Atlantis, Tiamat, Proto-Encke, Comets,
& Other Cataclysmic Theories of Myths
The Trail of the Dragon
Over a period of many thousands of years a complex astronomical/astrological system incorporated the movements and qualities of numerous celestial bodies, which could be called the "celestial mythos." The celestial mythos is found around the globe in astonishing uniformity. In fact, it served as the manner by which life on Earth was ordered, as it contained information crucial to life, such as the movements and interrelationship of the sun and moon. Without the mythos, no people would have been able to become sea-faring, and planting and harvesting would have been difficult. And the mythos needed no alien intervention to be developed by humans, nor did it need moderns to come along and reinterpret it contrary to what its creators intended.
For example, the Anunnaki play a part in the mythos, but they are not "people," human or otherwise. The Anunnaki, in general, represent the seven "nether spheres" and guardians of the seven "gates" through which the "sun of God" passes into the netherworld or darkness. They are also the "tutelary spirits of the earth." So, immediately we encounter a problem which reveals that what Sitchin is putting forth is not what the ancients themselves said of the traditions they themselves developed. Like so many before him, Sitchin also wants to make the main character of the celestial mythos, the sun, into a person. Actually, he wants to make it into several extraterrestrials.
These various gods found around the globe, such as Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Hercules, Jesus and Quetzalcoatl, are not people or aliens but personifications of the solar hero, as was stated by the peoples who created them. The ancients were not so dumb that they mistook planets for people, even though they personified those planets and, where the knowledge or gnosis of the mythos was lost, they hoped for "the incarnation," or the carnalization or appearance of a "god." There is no need to recreate the wheel here by speculating upon what the ancients "really" meant.
When we study what the ancients said about them, we discover that the Anunnaki, et al, are part of the celestial mythos, not "aliens." These Anunnaki are, in fact, the "seven nether spheres" or mirror images of the seven "planets." These seven judges are a common mythical motif, also found in Slavic/Serbian mythology, for example, where they are clearly identified as the planets:
"Among the Serbs the Sun was a young and handsome king. He lived in a kingdom of light and sat on a throne of gold and purple. At his side stood two beautiful virgins, Aurora of the Morning and Aurora of the Evening, seven judges (the planets) and seven 'messengers' who flew across the universe in the guise of 'stars with tails' (comets). Also present was the Sun's 'bald uncle, old Myesyats' (or the moon)." New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology , 284
As we can see, the reality of this issue is much more colorful and luminous than a group of bizarre aliens terrorizing cavemen. This information is what the ancients themselves wrote. They did not write, "And so the Anunnaki were sky people from another planet who landed here and mated with humans, etc." In fact, "Anunnaki" is a generic term for gods, especially secondary gods, and means "gods of heaven and earth," not "those who from heaven to earth came." "An" or "Anu" means "sky" and represents the name of the "god of heaven," while "Ki" means "earth" and is the name of the earth goddess. -Acharya
For example, the Anunnaki play a part in the mythos, but they are not "people," human or otherwise. The Anunnaki, in general, represent the seven "nether spheres" and guardians of the seven "gates" through which the "sun of God" passes into the netherworld or darkness. They are also the "tutelary spirits of the earth." So, immediately we encounter a problem which reveals that what Sitchin is putting forth is not what the ancients themselves said of the traditions they themselves developed. Like so many before him, Sitchin also wants to make the main character of the celestial mythos, the sun, into a person. Actually, he wants to make it into several extraterrestrials.
These various gods found around the globe, such as Osiris, Horus, Krishna, Hercules, Jesus and Quetzalcoatl, are not people or aliens but personifications of the solar hero, as was stated by the peoples who created them. The ancients were not so dumb that they mistook planets for people, even though they personified those planets and, where the knowledge or gnosis of the mythos was lost, they hoped for "the incarnation," or the carnalization or appearance of a "god." There is no need to recreate the wheel here by speculating upon what the ancients "really" meant.
When we study what the ancients said about them, we discover that the Anunnaki, et al, are part of the celestial mythos, not "aliens." These Anunnaki are, in fact, the "seven nether spheres" or mirror images of the seven "planets." These seven judges are a common mythical motif, also found in Slavic/Serbian mythology, for example, where they are clearly identified as the planets:
"Among the Serbs the Sun was a young and handsome king. He lived in a kingdom of light and sat on a throne of gold and purple. At his side stood two beautiful virgins, Aurora of the Morning and Aurora of the Evening, seven judges (the planets) and seven 'messengers' who flew across the universe in the guise of 'stars with tails' (comets). Also present was the Sun's 'bald uncle, old Myesyats' (or the moon)." New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology , 284
As we can see, the reality of this issue is much more colorful and luminous than a group of bizarre aliens terrorizing cavemen. This information is what the ancients themselves wrote. They did not write, "And so the Anunnaki were sky people from another planet who landed here and mated with humans, etc." In fact, "Anunnaki" is a generic term for gods, especially secondary gods, and means "gods of heaven and earth," not "those who from heaven to earth came." "An" or "Anu" means "sky" and represents the name of the "god of heaven," while "Ki" means "earth" and is the name of the earth goddess. -Acharya
Cosmic Serpents
Art by Iona Miller
"Near-Earth space" is anything but safe. Clearly, in the light of contemporary knowledge, it is not outrageous to suppose that humanity learned to dread comets as a consequence of direct experience with destructive phenomena engendered by actual encounters with the immediate environment of these flamboyant cosmic interlopers. Indeed, early attempts to predict this infrequent but periodically recurring phenomenon were quite likely the impetus which led to the widespread and ultimately formalized belief that star positions could directly influence events on Earth.
Comets certainly can break up, and Napier interprets meteor streams of the Taurid Complex as traces of a large comet that entered the inner Solar System system 20,000-30,000 years ago. His idea is that the Earth later ran into a dense trail of its material over the course of an hour, with North America bearing the brunt and experiencing thousands of fireball explosions each comparable with a nuclear bomb. Shock waves from the impact might have triggered the flood-basalt event.
That would explain a layer of soot found at many sites in the USA, telling of continental-scale wildfires, together with microscopic diamonds of the type produced by meteoritic shocks. And 35 genera of North American mammals were wiped out.
Comet Storm; Fragmented Impact
Observed comet phenomena such as fragmentation, where a comet appears to produce one or more offspring, can explain the origin of odd notions like Tiamat, Athena being born fully formed from the head of Zeus, thunderbolts from heaven, and war in heaven. That these objects were feared and worshiped as omnipotent, judgmental gods of the sky is understandable.
What would happen should the Earth pass through the orbit of a disintegrating giant comet just before or after the comet passes that same point? Since larger fragments tend to cluster close to the nucleus of the comet, chances would increase that the Earth would be bombarded by these larger fragments. The severity of this comet fragment shower would far exceed any ordinary meteor shower. Not only would "shooting stars" and bright fireballs caused by small debris appear, but so too would large airbursts and possibly ground impacts. These would result in significant destruction should they occur over an inhabited area. If a large enough fragment struck in the ocean -- say, 200 meters or so in diameter -- it would raise tsunamis even at a great distance that would sweep away coastal habitations.
Duncan Steel, a colleague of Clube and Napier, refers to this process as coherent catastrophism. Widespread destruction derives from the coherent arrival of many impactors within a few days, as opposed to the sporadic arrival of objects spread randomly in space. The shower repeats for a period of years until the cometary orbit precesses so that the Earth no longer encounters the dense part of the debris field. (Of course, sporadic debris unrelated to the disintegrating comet may impact at any time as well.)
The ancients were not entirely ignorant in their beliefs of the appearance of comets as bad omens. Fragments hitting the ground would cause earthquakes and blast damage, as well as start forest fires (fire storms? and perhaps volcanoes - which in turn would amplify the environmental effects through the release of soot into the air. Fragments hitting the water generate tsunamis which flood coastal and inland regions. Would it surprise you to learn that, according to Baillie, the ancient Celtics had an oath which translates as :
"We will not move from this place until the stars fall from the sky, the earth quakes and the sea comes over the land."
In "Lessons from Jupiter", Clube and Asher wrote : "We do not of course deny a general background of [Earth-crossing asteroids] from the asteroid belt but it is these meteoroidal streams, harbouring swarms of super-Tunguska debris, which are now perceived as the source of high-level dust veils and low-level airbursts in the atmosphere, essentially controlling climate and extinction on Earth and punctuating the course of evolution."
It’s one thing to discuss the probabilities of an Atlantean and a Lemurian civilization, and it’s totally another thing to come up with the reasons both or either were destroyed. Frank Joseph, editor in chief of Ancient America magazine, has an interesting opinion of the destruction of Lemuria. The civilization was undone by a comet.
Let’s start with what we “currently” know about this comet known as Encke.
Comet Encke (officially designated 2P/Encke) is a periodic comet, named after Johann Franz Encke, who through laborious study of its orbit and many calculations was able to link multiple observations in 1786. The single most observed comet, Encke’s Comet has been viewed for approximately 50 passes. Already possessing one of the shortest orbital periods (only 3.3 years), its period is further decreasing by up to 2.7 hours per revolution.
Encke’s Comet is thought to be the parent body of the Taurid meteor stream, an annually recurring minor meteor shower which culminates on November 8. Because the orbit of Encke’s Comet is so very well known, it is considered a prime target for an exploratory space probe to investigate.
Let’s back up now a few thousand years, maybe ten of thousands of years.
Some consider the Bronze Age breakup of an originally larger comet (Tiamat) of which Comet Encke is a member to be responsible for ancient destruction in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps evidenced by a large (unconfirmed) meteorite crater in Iraq identified as Umm al Biinni lake. More on that at another time.
Specifically, Frank Joseph says, “Encke had a near miss with planet earth in 3100 BCE raining down a barrage of debris in a in a firey swath around the world igniting widespread volcanism, earthquakes, and massive tsunamis that wiped out Lemuria.”
Encke may be part of a formerly larger comet, perhaps impacted by solar winds. On April 20, 2007, the comet had just dipped inside the orbit of Mercury, perilously close to the sun, when a solar eruption struck and literally tore the comet's tail off. This surely has happened to comets before, but for the first time in history a spacecraft was watching. NASA's STEREO-A probe recorded a fantastic movie of the collision.
How is the Dragon related to the Great Flood? The great comet Tiamat broke up in what the ancients described as a battle in the heavens. The comet Encke is the survivor of that calamity, which left a massive debris trail - The Taurids. Both the Dragon and the Flood are clues that contextualize one another. Likewise Egypt and Asia.
Massive Impactor
The answers are hidden in the mists of time. It is plausible that the Great Flood stories originated in a comet strike in the Indian Ocean 4800 years ago. Shortly thereafter Sumerian civilization arose with its myth of Floods and great watery dragons -- The 3 mile wide comet slammed into the ocean, radiating a fireball, shockwaves and Mega-Tsunamis that scoured the landscape and scorched the air, and released incredible electrical discharges and torrential rains of ejected ocean water. It was an utter Deluge. The 600 foot high waves carried huge deposits of sediment to land. Half the population died.
The dragon's form arose from his particular power of control over the waters of the earth and gave rise to many of the attributes singled out by different peoples as the whole myth developed. They were believed to live at the bottom of the sea, where they guarded vast treasure hoards, very frequently of pearls. Rain clouds and thunder and lightning were believed to be the dragon's breath, hence the fire-breathing monster. The significance of the dragon was its control over the destiny of mankind.
Comets certainly can break up, and Napier interprets meteor streams of the Taurid Complex as traces of a large comet that entered the inner Solar System system 20,000-30,000 years ago. His idea is that the Earth later ran into a dense trail of its material over the course of an hour, with North America bearing the brunt and experiencing thousands of fireball explosions each comparable with a nuclear bomb. Shock waves from the impact might have triggered the flood-basalt event.
That would explain a layer of soot found at many sites in the USA, telling of continental-scale wildfires, together with microscopic diamonds of the type produced by meteoritic shocks. And 35 genera of North American mammals were wiped out.
Comet Storm; Fragmented Impact
Observed comet phenomena such as fragmentation, where a comet appears to produce one or more offspring, can explain the origin of odd notions like Tiamat, Athena being born fully formed from the head of Zeus, thunderbolts from heaven, and war in heaven. That these objects were feared and worshiped as omnipotent, judgmental gods of the sky is understandable.
What would happen should the Earth pass through the orbit of a disintegrating giant comet just before or after the comet passes that same point? Since larger fragments tend to cluster close to the nucleus of the comet, chances would increase that the Earth would be bombarded by these larger fragments. The severity of this comet fragment shower would far exceed any ordinary meteor shower. Not only would "shooting stars" and bright fireballs caused by small debris appear, but so too would large airbursts and possibly ground impacts. These would result in significant destruction should they occur over an inhabited area. If a large enough fragment struck in the ocean -- say, 200 meters or so in diameter -- it would raise tsunamis even at a great distance that would sweep away coastal habitations.
Duncan Steel, a colleague of Clube and Napier, refers to this process as coherent catastrophism. Widespread destruction derives from the coherent arrival of many impactors within a few days, as opposed to the sporadic arrival of objects spread randomly in space. The shower repeats for a period of years until the cometary orbit precesses so that the Earth no longer encounters the dense part of the debris field. (Of course, sporadic debris unrelated to the disintegrating comet may impact at any time as well.)
The ancients were not entirely ignorant in their beliefs of the appearance of comets as bad omens. Fragments hitting the ground would cause earthquakes and blast damage, as well as start forest fires (fire storms? and perhaps volcanoes - which in turn would amplify the environmental effects through the release of soot into the air. Fragments hitting the water generate tsunamis which flood coastal and inland regions. Would it surprise you to learn that, according to Baillie, the ancient Celtics had an oath which translates as :
"We will not move from this place until the stars fall from the sky, the earth quakes and the sea comes over the land."
In "Lessons from Jupiter", Clube and Asher wrote : "We do not of course deny a general background of [Earth-crossing asteroids] from the asteroid belt but it is these meteoroidal streams, harbouring swarms of super-Tunguska debris, which are now perceived as the source of high-level dust veils and low-level airbursts in the atmosphere, essentially controlling climate and extinction on Earth and punctuating the course of evolution."
