 km Kanmare (Serpent) crater at 16.58S, 139.057E and the 12 km Tabban (Rainbow) crater at 17.125S, 139.86E. In the Mediterranean, a megatsunami source near the Rhone delta is of undetermined origin. All other sources are impact crater candidates and require more study. We found the following: the 1 km Judge crater candidate in Long Island Sound at 41.17N, 72.405W, the 10 km Quetzalcoatl crater candidate in the Caribbean at 22.04N, 96.32W, the 18 km Grendel crater candidate in the North Sea at 58.16 N, 5.86E, the 5 km Kangaroo crater candidate at 39.0465S, 141.285E and the 4 km Joey crater candidate at 39.16S, 141.21E.
Burckle Abyssal Impact Crater: Did this Impact Produce a Global Deluge?
We have found an impact crater that is likely < 6000 years old. Burckle Crater is in the central Indian Ocean at 30.87° S 61.36°E. The crater is 31±1 km wide. The crater is deepest SE of its center. There is a deep gouge in the surface topography to the SE and a topographically smooth area NW of the crater rim. These topographic features suggest that the impactor came from the SE and that the tektite field lies NW of the crater rim. We are looking for tektites in young abyssal sediments from NW of the crater. Because the impactor hit a fracture zone wall, the rim of Burckle crater is unusually well defined. The crater rim shows evenly spaced notches that we interpret as resurge gullies. Near Burckle crater, we found a 26 cm thick layer with high magnetic susceptibility that extends to the top of core DODO132P. DODO132P has a basal age of Pleistocene. The high susceptibility layer contains numerous Mn oxide coated rock fragments, as expected for an ejecta layer from an impact that fragmented a fracture zone wall. These fragments do not resemble typical Mn nodules. We also found clear fragments of mid-ocean ridge type plagioclase and a grain of NiC with a metallic luster. The NiC is clearly a fragment of the impactor as it has an ablation rind of oxidized NiC that forms drops on the surface of the grain. The NiC contains no significant Fe and we interpret it as a piece of a comet. Burckle crater impact event is in the right location to be the source of devastating rains, tsunamis, winds, and associated social upheaval around 2807 B.C.
It would have been about 6000 years ago.
87
posted on
10/09/2007 10:11:43 AM PDT
by
ckilmer
To: blam
Another data point from about the same period
The Burckle impact crater in the Indian Ocean created gigantic tsunami waves , that pushed megatons of seafloor up onto Madagascar that left chevron dunes in their wake. The vaporized ocean probably made it rain for weeks far away from the crater. Anyone close to the Indian Ocean would have been killed, and many people would have perished in the weather that followed the impact.
IMPACT CRATERS AS SOURCES OF MEGATSUNAMI GENERATED CHEVRON DUNES
Chevron dunes are not formed by wind. Chevron dunes are not oriented in the direction of the prevailing wind, they can form where there are no beaches, and they contain grains larger than 2 mm in diameter. Chevrons are produced by megatsunamis originating from point sources, i.e. landslides, impact craters, and volcanic explosions. We have assembled data on chevrons worldwide. Most are best explained as the result of tsunami generated from large impact cratering events. We now have data confirming an impact origin of two chevron sources. In the Indian ocean, chevron dunes in Western Australia, India, and Madagascar point towards the 29 km Burckle Crater at 30.865S, 61.365E. The impact ejecta from Burckle crater contain meteorite fragments, impact glass, oceanic mantle fragments, and impact spherules. The impact spherules are >200 microns in diameter, consistent with a 29 km crater. The impact glasses have no K and cannot be continental in origin. In the Gulf of Carpentaria, we found impact ejecta that contain impact glass and meteoritic material: merrillite, high Ni metal, and probable melted carbonaceous chondrite [1]. We also found abundant magnetite impact spherules with a bimodal size distribution [2]. This implies two source craters for the chevrons: the 18 km Kanmare (Serpent) crater at 16.58S, 139.057E and the 12 km Tabban (Rainbow) crater at 17.125S, 139.86E. In the Mediterranean, a megatsunami source near the Rhone delta is of undetermined origin. All other sources are impact crater candidates and require more study. We found the following: the 1 km Judge crater candidate in Long Island Sound at 41.17N, 72.405W, the 10 km Quetzalcoatl crater candidate in the Caribbean at 22.04N, 96.32W, the 18 km Grendel crater candidate in the North Sea at 58.16 N, 5.86E, the 5 km Kangaroo crater candidate at 39.0465S, 141.285E and the 4 km Joey crater candidate at 39.16S, 141.21E.