It’s one thing to discuss the probabilities of an Atlantean and a Lemurian civilization, and it’s totally another thing to come up with the reasons both or either were destroyed. Frank Joseph, editor in chief of Ancient America magazine, has an interesting opinion of the destruction of Lemuria. The civilization was undone by a comet.
Let’s start with what we “currently” know about this comet known as Encke.
Comet Encke (officially designated 2P/Encke) is a periodic comet, named after Johann Franz Encke, who through laborious study of its orbit and many calculations was able to link multiple observations in 1786. The single most observed comet, Encke’s Comet has been viewed for approximately 50 passes. Already possessing one of the shortest orbital periods (only 3.3 years), its period is further decreasing by up to 2.7 hours per revolution.
Encke’s Comet is thought to be the parent body of the Taurid meteor stream, an annually recurring minor meteor shower which culminates on November 8. Because the orbit of Encke’s Comet is so very well known, it is considered a prime target for an exploratory space probe to investigate.
Let’s back up now a few thousand years, maybe ten of thousands of years.
Some consider the Bronze Age breakup of an originally larger comet (Tiamat) of which Comet Encke is a member to be responsible for ancient destruction in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps evidenced by a large (unconfirmed) meteorite crater in Iraq identified as Umm al Biinni lake. More on that at another time.
Specifically, Frank Joseph says, “Encke had a near miss with planet earth in 3100 BCE raining down a barrage of debris in a in a firey swath around the world igniting widespread volcanism, earthquakes, and massive tsunamis that wiped out Lemuria.”
Encke may be part of a formerly larger comet, perhaps impacted by solar winds. On April 20, 2007, the comet had just dipped inside the orbit of Mercury, perilously close to the sun, when a solar eruption struck and literally tore the comet's tail off. This surely has happened to comets before, but for the first time in history a spacecraft was watching. NASA's STEREO-A probe recorded a fantastic movie of the collision.
How is the Dragon related to the Great Flood? The great comet Tiamat broke up in what the ancients described as a battle in the heavens. The comet Encke is the survivor of that calamity, which left a massive debris trail - The Taurids. Both the Dragon and the Flood are clues that contextualize one another. Likewise Egypt and Asia.
Massive Impactor
The answers are hidden in the mists of time. It is plausible that the Great Flood stories originated in a comet strike in the Indian Ocean 4800 years ago. Shortly thereafter Sumerian civilization arose with its myth of Floods and great watery dragons -- The 3 mile wide comet slammed into the ocean, radiating a fireball, shockwaves and Mega-Tsunamis that scoured the landscape and scorched the air, and released incredible electrical discharges and torrential rains of ejected ocean water. It was an utter Deluge. The 600 foot high waves carried huge deposits of sediment to land. Half the population died.
The dragon's form arose from his particular power of control over the waters of the earth and gave rise to many of the attributes singled out by different peoples as the whole myth developed. They were believed to live at the bottom of the sea, where they guarded vast treasure hoards, very frequently of pearls. Rain clouds and thunder and lightning were believed to be the dragon's breath, hence the fire-breathing monster. The significance of the dragon was its control over the destiny of mankind.
Art by Iona Miller
By 1940, Harvard Astronomer Fred L. Whipple had adduced comet Encke as a remnant of larger parent body which had been in a short period (around 3.3 years) low inclination (3.6 - 16 degree) orbit for between five and twenty thousand years; a long present spectacle for our ancestors as the comet progressively broke up creating the still active Taurid meteor streams(F.L. Whipple 1940). The very word DISASTER comes from the obsolete meaning of the malevolent force of a star or planet. Dis- (evil) aster (star). Thus, the fallen star or comet is the root of disasters, the mother of all disasters. Unlike meteorite falls which are detectable only instants before impact, comets can be viewed throughout their cyclic approaches to the Sun. The Earth passes through cometary debris, sweeping it up from its orbit. An occurrence inflicting widespread destruction and distress: calamity, cataclysm, catastrophe, tragedy.
In early 2010, Professor Napier published a paper in the Journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society titled, Paleolithic extinctions and the Taurid Complex in it we read: “The proposition that an exceptionally large comet has been undergoing disintegration in the inner planetary system goes back over 40 years (Whipple 1967), and the evidence for the hypothesis has accumulated to the point where it seems compelling. Radio and visual meteor data show that the zodiacal cloud is dominated by a broad stream of largely cometary material which incorporates an ancient, dispersed system of related meteor streams. Embedded within this system are significant numbers of large NEOs, including Comet Encke. Replenishment of the zodiacal cloud is sporadic, with the current cloud being substantially overmassive in relation to current sources. The system is most easily understood as due to the injection and continuing disintegration of a comet 50-100 km in diameter. The fragmentation of comets is now recognized as a major route of their disintegration, and this is consistent with the numerous sub-streams and co-moving observed in the Taurid complex. The probable epoch of injection of this large comet, ~20-30 kyr ago, comfortably straddles the 12.9 kyr date of the Younger Dryas Boundary.
The hypothesis that terrestrial catastrophes may happen on timescales ~0.1 Myr, due to the Earth running through swarms of debris from disintegrating large comets, is likewise not new (Clube & Napier, 1984). However the accumulation of observations has allowed us to build an astronomical model, closely based on the contemporary environment, which can plausibly yield the postulated YDB catastrophe. The interception of ~1015 gm of material during the course of disintegration is shown here to have been a reasonably probable event, capable of yielding destruction on a continental scale.
“The evidence that an exceptionally large (50-100 km) comet entered a short-period, Earth-crossing orbit during the upper Paleolithic, and underwent a series of disintegrations, now seems compelling. The idea is not new, but it has been strengthened by an accumulation of evidence from radar studies of the interplanetary environment, from the LDEF experiment, from numerical simulations of the Taurid complex meteoroids and ‘asteroids’, and from the latter’s highly significant orbital clustering around Comet Encke.
The hypothesis that terrestrial catastrophes may happen on timescales ~0.1 Myr, due to the Earth running through swarms of debris from disintegrating large comets, is likewise not new (Clube & Napier, 1984). However the accumulation of observations has allowed us to build an astronomical model, closely based on the contemporary environment, which can plausibly yield the postulated YDB catastrophe. The interception of ~1015 gm of material during the course of disintegration is shown here to have been a reasonably probable event, capable of yielding destruction on a continental scale.
“The evidence that an exceptionally large (50-100 km) comet entered a short-period, Earth-crossing orbit during the upper Paleolithic, and underwent a series of disintegrations, now seems compelling. The idea is not new, but it has been strengthened by an accumulation of evidence from radar studies of the interplanetary environment, from the LDEF experiment, from numerical simulations of the Taurid complex meteoroids and ‘asteroids’, and from the latter’s highly significant orbital clustering around Comet Encke.
ATLANTIS MYSTERY UNRAVELED
http://www.scribd.com/doc/32209488/Atlantis-the-Mystery-Unraveled-Jurgen-Spanuth-1956-226pgs-CIV
DRAGONS OF CHAOS
GOD'S EYE &
BREATH OF THE DIVINE SERPENT
CHAOS WAS AN UNIMAGINABLE FLOOD
Imagine you are an inhabitant of one of the first bustling but overcrowded cities on earth, a bountiful economy of agriculturalists and traders. Your priests bring the attention of all to a new star in the sky that seems to grow brighter and “hairier” in surprisingly short order. This evil eye in the sky is intuitively considered malevolent, upsetting the order of the heavens. It stirs something deep within racial memory which cannot quite be identified but is felt as primal awe and fear.
The comet wags its growing tail as it nears the sun and becomes ever more threatening as it nears earth, ever more foreboding as it increases in size and brightness, perhaps even rivaling sun and moon. Then one day that disturbing presence falls to earth and in an instant everything is profoundly changed – changed back to primeval chaos where survivors can’t tell sky from earth because terra firma has literally disappeared in an inundation of unbelievable scale immensely beyond their human memories of disasters.
But before the Flood actually arrives, a new sun seems to arise from the South Storm. Meteor showers of debris pepper the air even before the enormous fireball flares into instantaneous destruction. That fire is followed by the hot electrical breath of a sonic boom which trails electromagnetic chaos in the wake of the massive impactor. Plasma auroras ripple, writhe and coil like serpents throughout the darkened sky. Megalightning rends the sky and jolts the ground and ignites fires that crackle and roar incessantly. The earth groans, shifts and buckles. The flood wind blows as the south-storm strikes the land – and strikes it hard, like a relentless Dragon with wave upon wave of assaults for six days and nights that never seem to end. It sounds like a mighty battle of titanic scope, of the Gods themselves.
This is no cross-cultural myth, but a real, if legendary event that exceeds the most fertile imagination. Ancient superstitions are the result, not the cause of the epics that came down to us as the beginning of history since all else was virtually destroyed. The priesthood consolidated its hold on the people, gazing at the heavens incessantly lest another such cosmic sojourner threaten their existence. The fact is, then, as now – real life disasters were an immanent threat, from earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and climatic havoc.
The valley of Mesopotamia is dominated by two major rivers, the Tigris and the Euphraties, and numerous smaller ones. It was a land in which catastrophic floods were not unusual in ancient times, and it is unsurprising that stories about a major flood arose within the mythology of this area. Such stories might simply reflect an understandable preocupation with flooding in an area where flood disasters were an important reality. But this storm came from the South – from the Indian Ocean -- not upriver to the North.
ABYSSAL IMPACT
The sole survivors of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Biblical versions of the tale report the abject terror that rained down on humanity, virtually obliterating it from the world -- at least their world. The oldest timelines of the event are likely the most accurate.
NOTE ~ this is a South Storm, not the flooding of the northern Black Sea of an earlier era:'That stated time had arrived:
'He who orders unease at night, showers down a rain of blight.
'I watched the appearance of the weather.
The weather was awesome to behold.I boarded the ship and battened up the entrance.With the first glow of dawn,
A black cloud rose up from the horizon.
Inside it Adad (the storm god) thunders,
While Shullat and Hanish (the heralds) go in front,
Moving as heralds over hill and plain.
Erragal (god of the underworld) tears out the posts (of the world dam);
Forth comes Ninurta and causes the dikes to follow.
The Anunnaki (gods of judgment) lift up the torches,
Setting the land ablaze with their glare.
Consternation over Adad reaches to the heavens,
Who turned to blackness all that had been light.
[That wide] land was shattered like [a pot]!
For one day the south-storm blew, [submerging the mountains],
Overtaking the [people] like a battle.
No one can see his fellow,
Nor can the people be recognized from heaven.
The gods were frightened by the deluge,
And, shrinking back, they ascended to the heaven of Anu (the father of
the other gods, who lived in the highest heaven).
The gods cowered like dogs
Crouched against the outer wall.
Ishtar (goddess of passion) cried out like a woman in travail,
The sweet-voiced mistress of the [gods] moans aloud:
'The olden days are alas turned to clay,
Six days and [six] nights
Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land.
When the seventh day arrived,
The flood(-carrying) south-storm subsided in the battle,
Which it had fought like an army.
The sea grew quiet, the tempest was still, the flood ceased.
I looked at the weather: stillness had set in,
And all of mankind had returned to clay.
The landscape was as level as a flat roof.
Seven days later, the waters began to subside:
I sat and wept,
Tears running down on my face.
I looked about for coast lines in the expanse of the sea:
In each of fourteen (regions)
There emerged a region(-mountain).
The dread exceeded all known disasters.
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a lion had risen up to diminish mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a wolf had risen up to diminish mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a famine had risen up to l[ay low] mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that pestilence had risen up to smi[te down] mankind!
BOMBARDMENT
In an article in the NY Times on Nov 14, 2006, scientist Dallas Abbott has identified the site of a large asteroid impact crater (the Burckle Crater) off of the island of Madagascar that struck the earth around 2800 BC. This asteroid landed in the seabed, and sent a 600-900 foot high wall of water - a megatsunami - around the Indian Ocean, impacting land as far away as Australia, and crashing onto the coast of Africa, up the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and quite possibly into the Mediterranean Sea as well.
This asteroidal impact would have sent a huge surge of water into the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, flooding the ancient land of Sumeria, the source of the Biblical flood legend. Indeed, Sir Leonard Wooley, the archaeologist who discovered the city of Ur, found 30 feet of flood-deposited sand that separated the most ancient levels of the city from newer habitation levels on top of the flood debris.
Abbott's findings of deep-sea meteor/asteroid strike craters (which she has developed the technology to discover) indicates that large-scale cosmic strikes hit the earth much more frequently than scientists have previously postulated - perhaps every 1 to 3 thousand years, instead of every hundred thousand or so. Large asteroid strikes also produce weather alterations, and many more global phenomena. Interestingly, the period 2800 BC is when the first dynasty of Egypt started.
Massive Impactor
The answers to the relationship of Dragon and Deluge are hidden in the mists of time. In the Babylonian Creation myth, Enuma Elish, the dragon Tiamat is primeval chaos prior to the separation of heavens and earth. It is plausible that the Great Flood stories originated in a recently discovered comet strike in the Indian Ocean 4800 years ago. Shortly thereafter Sumerian civilization arose with its myth of Floods and great watery dragons. Dragon's pearls are a worldwide symbol of abyssal impactors, the death rain of cometary debris.
The 3-mile wide comet slammed into the ocean, radiating a fireball, shockwaves and mega-Tsunamis that scoured the landscape, scorched the air, and released sonic blasts, incredible electrical discharges and torrential rains of ejected ocean water and solid ejecta. It was an utter Deluge. The 600 foot high waves carried huge deposits of sediment to land. Half the population or more died.The dragon's form arose from his particular power of control over the waters of the earth and gave rise to many of the attributes singled out by different peoples as the whole myth developed. They were believed to live at the bottom of the sea, where they guarded vast treasure hoards, very frequently of pearls. Rain clouds and thunder and lightning were believed to be the dragon's breath, hence the fire-breathing monster. The significance of the dragon was its control over the destiny of mankind. Is it surprising it became confounded with the creation story?
Eliade, "Cosmogonic Myth," 174. 97 says The Flood story may be a late addition to Gilgamesh, but the theme of the inaccessibility of immortality is not. "...and the seven judges of hell ... raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup."-- An account of the Deluge from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2200 B.C.vThe Sumerian Creator is pictured as forming dry land from the primaeval water in much the same way as the early cultivator in the Euphrates Valley procured the rich fields for his crops. The existence of the earth is here not really presupposed. All the world was sea until the god created land out of the waters by the only practical method that was possible in Mesopotamia. Also, the rivers of Mesopotamia could be terrible.
The Dragon motif drew its imagery from the mighty Tigris and Euphrates, as much from flood as storm. Markduk, as king identified with Sun-god, conquers the once featureless and chaotic primaeval water, the Dragon of flood and storm. In the Hebrew versions of Creation, the Deluge narrative emphasizes connections between the Semitic Babylonians and themselves. The Sumerian versions are the originals, derived by the Jews from Semitic channels in Babylon. They increased the rain to forty days and add that "the fountains of the deep" and "the windows of heaven" opened, which sounds like the horrendous effects of a massive impact.
Some contributory cause other than local rain must sought for the magnitude of catastophes beyond those the rivers could cause. Mega-tsunami is orders of magnitude far far beyond local flood. Excavations at Ashur reveal a tablet describing a true dragon with legs, implying it crawls up onto land. A god announces the presence of the dragon, saying "In the sea he lies...." Then he describes its humongous size.
In the sea was the Serpent cre[ated].
Sixty /bêru/ is his length;
Thirty /bêru/ high is his he[ad].
For half (a /bêru/) each stretches the surface of his ey[es];
For twenty /bêru/ go [his feet].
He devours fish, the creatures [of the sea],
He devours birds, the creatures [of the heaven],
He devours wild asses, the creatures [of the field],
He devours men,[5] to the peoples [he . . .].
There are ample grounds, then, for assuming the independent existence of the Babylonian Dragon-myth, and though both the versions recovered have come to us in Semitic form, there is no doubt that the myth itself existed among the Sumerians. The dragon motif is constantly recurring in descriptions of Sumerian temple-decoration, and the twin dragons of Ningishzida on Gudea's libation-vase, carved in green steatite and inlaid with shell, are a notable product of Sumerian art.
The very names borne by Tiamat's brood of monsters in the "Seven Tablets" are stamped in most cases with their Sumerian descent, and Kingu, whom she appointed as her champion in place of Apsû, is equally Sumerian. It would be strange indeed if the Sumerians had not evolved a Dragon myth, for the Dragon combat is the most obvious of nature myths and is found in most mythologies of Europe and the Near East. The trailing storm-clouds suggest his serpent form, his fiery tongue is seen in the forked lightning, and, though he may darken the world for a time, the Sun-god will always be victorious. In Egypt the myth of "the Overthrowing of Apep, the enemy of Ra" presents a close parallel to that of Tiamat.
Texts of Sethos II (1215-1210) tells that "Sekhmet was a circling star which spreaed out his fire in flames, a fire-flame in his storm." From Ugarit we hear, "The star Anat has fallen from the heavens; he slew the peopleof the Syrian land and confused the two twilights and the seats of the constellations." The Zoroastrians claimed it unleashed first terrible fire and then a flood called Tistrya. Widespread peoples described it burning and flooding. The old Sumerian tale is thus not the only lengend of comet-fall but is perhaps the oldest. Even passing through the debris trail of a comet can wreak destruction and rain hellfire. Halley's comet has an erratic course but appeared in 451AD and 1225 BCE.
The Greek myth of Phaeton described a fiery comet that ended the Golden Age, wreaking climatic havoc in the second half of the Thirteenth Century BCE.
Dr Bill Napier, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory, and Dr Victor Clube, from Oxford and Armagh universities, say the evidence points to a comet hitting the Earth, and have called for more research.
Writing in Frontiers, the magazine of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, Dr Napier suggests that the Comet Encke, first observed in 1786, might be a remnant of the object along with its associated stream of meteors, called the Taurids.
This giant mother-comet is thought to have been disintegrating as recently as 5,000 years ago.
At this time, and for some millennia afterwards, the night sky would have been lit up by a bright light caused by dust particles, cometary fragments, and firework displays of meteor storms. The scientists highlight ancient civilisations' preoccupation with the sky. Cosmic icons were widespread .
Dr Napier wrote: "People have assumed that this was driven by the need for a calendar for both agricultural and ritual purposes. "However, this explanation does not account for the doom-laden nature of much cosmic iconography and early sky-centred cosmic religions associated with these societies."
Icons apparently depicting comets were widespread among early civilisations. The new evidence also ties in with ancient prophecies, including the Book of Revelations in the Bible, which appears to describe cataclysmic events involving objects falling from the sky. Dr Napier said the ancient swastika, a symbol of great antiquity stretching back to at least 1400 BC and found from China through India to the New World, may also be a cometary image.
Though gaining a detailed understanding of the effects episodic encounters with comets had on humanity will take some time, incorporating recent astronomical evidence can provide immediate boons to our comprehension of past cultures. This is particularly true for certain symbols and motifs that have endured to our time period. Wilson's 1894 work on the history of the swastika is quite valuable in showing how widely that symbol was utilized and what meanings came to be associated with it.
The fortunate find in the seventies, at Mawangdui, China, of a Han dynasty silk comet atlas sheds considerable light on earlier enigmatic motifs. Most illuminating is the drawing, described by text on the artifact as a long-tailed pheasant star. This rendering of a jetting comet viewed down its axis of rotation has a considerable history, and, as a motif, appears on artifacts found in most areas of the world. The artist who illustrated this silk twenty-two hundred, or so, years ago was not likely a first-hand observer. What is produced here is a schematic of received comet caricatures with claims that specific things will happen if a represented type appears. The pinwheel-like image is unique to the compilation in that an omen is given for an appearance in each of the four seasons, implying that this comet was seen more often than the others represented. This may illustrate a frequently viewed aspect of comet Encke which has a 3.3 year orbit and rotational axis that occasionally points toward Earth. [Whipple, F. 1985] Important in understanding ancient oriental lore is learning that this motif was associated with the pheasant (divine bird in China) which is frequently mentioned in the Chinese classics. The link between the spinning cross and birds is evident on artifacts from many cultures. Perhaps the association of the Sanskrit term "svastika" with this symbol can be linked to the Astika Parva in the MAHABHARATA which relates the birth of a cosmic bird par excellence--Garuda. This fabulous winged deity had a radiance like the Sun, could change shapes at will, and destroyed other gods and kings by casting down fire and stirring up storms of reddish dust which darkened the Sun, Moon and stars. Clearly Garuda was symbolic of an Earth approaching comet.The bird-comet connection is even more obvious in the Jamva-khanda Nirmana Parva of the MAHABHARATA which describes a fierce fowl with but one wing, one eye, and one leg, hovering in the night sky. As this bird "screams" and "vomits blood":
All the quarters of the earth, being overwhelmed by showers of dust, look inauspicious. Fierce clouds, portentous of danger, drop bloody showers during the night. Rahu of fierce deeds is also, O monarch, afflicting the constellation Kirtika. Rough winds, portending fierce danger, are constantly blowing.
The mention of Rahu, the demon of eclipse, which originally had four arms and a tail that was severed by Vishnu to become Ketu (comet) is interesting in that the demon is here darkening Kirttika (the Pleiades) in the month of Karttika (latter half of October, through mid November), for the tale goes on to relate that:
. . . in course of the same month both the Moon and the Sun have undergone eclipses on the thirteenth days from the day of the first lunation. The Sun and the Moon therefore, by undergoing eclipses on unusual days, will cause a great slaughter of the creatures of the earth. Meteors, effulgent like Indra's thunder-bolt, fall with loud hisses . . . People, for meeting together, coming out of their houses with lighted brands, have still to encounter a thick gloom all round . . . From the mountains of Kailasa and Mandara and Himavat thousands of explosions are heard and thousands of summits are tumbling down . . . Fierce winds charged with pointed pebbles are blowing, crushing mighty trees. In villages and towns trees, ordinary and sacred, are falling down, crushed by mighty winds and struck by lightning.
This is, without doubt, a mythological record of an intense meteor storm from the still active Taurid stream which presently peaks around the first of November and appears to radiate from near the Pleiades star cluster. The un-airworthy bird associated with this meteor bombardment could have been comet Encke which until recently was thought to be the sole source for the Taurid meteors. However, the discovery of other large contributors which are now dark but were once active comets rules out a positive identification. abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/sw/swpi.html
THE GREAT FLOOD & Crossroads Cultures
During the late Paleolithic, the retreat of the icecap in Europe caused climatic changes in North Africa, which became dryer over time. The Nile changed from a vast inland lake to a massive river, flanked by eight terraces. Worked stone age flints have been found from this era. Settlers found a valley of reedy swamps and shallows left by annual Nile floods, with abundant game. The first settlers were nomads who gradually settled to cultivate the land, whic easily produced abundant crops. Settlements unified and gradually came under coordinated control by Dynasty I in 3200 BCE.
Sumerian and Egyptian myths both relate how a god taught the art of writing and the knowledge of science to mankind. Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom was most likely derived from even earlier Sumerian sources. Thoth was the god who supposedly sent a Flood to punish humankind for wickedness.
"...the Egyptians and the Sumerian people of Mesopotamia worshipped virtually identical lunar deities who were amongst the very oldest in their respective pantheons. Exactly like Thoth, the Sumerian moon-god Sin was charged with measuring the passage of time."
- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal
"The name Sin is the Semitic form of Sumerian Enzu meaning lord of knowledge. The Mesopotamians ascribed very great importance to him. It was he who governed the passing of the months through his waxing and waning. ... The unvarying lunar cycle gave Sin a special connection with order and wisdom' and with immortality. The number seven is lunar in origin and is applied to the seven days of creation, the seven levels of hell and the seven great planets, Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn."
- Chris King, The Genesis of Eden
"The similarity between the two...gods is too close to be accidental...It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological systems form some common but exceedingly ancient source."
- E. A. Wallis Budge, From Fetish to God
"The first races [of the doctrine of primordial egg where all life began] can be authenticated in the Pyramid Texts, where a union with the ibis Thoth takes place in the marshy area of the Delta:"
- Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion
"Go, go to the two [halves of the] egg, go to Pe, to the Abode of Thoth."
- Pyramid Texts
"Thoth was called in the Pyramid Texts'He who reckons the heavens, the counter of the stars and the measurer of the Earth', the inventor of arts and sciences, scribe of the gods, the 'One who made calculations concerning the heavens, the stars and the Earth'. As the 'Reckoner of times and of seasons', he was depicted with a symbol combining the Sun's disk and the Moon's crescent upon his head, and - in words reminiscent of the biblical adoration of the Celestial Lord - the Egyptian inscriptions and legends said of Thoth that his knowledge and powers of calculating 'measured out the heavens and planned the Earth'. His hieroglyphic name Tehuti is usually explained as meaning 'He who balances'. Heinrich Brugsch (Religion und Mythologie) and E. A. Wallis Budge (The Gods of the Egyptians) interpreted that to mean that Thoth was the 'god of the equilibrium' and considered depictions of him as 'Master of the Balance' to indicate that he was associated with the equinoxes - the time when the day and the night were balanced."
- Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
Three accounts of an ancient store of wisdom hidden in pillars which may reflect a common tradition based on Thoth:
1.) A Hebrew tradition states that Enoch (the father of Methuselah) erected several columns before the flood and that a bronze one, which held a depository of the great philosophical and religious truths unknown to the world at large, survived.
2.) A third century AD Neoplatonic work, Corpus Hermeticum, tells how an Egyptian priest Manetho discovered the secrets of ancient rites that had been hidden in pillars, buried in a deep vault before the Deluge. (The Greeks equated their god Hermes with Thoth.)
3.) The "old ritual" of Freemasonry relates that the two great pillars placed in front of the Temple of Solomon had been hollow. Inside them had been stored the "ancient records" and the "valuable writings" pertaining to the past of the Jewish people.
BREATH OF THE DIVINE SERPENT
CHAOS WAS AN UNIMAGINABLE FLOOD
Imagine you are an inhabitant of one of the first bustling but overcrowded cities on earth, a bountiful economy of agriculturalists and traders. Your priests bring the attention of all to a new star in the sky that seems to grow brighter and “hairier” in surprisingly short order. This evil eye in the sky is intuitively considered malevolent, upsetting the order of the heavens. It stirs something deep within racial memory which cannot quite be identified but is felt as primal awe and fear.
The comet wags its growing tail as it nears the sun and becomes ever more threatening as it nears earth, ever more foreboding as it increases in size and brightness, perhaps even rivaling sun and moon. Then one day that disturbing presence falls to earth and in an instant everything is profoundly changed – changed back to primeval chaos where survivors can’t tell sky from earth because terra firma has literally disappeared in an inundation of unbelievable scale immensely beyond their human memories of disasters.
But before the Flood actually arrives, a new sun seems to arise from the South Storm. Meteor showers of debris pepper the air even before the enormous fireball flares into instantaneous destruction. That fire is followed by the hot electrical breath of a sonic boom which trails electromagnetic chaos in the wake of the massive impactor. Plasma auroras ripple, writhe and coil like serpents throughout the darkened sky. Megalightning rends the sky and jolts the ground and ignites fires that crackle and roar incessantly. The earth groans, shifts and buckles. The flood wind blows as the south-storm strikes the land – and strikes it hard, like a relentless Dragon with wave upon wave of assaults for six days and nights that never seem to end. It sounds like a mighty battle of titanic scope, of the Gods themselves.
This is no cross-cultural myth, but a real, if legendary event that exceeds the most fertile imagination. Ancient superstitions are the result, not the cause of the epics that came down to us as the beginning of history since all else was virtually destroyed. The priesthood consolidated its hold on the people, gazing at the heavens incessantly lest another such cosmic sojourner threaten their existence. The fact is, then, as now – real life disasters were an immanent threat, from earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and climatic havoc.
The valley of Mesopotamia is dominated by two major rivers, the Tigris and the Euphraties, and numerous smaller ones. It was a land in which catastrophic floods were not unusual in ancient times, and it is unsurprising that stories about a major flood arose within the mythology of this area. Such stories might simply reflect an understandable preocupation with flooding in an area where flood disasters were an important reality. But this storm came from the South – from the Indian Ocean -- not upriver to the North.