Burckle Abyssal Impact Crater: Did this Impact Produce a Global Deluge?
We have found an impact crater that is likely < 6000 years old. Burckle Crater is in the central Indian Ocean at 30.87° S 61.36°E. The crater is 31±1 km wide. The crater is deepest SE of its center. There is a deep gouge in the surface topography to the SE and a topographically smooth area NW of the crater rim. These topographic features suggest that the impactor came from the SE and that the tektite field lies NW of the crater rim. We are looking for tektites in young abyssal sediments from NW of the crater. Because the impactor hit a fracture zone wall, the rim of Burckle crater is unusually well defined. The crater rim shows evenly spaced notches that we interpret as resurge gullies. Near Burckle crater, we found a 26 cm thick layer with high magnetic susceptibility that extends to the top of core DODO132P. DODO132P has a basal age of Pleistocene. The high susceptibility layer contains numerous Mn oxide coated rock fragments, as expected for an ejecta layer from an impact that fragmented a fracture zone wall. These fragments do not resemble typical Mn nodules. We also found clear fragments of mid-ocean ridge type plagioclase and a grain of NiC with a metallic luster. The NiC is clearly a fragment of the impactor as it has an ablation rind of oxidized NiC that forms drops on the surface of the grain. The NiC contains no significant Fe and we interpret it as a piece of a comet. Burckle crater impact event is in the right location to be the source of devastating rains, tsunamis, winds, and associated social upheaval around 2807 B.C.
It would have been about 6000 years ago.
88
posted on
10/09/2007 10:12:18 AM PDT
by
ckilmer
To: ckilmer
89
posted on
10/09/2007 9:30:21 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Profile updated Friday, October 5, 2007. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
90
posted on
10/09/2007 9:33:22 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
(Profile updated Friday, October 5, 2007. https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
91
posted on
08/06/2010 7:08:29 PM PDT
by
SunkenCiv
("Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others." -- Otto von Bismarck)
92
posted on
12/30/2015 12:34:46 AM PST
by
SunkenCiv
(Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
To: blam
what about a flooding of the Persian gulf? That would tie in to the legend that Bahrain is the site of the garden of eden
93
posted on
04/12/2016 6:02:01 AM PDT
by
Cronos
(Obama's dislike of Assad is not based on his brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
To: Cronos
"what about a flooding of the Persian gulf? That would tie in to the legend that Bahrain is the site of the garden of eden" I would expect The Garden Of Eden area to be filled/surrounded with fresh water.
Maybe there was a freshwater lake there during the Ice Age?
94
posted on
04/12/2016 10:34:45 AM PDT
by
blam
(Jeff Sessions For President)
To: blam; Gamecock; wagglebee; markomalley
I was thinking that most likely the current Persian gulf would have been a valley during the ice age, with the Tigris and Euphrates meeting and surrounding the island of Dilmun and maybe a river from IRan and one from current Saudi arabia bringing the list of 4 rivers as in the Bible. These would have emptied into one common river that exited at the straits of Hormuz into the Arabian sea
95
posted on
04/13/2016 12:54:30 AM PDT
by
Cronos
(Obama's dislike of Assad is not based on his brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
To: Cronos
A very good possibility.
Remember that conditions during an Ice Age are very arid/dry.
96
posted on
04/13/2016 12:41:19 PM PDT
by
blam
(Jeff Sessions For President)
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