ABYSSAL IMPACT
The sole survivors of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Biblical versions of the tale report the abject terror that rained down on humanity, virtually obliterating it from the world -- at least their world. The oldest timelines of the event are likely the most accurate.
NOTE ~ this is a South Storm, not the flooding of the northern Black Sea of an earlier era:'That stated time had arrived:
'He who orders unease at night, showers down a rain of blight.
'I watched the appearance of the weather.
The weather was awesome to behold.I boarded the ship and battened up the entrance.With the first glow of dawn,
A black cloud rose up from the horizon.
Inside it Adad (the storm god) thunders,
While Shullat and Hanish (the heralds) go in front,
Moving as heralds over hill and plain.
Erragal (god of the underworld) tears out the posts (of the world dam);
Forth comes Ninurta and causes the dikes to follow.
The Anunnaki (gods of judgment) lift up the torches,
Setting the land ablaze with their glare.
Consternation over Adad reaches to the heavens,
Who turned to blackness all that had been light.
[That wide] land was shattered like [a pot]!
For one day the south-storm blew, [submerging the mountains],
Overtaking the [people] like a battle.
No one can see his fellow,
Nor can the people be recognized from heaven.
The gods were frightened by the deluge,
And, shrinking back, they ascended to the heaven of Anu (the father of
the other gods, who lived in the highest heaven).
The gods cowered like dogs
Crouched against the outer wall.
Ishtar (goddess of passion) cried out like a woman in travail,
The sweet-voiced mistress of the [gods] moans aloud:
'The olden days are alas turned to clay,
Six days and [six] nights
Blows the flood wind, as the south-storm sweeps the land.
When the seventh day arrived,
The flood(-carrying) south-storm subsided in the battle,
Which it had fought like an army.
The sea grew quiet, the tempest was still, the flood ceased.
I looked at the weather: stillness had set in,
And all of mankind had returned to clay.
The landscape was as level as a flat roof.
Seven days later, the waters began to subside:
I sat and wept,
Tears running down on my face.
I looked about for coast lines in the expanse of the sea:
In each of fourteen (regions)
There emerged a region(-mountain).
The dread exceeded all known disasters.
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a lion had risen up to diminish mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a wolf had risen up to diminish mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that a famine had risen up to l[ay low] mankind!
Instead of thy bringing on the deluge,
Would that pestilence had risen up to smi[te down] mankind!
BOMBARDMENT
In an article in the NY Times on Nov 14, 2006, scientist Dallas Abbott has identified the site of a large asteroid impact crater (the Burckle Crater) off of the island of Madagascar that struck the earth around 2800 BC. This asteroid landed in the seabed, and sent a 600-900 foot high wall of water - a megatsunami - around the Indian Ocean, impacting land as far away as Australia, and crashing onto the coast of Africa, up the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, and quite possibly into the Mediterranean Sea as well.
This asteroidal impact would have sent a huge surge of water into the mouth of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, flooding the ancient land of Sumeria, the source of the Biblical flood legend. Indeed, Sir Leonard Wooley, the archaeologist who discovered the city of Ur, found 30 feet of flood-deposited sand that separated the most ancient levels of the city from newer habitation levels on top of the flood debris.
Abbott's findings of deep-sea meteor/asteroid strike craters (which she has developed the technology to discover) indicates that large-scale cosmic strikes hit the earth much more frequently than scientists have previously postulated - perhaps every 1 to 3 thousand years, instead of every hundred thousand or so. Large asteroid strikes also produce weather alterations, and many more global phenomena. Interestingly, the period 2800 BC is when the first dynasty of Egypt started.
Massive Impactor
The answers to the relationship of Dragon and Deluge are hidden in the mists of time. In the Babylonian Creation myth, Enuma Elish, the dragon Tiamat is primeval chaos prior to the separation of heavens and earth. It is plausible that the Great Flood stories originated in a recently discovered comet strike in the Indian Ocean 4800 years ago. Shortly thereafter Sumerian civilization arose with its myth of Floods and great watery dragons. Dragon's pearls are a worldwide symbol of abyssal impactors, the death rain of cometary debris.
The 3-mile wide comet slammed into the ocean, radiating a fireball, shockwaves and mega-Tsunamis that scoured the landscape, scorched the air, and released sonic blasts, incredible electrical discharges and torrential rains of ejected ocean water and solid ejecta. It was an utter Deluge. The 600 foot high waves carried huge deposits of sediment to land. Half the population or more died.The dragon's form arose from his particular power of control over the waters of the earth and gave rise to many of the attributes singled out by different peoples as the whole myth developed. They were believed to live at the bottom of the sea, where they guarded vast treasure hoards, very frequently of pearls. Rain clouds and thunder and lightning were believed to be the dragon's breath, hence the fire-breathing monster. The significance of the dragon was its control over the destiny of mankind. Is it surprising it became confounded with the creation story?
Eliade, "Cosmogonic Myth," 174. 97 says The Flood story may be a late addition to Gilgamesh, but the theme of the inaccessibility of immortality is not. "...and the seven judges of hell ... raised their torches, lighting the land with their livid flame. A stupor of despair went up to heaven when the god of the storm turned daylight into darkness, when he smashed the land like a cup."-- An account of the Deluge from the Epic of Gilgamesh, circa 2200 B.C.vThe Sumerian Creator is pictured as forming dry land from the primaeval water in much the same way as the early cultivator in the Euphrates Valley procured the rich fields for his crops. The existence of the earth is here not really presupposed. All the world was sea until the god created land out of the waters by the only practical method that was possible in Mesopotamia. Also, the rivers of Mesopotamia could be terrible.
The Dragon motif drew its imagery from the mighty Tigris and Euphrates, as much from flood as storm. Markduk, as king identified with Sun-god, conquers the once featureless and chaotic primaeval water, the Dragon of flood and storm. In the Hebrew versions of Creation, the Deluge narrative emphasizes connections between the Semitic Babylonians and themselves. The Sumerian versions are the originals, derived by the Jews from Semitic channels in Babylon. They increased the rain to forty days and add that "the fountains of the deep" and "the windows of heaven" opened, which sounds like the horrendous effects of a massive impact.
Some contributory cause other than local rain must sought for the magnitude of catastophes beyond those the rivers could cause. Mega-tsunami is orders of magnitude far far beyond local flood. Excavations at Ashur reveal a tablet describing a true dragon with legs, implying it crawls up onto land. A god announces the presence of the dragon, saying "In the sea he lies...." Then he describes its humongous size.
In the sea was the Serpent cre[ated].
Sixty /bêru/ is his length;
Thirty /bêru/ high is his he[ad].
For half (a /bêru/) each stretches the surface of his ey[es];
For twenty /bêru/ go [his feet].
He devours fish, the creatures [of the sea],
He devours birds, the creatures [of the heaven],
He devours wild asses, the creatures [of the field],
He devours men,[5] to the peoples [he . . .].
There are ample grounds, then, for assuming the independent existence of the Babylonian Dragon-myth, and though both the versions recovered have come to us in Semitic form, there is no doubt that the myth itself existed among the Sumerians. The dragon motif is constantly recurring in descriptions of Sumerian temple-decoration, and the twin dragons of Ningishzida on Gudea's libation-vase, carved in green steatite and inlaid with shell, are a notable product of Sumerian art.
The very names borne by Tiamat's brood of monsters in the "Seven Tablets" are stamped in most cases with their Sumerian descent, and Kingu, whom she appointed as her champion in place of Apsû, is equally Sumerian. It would be strange indeed if the Sumerians had not evolved a Dragon myth, for the Dragon combat is the most obvious of nature myths and is found in most mythologies of Europe and the Near East. The trailing storm-clouds suggest his serpent form, his fiery tongue is seen in the forked lightning, and, though he may darken the world for a time, the Sun-god will always be victorious. In Egypt the myth of "the Overthrowing of Apep, the enemy of Ra" presents a close parallel to that of Tiamat.
Texts of Sethos II (1215-1210) tells that "Sekhmet was a circling star which spreaed out his fire in flames, a fire-flame in his storm." From Ugarit we hear, "The star Anat has fallen from the heavens; he slew the peopleof the Syrian land and confused the two twilights and the seats of the constellations." The Zoroastrians claimed it unleashed first terrible fire and then a flood called Tistrya. Widespread peoples described it burning and flooding. The old Sumerian tale is thus not the only lengend of comet-fall but is perhaps the oldest. Even passing through the debris trail of a comet can wreak destruction and rain hellfire. Halley's comet has an erratic course but appeared in 451AD and 1225 BCE.
The Greek myth of Phaeton described a fiery comet that ended the Golden Age, wreaking climatic havoc in the second half of the Thirteenth Century BCE.
Dr Bill Napier, an astronomer at Armagh Observatory, and Dr Victor Clube, from Oxford and Armagh universities, say the evidence points to a comet hitting the Earth, and have called for more research.
Writing in Frontiers, the magazine of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, Dr Napier suggests that the Comet Encke, first observed in 1786, might be a remnant of the object along with its associated stream of meteors, called the Taurids.
This giant mother-comet is thought to have been disintegrating as recently as 5,000 years ago.
At this time, and for some millennia afterwards, the night sky would have been lit up by a bright light caused by dust particles, cometary fragments, and firework displays of meteor storms. The scientists highlight ancient civilisations' preoccupation with the sky. Cosmic icons were widespread .
Dr Napier wrote: "People have assumed that this was driven by the need for a calendar for both agricultural and ritual purposes. "However, this explanation does not account for the doom-laden nature of much cosmic iconography and early sky-centred cosmic religions associated with these societies."
Icons apparently depicting comets were widespread among early civilisations. The new evidence also ties in with ancient prophecies, including the Book of Revelations in the Bible, which appears to describe cataclysmic events involving objects falling from the sky. Dr Napier said the ancient swastika, a symbol of great antiquity stretching back to at least 1400 BC and found from China through India to the New World, may also be a cometary image.
Though gaining a detailed understanding of the effects episodic encounters with comets had on humanity will take some time, incorporating recent astronomical evidence can provide immediate boons to our comprehension of past cultures. This is particularly true for certain symbols and motifs that have endured to our time period. Wilson's 1894 work on the history of the swastika is quite valuable in showing how widely that symbol was utilized and what meanings came to be associated with it.
The fortunate find in the seventies, at Mawangdui, China, of a Han dynasty silk comet atlas sheds considerable light on earlier enigmatic motifs. Most illuminating is the drawing, described by text on the artifact as a long-tailed pheasant star. This rendering of a jetting comet viewed down its axis of rotation has a considerable history, and, as a motif, appears on artifacts found in most areas of the world. The artist who illustrated this silk twenty-two hundred, or so, years ago was not likely a first-hand observer. What is produced here is a schematic of received comet caricatures with claims that specific things will happen if a represented type appears. The pinwheel-like image is unique to the compilation in that an omen is given for an appearance in each of the four seasons, implying that this comet was seen more often than the others represented. This may illustrate a frequently viewed aspect of comet Encke which has a 3.3 year orbit and rotational axis that occasionally points toward Earth. [Whipple, F. 1985] Important in understanding ancient oriental lore is learning that this motif was associated with the pheasant (divine bird in China) which is frequently mentioned in the Chinese classics. The link between the spinning cross and birds is evident on artifacts from many cultures. Perhaps the association of the Sanskrit term "svastika" with this symbol can be linked to the Astika Parva in the MAHABHARATA which relates the birth of a cosmic bird par excellence--Garuda. This fabulous winged deity had a radiance like the Sun, could change shapes at will, and destroyed other gods and kings by casting down fire and stirring up storms of reddish dust which darkened the Sun, Moon and stars. Clearly Garuda was symbolic of an Earth approaching comet.The bird-comet connection is even more obvious in the Jamva-khanda Nirmana Parva of the MAHABHARATA which describes a fierce fowl with but one wing, one eye, and one leg, hovering in the night sky. As this bird "screams" and "vomits blood":
All the quarters of the earth, being overwhelmed by showers of dust, look inauspicious. Fierce clouds, portentous of danger, drop bloody showers during the night. Rahu of fierce deeds is also, O monarch, afflicting the constellation Kirtika. Rough winds, portending fierce danger, are constantly blowing.
The mention of Rahu, the demon of eclipse, which originally had four arms and a tail that was severed by Vishnu to become Ketu (comet) is interesting in that the demon is here darkening Kirttika (the Pleiades) in the month of Karttika (latter half of October, through mid November), for the tale goes on to relate that:
. . . in course of the same month both the Moon and the Sun have undergone eclipses on the thirteenth days from the day of the first lunation. The Sun and the Moon therefore, by undergoing eclipses on unusual days, will cause a great slaughter of the creatures of the earth. Meteors, effulgent like Indra's thunder-bolt, fall with loud hisses . . . People, for meeting together, coming out of their houses with lighted brands, have still to encounter a thick gloom all round . . . From the mountains of Kailasa and Mandara and Himavat thousands of explosions are heard and thousands of summits are tumbling down . . . Fierce winds charged with pointed pebbles are blowing, crushing mighty trees. In villages and towns trees, ordinary and sacred, are falling down, crushed by mighty winds and struck by lightning.
This is, without doubt, a mythological record of an intense meteor storm from the still active Taurid stream which presently peaks around the first of November and appears to radiate from near the Pleiades star cluster. The un-airworthy bird associated with this meteor bombardment could have been comet Encke which until recently was thought to be the sole source for the Taurid meteors. However, the discovery of other large contributors which are now dark but were once active comets rules out a positive identification. abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/sw/swpi.html
THE GREAT FLOOD & Crossroads Cultures
During the late Paleolithic, the retreat of the icecap in Europe caused climatic changes in North Africa, which became dryer over time. The Nile changed from a vast inland lake to a massive river, flanked by eight terraces. Worked stone age flints have been found from this era. Settlers found a valley of reedy swamps and shallows left by annual Nile floods, with abundant game. The first settlers were nomads who gradually settled to cultivate the land, whic easily produced abundant crops. Settlements unified and gradually came under coordinated control by Dynasty I in 3200 BCE.
Sumerian and Egyptian myths both relate how a god taught the art of writing and the knowledge of science to mankind. Thoth, the Egyptian God of Wisdom was most likely derived from even earlier Sumerian sources. Thoth was the god who supposedly sent a Flood to punish humankind for wickedness.
"...the Egyptians and the Sumerian people of Mesopotamia worshipped virtually identical lunar deities who were amongst the very oldest in their respective pantheons. Exactly like Thoth, the Sumerian moon-god Sin was charged with measuring the passage of time."
- Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal
"The name Sin is the Semitic form of Sumerian Enzu meaning lord of knowledge. The Mesopotamians ascribed very great importance to him. It was he who governed the passing of the months through his waxing and waning. ... The unvarying lunar cycle gave Sin a special connection with order and wisdom' and with immortality. The number seven is lunar in origin and is applied to the seven days of creation, the seven levels of hell and the seven great planets, Moon, Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn."
- Chris King, The Genesis of Eden
"The similarity between the two...gods is too close to be accidental...It would be wrong to say that the Egyptians borrowed from the Sumerians or the Sumerians from the Egyptians, but it may be submitted that the literati of both peoples borrowed their theological systems form some common but exceedingly ancient source."
- E. A. Wallis Budge, From Fetish to God
"The first races [of the doctrine of primordial egg where all life began] can be authenticated in the Pyramid Texts, where a union with the ibis Thoth takes place in the marshy area of the Delta:"
- Siegfried Morenz, Egyptian Religion
"Go, go to the two [halves of the] egg, go to Pe, to the Abode of Thoth."
- Pyramid Texts
"Thoth was called in the Pyramid Texts'He who reckons the heavens, the counter of the stars and the measurer of the Earth', the inventor of arts and sciences, scribe of the gods, the 'One who made calculations concerning the heavens, the stars and the Earth'. As the 'Reckoner of times and of seasons', he was depicted with a symbol combining the Sun's disk and the Moon's crescent upon his head, and - in words reminiscent of the biblical adoration of the Celestial Lord - the Egyptian inscriptions and legends said of Thoth that his knowledge and powers of calculating 'measured out the heavens and planned the Earth'. His hieroglyphic name Tehuti is usually explained as meaning 'He who balances'. Heinrich Brugsch (Religion und Mythologie) and E. A. Wallis Budge (The Gods of the Egyptians) interpreted that to mean that Thoth was the 'god of the equilibrium' and considered depictions of him as 'Master of the Balance' to indicate that he was associated with the equinoxes - the time when the day and the night were balanced."
- Zecharia Sitchin, When Time Began
Three accounts of an ancient store of wisdom hidden in pillars which may reflect a common tradition based on Thoth:
1.) A Hebrew tradition states that Enoch (the father of Methuselah) erected several columns before the flood and that a bronze one, which held a depository of the great philosophical and religious truths unknown to the world at large, survived.
2.) A third century AD Neoplatonic work, Corpus Hermeticum, tells how an Egyptian priest Manetho discovered the secrets of ancient rites that had been hidden in pillars, buried in a deep vault before the Deluge. (The Greeks equated their god Hermes with Thoth.)
3.) The "old ritual" of Freemasonry relates that the two great pillars placed in front of the Temple of Solomon had been hollow. Inside them had been stored the "ancient records" and the "valuable writings" pertaining to the past of the Jewish people.
Dragon Deluge
Pre-diluvian theology was based on the observance and veneration of the stars, of the sun, the moon, and the zodiac. From its inception it was a stellar religion, an astro-theological gnosis - centered on the celestial pole of Draco.
The first written story linking dragons to deluge is Mesopotamian. But pre-history saw many catastrophes and floods. An extraterrestrial impact, possibly a comet, set off a 1,000-year-long cold spell and wiped out or fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and a variety of animals across North America almost 13,000 years ago.
The Clovis impact would have been felt in Europe and around the world. Reversal in the world's ocean currents [oceanic pump] and associated rapid global cooling caused the extinction of megafauna and the end of the Clovis Period. While generally accepted theory says glacial melting from the North American interior caused the shift in currents, the new proposal points to a large extraterrestrial object exploding above or even into the Laurentide ice sheet north of the Great Lakes. Immediate effects would have been to the north and east (of the impact site), producing shockwaves, heat, flooding, wildfires, and a reduction and fragmentation of the human population.
A Black Sea deluge is dated from 5900 BC to 9500 years ago. Gobekli Tepi is roughly 10,000 years old. Catal Huyuk flourished in 7000 BC. Widespread farming commenced around 4000 BC. though the neolithic Vinca farmed and also mined metals. Sumeria is dated as early as 5400 BC. with small towns and encampments back to 8000 BC. The Dragon culture travelled and spread cultural ideas. Various groups spread throughout Europe from 6000 to 8000 BC. The glacial-melt flood, including a massive one in the Altai basin sent the proto-Scythian and proto-European population migrating.
The suddeness and magnitude of this event, set off by glacial melt, is debated, but the results are not contested. All pre-flood coastal settlements were inundated. Some call it Noah's Flood, but that is more likely associated with the abyssal impact of a comet whose remains are seen in the Indian Ocean in Burckle Crater. This event coincides with the Enuma Elish and Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Enuma Elish, a Mesopotamian creation myth from around 1900 BCE, relates how the primordial waters of Tiamat, ‘she who bore them all,’ and Apsu, ‘their begetter . . . commingle as a single body,’ and thus become the sole matrix from which everything emerges. The verse accompanying the figure heightens the correspondence between the alchemical fountain and the hierogamy that produced all life: ‘We (waters) are the metal’s first nature and only source; the highest tincture of the Art is made through us.’
For uncounted Aeons, mankind witnessed the nightly drama of the heavenly bodies -- the fixed and wandering stars watched back. They rightly held it in awe, as periodically great catastrophes descended to Earth from the heavens. Eventually, an order was deduced from these nightly wanderings. Man sought to magically reflect this heavenly order on Earth and perhaps hold catastrophe at bay. The archetypal Pole of Light was the focus of this spiritually significant primordial observation. The Ouroborous serpent that bites its tail is the Milky Way.
The power behind the veil is the circumpolar Void, sometimes inhabited by a star, sometimes not. We now know the true center of our galaxy is a massive black hole, through which the galaxy consumes itself. Draconian magic is thus a Path into the Abyss to awaken the potential of life force -- initiation to awaken the gnostic seership of pineal vision and latent healing serpent power. It is also a royal bloodline, unbroken from pre-Diluvian times to today. In the beginning of the world, Winged Serpents reigned upon the Earth. These were the demigods which predate the historical civilization of every nation.
The first dragon story on record is found in the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish. First called Labbu by the Sumerians in 3000 BC, this dragon came to be known as Tiamat when that civilization gave way to the Babylonians and their mythologies blended. Broken down, Tiamat’s name means “life-mother,” and this she-dragon was indeed the creator of all. Part animal, part serpent, and part bird, Tiamat, the spirit of chaos. Myths of the gods recount celestial events, including the breakup of a massive comet Encke into many fragments, just like Shoemaker-Levi which hit Jupiter.
Geo-climatologists found a huge climatic change around 3117 BC, called the Piora oscillation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piora_Oscillation
This abrupt change in the climate was probably caused by a massive meteorite swarm (”seven heads and ten horns“), possibly from the break-up of a great comet Encke (”the Red Dragon“) in the inner parts of the Solar system.
Archaeologists have confirmed the presence of a widespread layer of riverine silt deposits, shortly after the Piora Oscillation interrupting the sequence of settlement, that left a few feet of yellow sediment in the cities of Shuruppak and Uruk and extended as far north as Kish.
The recent detected undersea Burckle Crater,1500 kilometers Southeast of Madagascar could be the abyssal Impact crater of one of the parts of the Typhon. The Comet that crashed into the Sea caused massive rainstorms, Darkness and a huge tsunami with waves more than 200 meters high.
“The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about, at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking.” (Hesiod, Theogeny).
At that time the Earth was also at the end of a 1500 year climate cycle caused by the Wobble of the Axis of the Earth. This cycle generates Earthquakes, rising of the sea level and a Sudden Change of the Climate. At that time the Earth was highly vulnerable. The huge impact of Comet Typhon triggered Earthquake-Storms all over the World.
Before the Flood things were very different. The Immortal Gods and the Humans lived for four thousand years between 7.000 BC and 3.000 BC in the Paradise of the Green Sahara The nice climate in the Sahara made it possible that fruits, plants and animals were so plentiful that there was no need to strive.
After 3117 BC the Green Sahara suddenly transformed into a Desert because the weather patterns on Earth changed completely.The survivors of the wandering communities of the hunter/gatherers had to move to more fertile places on Earth. They settled down at the oases in the desert and/or started to attack the groups that were able to live on fertile grounds. The peaceful time of the Green Sahara paradise, was suddenly disrupted.
About 3000 BC, a shift of power took place in the Near East, as the result of the immigration of large numbers of Semitic & Aryan tribes into the area. Out of the Green Sahara, Semitic tribes pushed, in several waves, into the area of the Fertile Crescent. These tribes were known by the Mesopotamians as Amurru (meaning “Westerners“).
After the Flood the Shaman of the Hunter/Gatherers were replaced by the priests of the ruling class, the Pharaohs. The priests of Nimrod blocked the connection with the Infinite Potential, created artificial scarcity, introduced the concept of Sin, started to divide and rule and transformed the Story of Maya, the Material World, into a Spiritual Story.
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW: The Fractal Field of Resonating Potential
The narrative of the Sky had to be a “rotating” cyclic narrative because the sky was in constant cyclic motion. Ancient tradition states that heavenly locations had earthly counterparts ("As Above, So Below"). The next step was to project this Narrative on the Sky using highly visible stars as a connection point. In the last step the Sky was projected unto Earth again.
Megaliths (”giant standing stones“, “menhirs“) and related constructions such as cairns and dolmens (chambers of stone), tumuli and barrows (ancient earthworks) and henges and circles were built by ancient man for purposes of Astronomy and Geodetics. Anyone having knowledge of the heavenly stars could thus find his way around on Earth by means of the megaliths, which served both as boundaries and landmarks.
When we measure the Earth in Egypt the number 26,400 miles appears which is the number of Years the Precession of the Equinox takes. A mile in distance upon the earth equals one year of precession, and one degree of distance on the earth, a 360th part of the circumference equals 72 years of Precession of Equinox. In Precession solar and galactic intentionality align.
The ancient Scientists not only created a highly advanced Navigation System and a Calendar, they also Mapped this System to a metric systemof Earth. This System was just like the Calendar and the Navigation System implemented all over the world. To Rule efficiently you have to Standardize to predict the future.
One of most important Cycles is called the Etanic Cycle In a 780 year period the earth wobbles above the equator to a max of (4) degrees, then wobbles back below the equator to a max of (4) degrees. The full cycle take 1560 years. The 1560 year wobble can be broken down into the four quadrants of 390 years, and to the Mayan Calendar eighth part of 130 years.
The constant movement by Earth above and below the equator shifts the exposure of different areas of the planet to annual sun light. It also generates a lot of Tectonic Stress (Earth Quake Storms) from the planet’s core to its surface.
The Etanic Cycle has a huge influence on the Climate. Climate changes shift populations of humans and herds all around the Globe. To Rule the World you have to know when the Big Troubles are Coming.
The year 3117 BC was a special year not only because of the special alignment of Sun and Earth. There are 5280 Feet to the Mile. This number is 0ne fifth of the duration of the Precession Cycle. The periodicity of the well-known Economic Kondratiev Cycle is 5280/100=52.8 years.
Synchromystic
The number Five is a very important number. It is the number of the Pentangle and the Quintessence (Chi, Ether, Prana). Five is the Number of the Center. The Ancient Scientists divided the Precession Cycle into Five Stages. The Stage that started at 3117 BC was the last Phase before a new Golden Age would start. It was the Fifth Age of the Precession. 3117 BC was the start of Human Civilization. It was the time of the Establishment of the Old Kingdom, the first Writing in Sumeria, and the first Stellar Observation Systems. The Hindu Kali Yuga (‘The Dark Age“) begins at this time as well.
Syncretism is the belief that the majority of the world’s religions can all be reconciled; that what they have in common is more than what they do not. Within syncretism is a feeling of harmony, unity, and overall love. Syncretism is not a modern belief, it was shared by ancient cultures – the most well-known being the cross-over gods between the Egyptians and Greeks and also the Celts and Romans.
They didn’t see anything wrong with this as either their beliefs, teachings, or their blood told them their gods are of the same origin. Some believe all gods originated from Africa, others the Middle East, and others yet from the Proto-Indo European. Put the cultures of these regions on a timeline and you’ll see that all of the above are right, they just represent different evolutionary periods through early pre-history.
Dragon Tracks - Precession Paradigm
The prime paradigm of each era is that of its Age. We might look at our emergent "apocalyptic" meme era as the Age of Revealing -- hopefully an era of more lucid understanding. On December 25, 3117 B.C. a total solar eclipse was visible at Sunrise at the Winter Solstice point, in the era of the global Dragon culture. This date is the Beginning of the Mayan Calendar. It is also the start of the Reign of Me-Sin or Menes, the first Pharaoh King that united Egypt.
The beginning of the new calendar marks the most important Geophysical Event of the past five millennia, the Great Flood. One of the causes of the Great Flood could be a close encounter of the earth with the comet, Typhon the Dragon.
Dragons are real and the basis of scientific priesthood and royal lineage. The sacred past is a story of sacred dragon or serpent worship. The triangular Dragon Book is essentially a magical astonomical text. Civilization was originally rooted in ancient prehistoric observations of the order of the stars. It tracked time and created calendars, and most importantly allowed predictions of eclipses rooted in the GREAT CYCLE of PRECESSION of the Zodiac, the serpentine ring of the Ecliptic.
The Center of the Universe, the Pole Star, as the most important point in the Universe. The Pole Star, the Hole in the Centre, was the entrance to the Other Worlds. Megalithic temples are tuned to this Great Cycle drama in the heavens. The "tuning and untuning of the sky" is an actual astronomical occurrence.
The Center of the Universe is not fixed. It moves around in a circle counter the Circle of the Zodiac. The Movement of the Center is called the Precession of the Equinox, and takes about 26,400 years. This movement was already known before the Great Flood occured. Plato called it the Great Year, and each of its "months" is a sign of the Zodiac.
Some 6,500 years ago the position of the equinoctial sun was aligned with the band of the Milky Way. This provided an obvious celestial alignment, occurring twice a year on the equinoxes, when the sun would conjunct the Milky Way -- the Bridge Out of Time -- opening the way out of the plane of the living (the zodiac) and up to the cosmic center and source in heaven. A "breaking asunder" occurred when this great cosmogonic picture began to precess out of alignment. Presumably, the "untuning of the sky" coincided with increasing social tension, leading to greater collective confusion and our descent into history.
The earth either wobbles in what is known as the Precession of the Equinox or orbits in a binary star system with the same observable result. This wobble take approximately 25,800 years to go from a beginning point and return to that point. But the earth doesn't really return to the exact point in space because of at least two other factors, the perihelion precession and the obliquity of the ecliptic. Simply put, The Sun appears (as viewed from the earth) to move backward through the stars at the rate of about 1 degree every 72 years.
Key numbers of Babylonian-Sumerian mathematics (including the sixty-based system still being used) were derived from astronomical observations, and yield the traditional estimate of precession: 108 x 4 x 60 = 25,920 years.The Cycle of the Precession was divided into twelve parts of 2200 years and related to the Zodiac. With every movement into a new part of the Zodiac, society was completely reorganized to the theme of the Sign of the Zodiac.
The huge precessional clock does not stop. The axis of the earth slowly changes its orientation in space - either directly due to a precession of earth's polar axis or indirectly as a result of our entire solar system moving around a point x in space.Earth is like a gyroscope. Earth is suppose to precess opposite to its direction of rotation. The period of its complete precession cycle is said to take about 25,800 years.
During this Great Year time period, Earth supposedly goes through one retrograding rotation relative to the inertial system of the fixed stars. An additional time interval of one year of about 365 days must occur simultaneously. But since this time interval cannot be substantiated by actual time measurement, the theory of the Earth's precession does not have a proven scientific foundation. But it was accepted by all cultures in antiquity.
Hamlet's Mill describes a cycle within the precessional shifting of the crossroads of ecliptic and equator. An archetypal triangle, a Grand Trine, is associated with Precession: the Trigon of the Great Conjunction. The revolution of that Trigon is built up by "Great Conjunctions" of Saturn and Jupiter. This Trigon of Great Conjunctions is an instrument by which one could "narrow down" the almost imperceptible tempo of the Precession. To move through the whole zodiac, one of the angles of the Trigon need approximately 3 x 794 1/3 = 2383 years. That comes tolerably near to one double-hour of the greatest "day" of the Precession of 25,900 years.
The Zodiac moved from Virgo to Leo (10.000 BC), from Cancer (8700 BC, Scarab, Kheper) to Gemini (6593 BC, Twins, the Two Kingsdoms), From Taurus (Bull, 4435 BC) to Aries (Ram, 2277 BC, Shepherd, Sheep, Khnum) and from Aries to Pisces (Fish, 155 BC) and is now moving into Aquarius. The Story of Religion also moved with the Signs of the Zodiac. A new zodiacal sign was termed to "rise" starting from the day of a great conjunction at the place of the "passage." Our own era, the Age of Pisces, started with a great conjunction in Pisces, in the year 6 B.C..
The identification of an "age" with a particular zodiac constellation is based on the sun's position during the vernal equinox. Before 2000 BC, the Sun could have been seen against the stars of the constellation of Taurus at the time of vernal equinox [had there been an eclipse]. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, on average every 2,160 years the Sun appears against the stars of a new constellation at vernal equinox. The current astrological age started when the equinox precessed into the constellation of Pisces, in about the year 150 BC, with the "Age of Aquarius" starting in AD 2600.
The myth of the Eternal Return is real. Precession takes roughly 26,000 years for a cycle about the ecliptic pole. The ecliptic North Pole corresponds to the Sun's North Pole. It is the pole of the path the Sun traces about the Earth in the course of the year. The placement of Draco focuses on the Sun, so spiritually the Dragon is associated with worship of the Sun.
Dragons that 'fought with the Sun' probably described the celestrial upheaval of large fearsome comets that streaked across the sky with their long tails. They appeared cyclically and broke up upon nearing the sun, some of which collided with Earth. Eclipses were also considered celestial battles between the dark and light. In ancient times the cataclysmic forces of nature were personified as a great cosmic dragon or serpent.
Many ancient mythologies, and many god-like characters who appear in world myth, owe their existence to cosmic disasters that occurred in our solar system and which were witnessed by the inhabitants of the Earth. The cataclysmic events (involving comets and exploding planets) were permanently archived in what we nowadays refer to as the "collective unconscious."
Dragons were deeply etched in the racial memory of all mankind. Draco in Latin, the Egyptians called the constellation Tanem, the Hebrews called it Tannim, and in Aramaic its name is Tannin. The ancient root, Tan- has been wrongly translated in the Bible as whale instead of dragon. Early astrologers believed that when a comet was located in the head of the dragon, that poison was scattered all over the world.
Decoding the sky meant connecting the dots of the starry constellations, making star maps, reproducing that heaven on earth in the form of sacred sites, and embodying it in sacred royal lineage. The most ancient lines are symbolically related to the circumpolar constellation Draco, the great Dragon or "crooked" Serpent (Babylonian Sir). The winged serpent was a symbol of the Gods of Egypt, Phoenicia, China, Persia, and Hindustan.
The serpent is set in the symbol of the "Chalice," or downward pointing triangle, that has long been a womb symbol. In the Far East, this symbol is known as the Yoni. The word "one" derives from this word denoting the female womb.
The title-page of St. Germain's triangular DRAGON BOOK mimics this Dragon in the downward-pointing triangle and describes magic, treasures and immortality. Ritual swallowing by the snake in the underworld led to the symbolic return to the embryonic state, rejuvination and rebirth in the mystery schools.
Roughly 3000 BC, the heavens revolved around the Great Dragon, and so did earthly civilization. Dragons became synonymous with immortality because the celestial dragon was exempt from the cycle of time and because the dragon lineage did not die but was preserved in the noble bloodline. The point of circumpolar rotation, inhabited by the star Thuban or not, became the "Eye of the Dragon". The stars were the witnesses or watchers - the seers. Egyptian rulers wore the Uraeus serpent (Wadjet) as their crown symbol of sovereignty (serpent of life), a link to the celestial Ouroborous.
The serpent cult worshipped the esoteric or inner sun, manifested as the biophotonic energy body. This inner light is the realization of our own connection to the greater universe, of our own inner balance and our own growth toward attune to or resonance with the world around us. It is also the part of ourselves and our outer world, which gives life, sustains and gives growth. The dragon and serpent cults inspired megalithic monuments, global dragon and serpent mounds. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolize this inner sun.
DRAGON CODE
The accepted theory that the serpent is evil cannot be substantiated. It has long been viewed as the emblem of immortality. It is the symbol of reincarnation, or metempsychosis, because it annually sheds its skin...It was also believed that snakes swallowed themselves, and this resulted in their being considered emblematic of the Supreme Creator, who periodically reabsorbed His universe back into Himself. In "Isis Unveiled," H. P. Blavatsky makes this significant statement concerning the origin of serpent worship: "Before our globe had become egg-shaped or round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or fire-mist, moving and writhing like a serpent. This, say the explanations, was the Spirit of God moving on the chaos until its breath had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its month--emblem of eternity in its spiritual and of our world in its physical sense" - Manly Palmer Hall (The Secret Teachings of All Ages)
The figure of Eve is based upon much older mythology and may be traced back to the ancient Mother Goddess or World Mother and the serpent cults of the pre-Biblical period. Closer examination of the name ‘Eve’ revealed her serpent origins, for the Hebrew for Eve is havvah, meaning ‘mother of all things,’ but also ‘serpent.’ Likewise, the Arabic words for ‘snake,’ ‘life,’ and ‘teaching,’ are closely related to the word or name “Eve’ – Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn (The Serpent Grail)
The priests of the Mysteries were symbolized as a serpent, sometimes called Hydra...The Serpent Kings reigned over the earth. It was these Serpent Kings who founded the Mystery Schools which later appeared as the Egyptian and Brahmin Mysteries...The serpent was their symbol...They were the true Sons of Light, and from them have descended a long line of adepts and initiates - Manly Palmer Hall
The Uraeus is a serpent issuing forth from the forehead of many gods being also an ornament of the royal crowns...The amulet of the serpent head is the symbol of the goddess Isis who is often represented by a serpent – Karel Weinfurter (Man’s Highest Purpose)
Dragon history is extensive and wide-spread, as almost every mythology has unique styles of dragon. The Sumerian word for dragon is "ushum". Chinese dragons date back to around 5,000 BCE. The Chinese believed that they were the "decendants of the dragons," too. Like comets, they could rise to the heavens or go to the bottom of the seas. Like Mesopotamian and Egyptian rulers, Chinese emperors were said to be sons of the dragons and wore special robes. The sign of the celestial dragon could only be worn by the emperor, and it was the sign of the ultimate power.
Japanese dragons are also linked to natural disasters. Floods were said to be commonly caused by Japanese dragons who were offended by mortals. The also were producers of the storms, and they were water-granting and water-producing creatures. In addition, heavenly dragons gaurded the palace of the gods. The earth dragons decided the course of the rivers, and the spiritual dragons bring the blessed rains. There were also the gaurdians of earthly treasures.
Egyptian dragons were both good and evil. In Egyptian history Osiris entered the serpent and emerged reborn and invigorated, and our European and American ancestors mimicked this belief. In all cases it was the wisdom of the serpent, which gave the strength to empower the individual to move on in life, as if born again. The dates of Egyptian myths vary, but they tend to be within 3,000 BCE and 2,000 BCE. The foremost dragon of Egypt is Apep. He has many other names, including the sea serpent. Holding a grudge against Ra, the sun god, Apep attempted to swallow him every night as he made his trip through the underworld. When he succeeded, an eclipse occured.
In contrast to Apep, there is Mehen, a serpent-dragon. Often, Mehen is depicted coiled around the Boat of the Sun, which Ra traveled upon nightly. He was a protectorate of Ra. Ra also encountered the Guardians of the Gates of the Underworld on his journey. Serpents were also known to watch the dead. Such were the laculi, the Egyptian Winged Serpent, which can often be found on the tombs of the departed. There was also Wadjet, who was also a symbol of rulership in addition to being a guardian. Often, Pharoahs would have her symbol upon their crowns.
The foremost Babylonian tale is Tiamat and Apsu, and they were the waters. Apsu was the sweet water while Tiamat was the salt waters, and together they created the gods. After a great struggle, Marduk emerged victorious over Tiamat and her monsters. He gathered all the monsters within his fish nets, and he cut Tiamat in half. With one half, he created the Earth; with the other he created the Heavens.
Epic of Gilgamesh, the most famous Babylonian tale, dates to 2000 BCE. In this Epic, the dragon known as Humbaba appears. Humbaba was a sort of dragon-mix, being that he had the body of a lion, but it was covered with horned scales. His claws and feet were that of a vulture, and his tail ended with the head of a snake. In addition, he had the horns of a bull on his head and walked upright.
Ophite (serpent worshiping) temples of Syria serpent worshippers were known as Hivites (linked with the root word hivvah which from which came the biblical name of Eve, equated with "female serpent"). In India serpent deities are known as the Naga. The physical snake renews and sloughs its skin and is thought to prevent and cure disease. The knowledge of amazing regenerative properties of the various parts of the snake have been discovered in hundreds of ancient medica materia, alchemical texts and hidden within folklore. The Native American medicine wheel echoes the circumpunct cross within a circle.
Somewhere around 250 AD, the Quetzalcoatl became a very important god to the Mayans and Aztecs. He did many things, and operated also under the names of Kukulkan, Ehecatl, and The Lord of the Dawn.
Serpent Mounds were subterranean passages that terminated at the ‘root of heaven’ – referred to as a ‘snake’s hole’ while snake heaven was Patala. Votan was only allowed entry because he was ‘the son of a snake’ from which we can infer he was an initiate in the serpent cult.
The venom of the snake was used as an Elixir to help prevent disease through boosting the immune system with high levels of protein. And secondly mixing the neurotoxic venom with the blood of the snake or mammalian host such as a horse brings on altered states of consciousness much akin to certain drugs used by shaman across the world from ancient times. Visions of ‘otherworlds’ seen in such trances are often depicted as tombs, wombs or caves, within which sometimes benevolent, sometimes terrible, serpents are encountered.
In any discussion of serpent wisdom we cannot fail to also mention the ancient Hindu Kundalini practice. Kundalini means simply "coiled serpent" and in the Indian system the ida and pingala energy (through serpent channels) are raised up and down the spine to raise the consciousness of the adept. The dual serpentine caduceus is known to all health practitioners the world over.
Daemon Est Deus Inversus
(Latin) Daemon is divinity inverted; more commonly, the Devil is God inverted. An ancient Hermetic, and later Qabbalistic, aphorism referring to that polar power which is required by the equilibrium and harmony in nature. The One, when manifested, becomes Two, and from the Two are unfolded or evolved all the sequence of manifest existence. Spirit and matter, good and evil, as distinct conceptions exist only by their mutual contrast. There is no evil per se, but the human notion of essential evil arises from our inability to take in the whole at a single glance.
Daemon is applicable in general to all formative power, from the highest to the lowest; in this aphorism it denotes the formative rays in their manifestation in and on the lower planes of prakriti, called by contrast the nether pole. Western monotheism, having anthropomorphized the higher creative powers into a personal God, personified the lower powers into a Devil and demons.
But Satan or the Adversary is only God's messenger, because what is below reflects what is above. This aphorism, then, states that all the manifested universe is the representation or material inversion or reflection of the divine essence and its emanations which in their aggregate compose the spiritual background and causal forces of the universe. Furthermore, a reflected image reverses.
Finally, the aphorism denotes the astral light, represented by a black triangle inverted on a white (SD 1:424).
Brainiac Gene http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14932330
Pre-diluvian theology was based on the observance and veneration of the stars, of the sun, the moon, and the zodiac. From its inception it was a stellar religion, an astro-theological gnosis - centered on the celestial pole of Draco.
The first written story linking dragons to deluge is Mesopotamian. But pre-history saw many catastrophes and floods. An extraterrestrial impact, possibly a comet, set off a 1,000-year-long cold spell and wiped out or fragmented the prehistoric Clovis culture and a variety of animals across North America almost 13,000 years ago.
The Clovis impact would have been felt in Europe and around the world. Reversal in the world's ocean currents [oceanic pump] and associated rapid global cooling caused the extinction of megafauna and the end of the Clovis Period. While generally accepted theory says glacial melting from the North American interior caused the shift in currents, the new proposal points to a large extraterrestrial object exploding above or even into the Laurentide ice sheet north of the Great Lakes. Immediate effects would have been to the north and east (of the impact site), producing shockwaves, heat, flooding, wildfires, and a reduction and fragmentation of the human population.
A Black Sea deluge is dated from 5900 BC to 9500 years ago. Gobekli Tepi is roughly 10,000 years old. Catal Huyuk flourished in 7000 BC. Widespread farming commenced around 4000 BC. though the neolithic Vinca farmed and also mined metals. Sumeria is dated as early as 5400 BC. with small towns and encampments back to 8000 BC. The Dragon culture travelled and spread cultural ideas. Various groups spread throughout Europe from 6000 to 8000 BC. The glacial-melt flood, including a massive one in the Altai basin sent the proto-Scythian and proto-European population migrating.
The suddeness and magnitude of this event, set off by glacial melt, is debated, but the results are not contested. All pre-flood coastal settlements were inundated. Some call it Noah's Flood, but that is more likely associated with the abyssal impact of a comet whose remains are seen in the Indian Ocean in Burckle Crater. This event coincides with the Enuma Elish and Epic of Gilgamesh.
The Enuma Elish, a Mesopotamian creation myth from around 1900 BCE, relates how the primordial waters of Tiamat, ‘she who bore them all,’ and Apsu, ‘their begetter . . . commingle as a single body,’ and thus become the sole matrix from which everything emerges. The verse accompanying the figure heightens the correspondence between the alchemical fountain and the hierogamy that produced all life: ‘We (waters) are the metal’s first nature and only source; the highest tincture of the Art is made through us.’
For uncounted Aeons, mankind witnessed the nightly drama of the heavenly bodies -- the fixed and wandering stars watched back. They rightly held it in awe, as periodically great catastrophes descended to Earth from the heavens. Eventually, an order was deduced from these nightly wanderings. Man sought to magically reflect this heavenly order on Earth and perhaps hold catastrophe at bay. The archetypal Pole of Light was the focus of this spiritually significant primordial observation. The Ouroborous serpent that bites its tail is the Milky Way.
The power behind the veil is the circumpolar Void, sometimes inhabited by a star, sometimes not. We now know the true center of our galaxy is a massive black hole, through which the galaxy consumes itself. Draconian magic is thus a Path into the Abyss to awaken the potential of life force -- initiation to awaken the gnostic seership of pineal vision and latent healing serpent power. It is also a royal bloodline, unbroken from pre-Diluvian times to today. In the beginning of the world, Winged Serpents reigned upon the Earth. These were the demigods which predate the historical civilization of every nation.
The first dragon story on record is found in the Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish. First called Labbu by the Sumerians in 3000 BC, this dragon came to be known as Tiamat when that civilization gave way to the Babylonians and their mythologies blended. Broken down, Tiamat’s name means “life-mother,” and this she-dragon was indeed the creator of all. Part animal, part serpent, and part bird, Tiamat, the spirit of chaos. Myths of the gods recount celestial events, including the breakup of a massive comet Encke into many fragments, just like Shoemaker-Levi which hit Jupiter.
Geo-climatologists found a huge climatic change around 3117 BC, called the Piora oscillation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piora_Oscillation
This abrupt change in the climate was probably caused by a massive meteorite swarm (”seven heads and ten horns“), possibly from the break-up of a great comet Encke (”the Red Dragon“) in the inner parts of the Solar system.
Archaeologists have confirmed the presence of a widespread layer of riverine silt deposits, shortly after the Piora Oscillation interrupting the sequence of settlement, that left a few feet of yellow sediment in the cities of Shuruppak and Uruk and extended as far north as Kish.
The recent detected undersea Burckle Crater,1500 kilometers Southeast of Madagascar could be the abyssal Impact crater of one of the parts of the Typhon. The Comet that crashed into the Sea caused massive rainstorms, Darkness and a huge tsunami with waves more than 200 meters high.
“The whole earth seethed, and sky and sea: and the long waves raged along the beaches round and about, at the rush of the deathless gods: and there arose an endless shaking.” (Hesiod, Theogeny).
At that time the Earth was also at the end of a 1500 year climate cycle caused by the Wobble of the Axis of the Earth. This cycle generates Earthquakes, rising of the sea level and a Sudden Change of the Climate. At that time the Earth was highly vulnerable. The huge impact of Comet Typhon triggered Earthquake-Storms all over the World.
Before the Flood things were very different. The Immortal Gods and the Humans lived for four thousand years between 7.000 BC and 3.000 BC in the Paradise of the Green Sahara The nice climate in the Sahara made it possible that fruits, plants and animals were so plentiful that there was no need to strive.
After 3117 BC the Green Sahara suddenly transformed into a Desert because the weather patterns on Earth changed completely.The survivors of the wandering communities of the hunter/gatherers had to move to more fertile places on Earth. They settled down at the oases in the desert and/or started to attack the groups that were able to live on fertile grounds. The peaceful time of the Green Sahara paradise, was suddenly disrupted.
About 3000 BC, a shift of power took place in the Near East, as the result of the immigration of large numbers of Semitic & Aryan tribes into the area. Out of the Green Sahara, Semitic tribes pushed, in several waves, into the area of the Fertile Crescent. These tribes were known by the Mesopotamians as Amurru (meaning “Westerners“).
After the Flood the Shaman of the Hunter/Gatherers were replaced by the priests of the ruling class, the Pharaohs. The priests of Nimrod blocked the connection with the Infinite Potential, created artificial scarcity, introduced the concept of Sin, started to divide and rule and transformed the Story of Maya, the Material World, into a Spiritual Story.
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW: The Fractal Field of Resonating Potential
The narrative of the Sky had to be a “rotating” cyclic narrative because the sky was in constant cyclic motion. Ancient tradition states that heavenly locations had earthly counterparts ("As Above, So Below"). The next step was to project this Narrative on the Sky using highly visible stars as a connection point. In the last step the Sky was projected unto Earth again.
Megaliths (”giant standing stones“, “menhirs“) and related constructions such as cairns and dolmens (chambers of stone), tumuli and barrows (ancient earthworks) and henges and circles were built by ancient man for purposes of Astronomy and Geodetics. Anyone having knowledge of the heavenly stars could thus find his way around on Earth by means of the megaliths, which served both as boundaries and landmarks.
When we measure the Earth in Egypt the number 26,400 miles appears which is the number of Years the Precession of the Equinox takes. A mile in distance upon the earth equals one year of precession, and one degree of distance on the earth, a 360th part of the circumference equals 72 years of Precession of Equinox. In Precession solar and galactic intentionality align.
The ancient Scientists not only created a highly advanced Navigation System and a Calendar, they also Mapped this System to a metric systemof Earth. This System was just like the Calendar and the Navigation System implemented all over the world. To Rule efficiently you have to Standardize to predict the future.
One of most important Cycles is called the Etanic Cycle In a 780 year period the earth wobbles above the equator to a max of (4) degrees, then wobbles back below the equator to a max of (4) degrees. The full cycle take 1560 years. The 1560 year wobble can be broken down into the four quadrants of 390 years, and to the Mayan Calendar eighth part of 130 years.
The constant movement by Earth above and below the equator shifts the exposure of different areas of the planet to annual sun light. It also generates a lot of Tectonic Stress (Earth Quake Storms) from the planet’s core to its surface.
The Etanic Cycle has a huge influence on the Climate. Climate changes shift populations of humans and herds all around the Globe. To Rule the World you have to know when the Big Troubles are Coming.
The year 3117 BC was a special year not only because of the special alignment of Sun and Earth. There are 5280 Feet to the Mile. This number is 0ne fifth of the duration of the Precession Cycle. The periodicity of the well-known Economic Kondratiev Cycle is 5280/100=52.8 years.
Synchromystic
The number Five is a very important number. It is the number of the Pentangle and the Quintessence (Chi, Ether, Prana). Five is the Number of the Center. The Ancient Scientists divided the Precession Cycle into Five Stages. The Stage that started at 3117 BC was the last Phase before a new Golden Age would start. It was the Fifth Age of the Precession. 3117 BC was the start of Human Civilization. It was the time of the Establishment of the Old Kingdom, the first Writing in Sumeria, and the first Stellar Observation Systems. The Hindu Kali Yuga (‘The Dark Age“) begins at this time as well.
Syncretism is the belief that the majority of the world’s religions can all be reconciled; that what they have in common is more than what they do not. Within syncretism is a feeling of harmony, unity, and overall love. Syncretism is not a modern belief, it was shared by ancient cultures – the most well-known being the cross-over gods between the Egyptians and Greeks and also the Celts and Romans.
They didn’t see anything wrong with this as either their beliefs, teachings, or their blood told them their gods are of the same origin. Some believe all gods originated from Africa, others the Middle East, and others yet from the Proto-Indo European. Put the cultures of these regions on a timeline and you’ll see that all of the above are right, they just represent different evolutionary periods through early pre-history.
Dragon Tracks - Precession Paradigm
The prime paradigm of each era is that of its Age. We might look at our emergent "apocalyptic" meme era as the Age of Revealing -- hopefully an era of more lucid understanding. On December 25, 3117 B.C. a total solar eclipse was visible at Sunrise at the Winter Solstice point, in the era of the global Dragon culture. This date is the Beginning of the Mayan Calendar. It is also the start of the Reign of Me-Sin or Menes, the first Pharaoh King that united Egypt.
The beginning of the new calendar marks the most important Geophysical Event of the past five millennia, the Great Flood. One of the causes of the Great Flood could be a close encounter of the earth with the comet, Typhon the Dragon.
Dragons are real and the basis of scientific priesthood and royal lineage. The sacred past is a story of sacred dragon or serpent worship. The triangular Dragon Book is essentially a magical astonomical text. Civilization was originally rooted in ancient prehistoric observations of the order of the stars. It tracked time and created calendars, and most importantly allowed predictions of eclipses rooted in the GREAT CYCLE of PRECESSION of the Zodiac, the serpentine ring of the Ecliptic.
The Center of the Universe, the Pole Star, as the most important point in the Universe. The Pole Star, the Hole in the Centre, was the entrance to the Other Worlds. Megalithic temples are tuned to this Great Cycle drama in the heavens. The "tuning and untuning of the sky" is an actual astronomical occurrence.
The Center of the Universe is not fixed. It moves around in a circle counter the Circle of the Zodiac. The Movement of the Center is called the Precession of the Equinox, and takes about 26,400 years. This movement was already known before the Great Flood occured. Plato called it the Great Year, and each of its "months" is a sign of the Zodiac.
Some 6,500 years ago the position of the equinoctial sun was aligned with the band of the Milky Way. This provided an obvious celestial alignment, occurring twice a year on the equinoxes, when the sun would conjunct the Milky Way -- the Bridge Out of Time -- opening the way out of the plane of the living (the zodiac) and up to the cosmic center and source in heaven. A "breaking asunder" occurred when this great cosmogonic picture began to precess out of alignment. Presumably, the "untuning of the sky" coincided with increasing social tension, leading to greater collective confusion and our descent into history.
The earth either wobbles in what is known as the Precession of the Equinox or orbits in a binary star system with the same observable result. This wobble take approximately 25,800 years to go from a beginning point and return to that point. But the earth doesn't really return to the exact point in space because of at least two other factors, the perihelion precession and the obliquity of the ecliptic. Simply put, The Sun appears (as viewed from the earth) to move backward through the stars at the rate of about 1 degree every 72 years.
Key numbers of Babylonian-Sumerian mathematics (including the sixty-based system still being used) were derived from astronomical observations, and yield the traditional estimate of precession: 108 x 4 x 60 = 25,920 years.The Cycle of the Precession was divided into twelve parts of 2200 years and related to the Zodiac. With every movement into a new part of the Zodiac, society was completely reorganized to the theme of the Sign of the Zodiac.
The huge precessional clock does not stop. The axis of the earth slowly changes its orientation in space - either directly due to a precession of earth's polar axis or indirectly as a result of our entire solar system moving around a point x in space.Earth is like a gyroscope. Earth is suppose to precess opposite to its direction of rotation. The period of its complete precession cycle is said to take about 25,800 years.
During this Great Year time period, Earth supposedly goes through one retrograding rotation relative to the inertial system of the fixed stars. An additional time interval of one year of about 365 days must occur simultaneously. But since this time interval cannot be substantiated by actual time measurement, the theory of the Earth's precession does not have a proven scientific foundation. But it was accepted by all cultures in antiquity.
Hamlet's Mill describes a cycle within the precessional shifting of the crossroads of ecliptic and equator. An archetypal triangle, a Grand Trine, is associated with Precession: the Trigon of the Great Conjunction. The revolution of that Trigon is built up by "Great Conjunctions" of Saturn and Jupiter. This Trigon of Great Conjunctions is an instrument by which one could "narrow down" the almost imperceptible tempo of the Precession. To move through the whole zodiac, one of the angles of the Trigon need approximately 3 x 794 1/3 = 2383 years. That comes tolerably near to one double-hour of the greatest "day" of the Precession of 25,900 years.
The Zodiac moved from Virgo to Leo (10.000 BC), from Cancer (8700 BC, Scarab, Kheper) to Gemini (6593 BC, Twins, the Two Kingsdoms), From Taurus (Bull, 4435 BC) to Aries (Ram, 2277 BC, Shepherd, Sheep, Khnum) and from Aries to Pisces (Fish, 155 BC) and is now moving into Aquarius. The Story of Religion also moved with the Signs of the Zodiac. A new zodiacal sign was termed to "rise" starting from the day of a great conjunction at the place of the "passage." Our own era, the Age of Pisces, started with a great conjunction in Pisces, in the year 6 B.C..
The identification of an "age" with a particular zodiac constellation is based on the sun's position during the vernal equinox. Before 2000 BC, the Sun could have been seen against the stars of the constellation of Taurus at the time of vernal equinox [had there been an eclipse]. Due to the precession of the equinoxes, on average every 2,160 years the Sun appears against the stars of a new constellation at vernal equinox. The current astrological age started when the equinox precessed into the constellation of Pisces, in about the year 150 BC, with the "Age of Aquarius" starting in AD 2600.
The myth of the Eternal Return is real. Precession takes roughly 26,000 years for a cycle about the ecliptic pole. The ecliptic North Pole corresponds to the Sun's North Pole. It is the pole of the path the Sun traces about the Earth in the course of the year. The placement of Draco focuses on the Sun, so spiritually the Dragon is associated with worship of the Sun.
Dragons that 'fought with the Sun' probably described the celestrial upheaval of large fearsome comets that streaked across the sky with their long tails. They appeared cyclically and broke up upon nearing the sun, some of which collided with Earth. Eclipses were also considered celestial battles between the dark and light. In ancient times the cataclysmic forces of nature were personified as a great cosmic dragon or serpent.
Many ancient mythologies, and many god-like characters who appear in world myth, owe their existence to cosmic disasters that occurred in our solar system and which were witnessed by the inhabitants of the Earth. The cataclysmic events (involving comets and exploding planets) were permanently archived in what we nowadays refer to as the "collective unconscious."
Dragons were deeply etched in the racial memory of all mankind. Draco in Latin, the Egyptians called the constellation Tanem, the Hebrews called it Tannim, and in Aramaic its name is Tannin. The ancient root, Tan- has been wrongly translated in the Bible as whale instead of dragon. Early astrologers believed that when a comet was located in the head of the dragon, that poison was scattered all over the world.
Decoding the sky meant connecting the dots of the starry constellations, making star maps, reproducing that heaven on earth in the form of sacred sites, and embodying it in sacred royal lineage. The most ancient lines are symbolically related to the circumpolar constellation Draco, the great Dragon or "crooked" Serpent (Babylonian Sir). The winged serpent was a symbol of the Gods of Egypt, Phoenicia, China, Persia, and Hindustan.
The serpent is set in the symbol of the "Chalice," or downward pointing triangle, that has long been a womb symbol. In the Far East, this symbol is known as the Yoni. The word "one" derives from this word denoting the female womb.
The title-page of St. Germain's triangular DRAGON BOOK mimics this Dragon in the downward-pointing triangle and describes magic, treasures and immortality. Ritual swallowing by the snake in the underworld led to the symbolic return to the embryonic state, rejuvination and rebirth in the mystery schools.
Roughly 3000 BC, the heavens revolved around the Great Dragon, and so did earthly civilization. Dragons became synonymous with immortality because the celestial dragon was exempt from the cycle of time and because the dragon lineage did not die but was preserved in the noble bloodline. The point of circumpolar rotation, inhabited by the star Thuban or not, became the "Eye of the Dragon". The stars were the witnesses or watchers - the seers. Egyptian rulers wore the Uraeus serpent (Wadjet) as their crown symbol of sovereignty (serpent of life), a link to the celestial Ouroborous.
The serpent cult worshipped the esoteric or inner sun, manifested as the biophotonic energy body. This inner light is the realization of our own connection to the greater universe, of our own inner balance and our own growth toward attune to or resonance with the world around us. It is also the part of ourselves and our outer world, which gives life, sustains and gives growth. The dragon and serpent cults inspired megalithic monuments, global dragon and serpent mounds. The most ancient initiatory and healing symbols, the circumpunct, a dot within a circle and/or a cross within a circle symbolize this inner sun.
DRAGON CODE
The accepted theory that the serpent is evil cannot be substantiated. It has long been viewed as the emblem of immortality. It is the symbol of reincarnation, or metempsychosis, because it annually sheds its skin...It was also believed that snakes swallowed themselves, and this resulted in their being considered emblematic of the Supreme Creator, who periodically reabsorbed His universe back into Himself. In "Isis Unveiled," H. P. Blavatsky makes this significant statement concerning the origin of serpent worship: "Before our globe had become egg-shaped or round it was a long trail of cosmic dust or fire-mist, moving and writhing like a serpent. This, say the explanations, was the Spirit of God moving on the chaos until its breath had incubated cosmic matter and made it assume the annular shape of a serpent with its tail in its month--emblem of eternity in its spiritual and of our world in its physical sense" - Manly Palmer Hall (The Secret Teachings of All Ages)
The figure of Eve is based upon much older mythology and may be traced back to the ancient Mother Goddess or World Mother and the serpent cults of the pre-Biblical period. Closer examination of the name ‘Eve’ revealed her serpent origins, for the Hebrew for Eve is havvah, meaning ‘mother of all things,’ but also ‘serpent.’ Likewise, the Arabic words for ‘snake,’ ‘life,’ and ‘teaching,’ are closely related to the word or name “Eve’ – Philip Gardiner and Gary Osborn (The Serpent Grail)
The priests of the Mysteries were symbolized as a serpent, sometimes called Hydra...The Serpent Kings reigned over the earth. It was these Serpent Kings who founded the Mystery Schools which later appeared as the Egyptian and Brahmin Mysteries...The serpent was their symbol...They were the true Sons of Light, and from them have descended a long line of adepts and initiates - Manly Palmer Hall
The Uraeus is a serpent issuing forth from the forehead of many gods being also an ornament of the royal crowns...The amulet of the serpent head is the symbol of the goddess Isis who is often represented by a serpent – Karel Weinfurter (Man’s Highest Purpose)
Dragon history is extensive and wide-spread, as almost every mythology has unique styles of dragon. The Sumerian word for dragon is "ushum". Chinese dragons date back to around 5,000 BCE. The Chinese believed that they were the "decendants of the dragons," too. Like comets, they could rise to the heavens or go to the bottom of the seas. Like Mesopotamian and Egyptian rulers, Chinese emperors were said to be sons of the dragons and wore special robes. The sign of the celestial dragon could only be worn by the emperor, and it was the sign of the ultimate power.
Japanese dragons are also linked to natural disasters. Floods were said to be commonly caused by Japanese dragons who were offended by mortals. The also were producers of the storms, and they were water-granting and water-producing creatures. In addition, heavenly dragons gaurded the palace of the gods. The earth dragons decided the course of the rivers, and the spiritual dragons bring the blessed rains. There were also the gaurdians of earthly treasures.
Egyptian dragons were both good and evil. In Egyptian history Osiris entered the serpent and emerged reborn and invigorated, and our European and American ancestors mimicked this belief. In all cases it was the wisdom of the serpent, which gave the strength to empower the individual to move on in life, as if born again. The dates of Egyptian myths vary, but they tend to be within 3,000 BCE and 2,000 BCE. The foremost dragon of Egypt is Apep. He has many other names, including the sea serpent. Holding a grudge against Ra, the sun god, Apep attempted to swallow him every night as he made his trip through the underworld. When he succeeded, an eclipse occured.
In contrast to Apep, there is Mehen, a serpent-dragon. Often, Mehen is depicted coiled around the Boat of the Sun, which Ra traveled upon nightly. He was a protectorate of Ra. Ra also encountered the Guardians of the Gates of the Underworld on his journey. Serpents were also known to watch the dead. Such were the laculi, the Egyptian Winged Serpent, which can often be found on the tombs of the departed. There was also Wadjet, who was also a symbol of rulership in addition to being a guardian. Often, Pharoahs would have her symbol upon their crowns.
The foremost Babylonian tale is Tiamat and Apsu, and they were the waters. Apsu was the sweet water while Tiamat was the salt waters, and together they created the gods. After a great struggle, Marduk emerged victorious over Tiamat and her monsters. He gathered all the monsters within his fish nets, and he cut Tiamat in half. With one half, he created the Earth; with the other he created the Heavens.
Epic of Gilgamesh, the most famous Babylonian tale, dates to 2000 BCE. In this Epic, the dragon known as Humbaba appears. Humbaba was a sort of dragon-mix, being that he had the body of a lion, but it was covered with horned scales. His claws and feet were that of a vulture, and his tail ended with the head of a snake. In addition, he had the horns of a bull on his head and walked upright.
Ophite (serpent worshiping) temples of Syria serpent worshippers were known as Hivites (linked with the root word hivvah which from which came the biblical name of Eve, equated with "female serpent"). In India serpent deities are known as the Naga. The physical snake renews and sloughs its skin and is thought to prevent and cure disease. The knowledge of amazing regenerative properties of the various parts of the snake have been discovered in hundreds of ancient medica materia, alchemical texts and hidden within folklore. The Native American medicine wheel echoes the circumpunct cross within a circle.
Somewhere around 250 AD, the Quetzalcoatl became a very important god to the Mayans and Aztecs. He did many things, and operated also under the names of Kukulkan, Ehecatl, and The Lord of the Dawn.
Serpent Mounds were subterranean passages that terminated at the ‘root of heaven’ – referred to as a ‘snake’s hole’ while snake heaven was Patala. Votan was only allowed entry because he was ‘the son of a snake’ from which we can infer he was an initiate in the serpent cult.
The venom of the snake was used as an Elixir to help prevent disease through boosting the immune system with high levels of protein. And secondly mixing the neurotoxic venom with the blood of the snake or mammalian host such as a horse brings on altered states of consciousness much akin to certain drugs used by shaman across the world from ancient times. Visions of ‘otherworlds’ seen in such trances are often depicted as tombs, wombs or caves, within which sometimes benevolent, sometimes terrible, serpents are encountered.
In any discussion of serpent wisdom we cannot fail to also mention the ancient Hindu Kundalini practice. Kundalini means simply "coiled serpent" and in the Indian system the ida and pingala energy (through serpent channels) are raised up and down the spine to raise the consciousness of the adept. The dual serpentine caduceus is known to all health practitioners the world over.
Daemon Est Deus Inversus
(Latin) Daemon is divinity inverted; more commonly, the Devil is God inverted. An ancient Hermetic, and later Qabbalistic, aphorism referring to that polar power which is required by the equilibrium and harmony in nature. The One, when manifested, becomes Two, and from the Two are unfolded or evolved all the sequence of manifest existence. Spirit and matter, good and evil, as distinct conceptions exist only by their mutual contrast. There is no evil per se, but the human notion of essential evil arises from our inability to take in the whole at a single glance.
Daemon is applicable in general to all formative power, from the highest to the lowest; in this aphorism it denotes the formative rays in their manifestation in and on the lower planes of prakriti, called by contrast the nether pole. Western monotheism, having anthropomorphized the higher creative powers into a personal God, personified the lower powers into a Devil and demons.
But Satan or the Adversary is only God's messenger, because what is below reflects what is above. This aphorism, then, states that all the manifested universe is the representation or material inversion or reflection of the divine essence and its emanations which in their aggregate compose the spiritual background and causal forces of the universe. Furthermore, a reflected image reverses.
Finally, the aphorism denotes the astral light, represented by a black triangle inverted on a white (SD 1:424).
Brainiac Gene http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14932330
Greek Myths
Art by Iona Miller
Cataclysms of the Greeks
In Plato’s Timaeus, the myth of Phaethon is followed by the story of Atlantis – the island-continent that sank into the sea following a cataclysm of earthquakes and floods. The story, according to Plato, was true. But in what sense was it true? In search of an answer to this ever perplexing mystery, and curious to learn more about the foundations of Western philosophy, I initiated a study into the ancient Greek myths in their entirety. The result is my new book 'The Atlantis Secret' (to be published 8th October 2001) which not only contains a complete decoding of the Atlantis story, but also a complete decoding of all Greek myths, mysteries and mysticism.
What is the link between Atlantis and the Greek myths? The answer, in a nutshell, is that they all convey a true story about cataclysms. A few examples will set the scene.
In Hesiod’s Theogony, the creation of the Universe stemmed from an original fall of the sky, when Ouranos, the ‘Mountain of Heaven’, descended and impregnated Gaia, Mother Earth. In Hesiod’s words: ‘Great Ouranos came, bringing on Night, and desirous of love, he spread himself over Gaia (Earth), stretched out in every direction.’
As a result of this impregnation, terrible monsters were born inside the womb of Gaia, causing her to groan as a result of the ‘tight-pressed’ forces inside her. One of these Titans-gods was Kronos, who castrated Ouranos and ascended to heavenly Mount Olympus to become its new ruler. Hesiod then goes on to describe Kronos impregnating Gaia (in her name of Rhea), after which there occurred a cataclysmic struggle between the Titans of Kronos and an alliance of gods led by Zeus:
‘The Hundred-handers then engaged the Titans in grim slaughter, with sheer cliffs in their stalwart hands... the boundless sea roared terribly round about, the Earth crashed loudly, and the broad Heaven quaked and groaned. Tall Olympus was shaken to its foundations by the onrush of the immortals; the heavy tremors from their feet reached misty Tartarus, as did the shrill din of the indescribable onset and the powerful bombardment. So it was when the two sides discharged their woe-laden missiles at each other.’
The battle raged on, finely poised, until Zeus himself entered the affray. He plunged down from Olympus (where he had been acting as cupbearer to Kronos) and threw his whole might against the Titans:
‘With continuous lightning flashes Zeus went, and the bolts flew thick and fast amid thunder and lightning from his stalwart hand, trailing holy flames. All around, the life-bearing Earth rumbled as it burned... The whole land was seething, and the streams of Oceanus, and the undraining sea. The hot blast enveloped the chthonic Titans; the indescribable flames reached the divine heavens... it was just as if Earth and the broad Heaven above were coming together.’
As a result of this battle, Kronos and his Titans were deposed from Olympus and consigned to Tartarus (the innermost depths of the Earth). Included among these Titans were the four brothers Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoitios, who provide yet further examples of cataclysmic thought in Greek religion.
Atlas, for example, was confined at the ends of the Earth, where Zeus forced him to support the Heaven, either with his head, hands and shoulders, or in the form of Mount Atlas, or by supporting the pillars ‘that hold Earth and Heaven together in opposition’. Atlas’ role was to maintain the world order of Zeus by preventing the Heaven from collapsing again onto the Earth. Clearly, the idea of cataclysms was fundamental to the Greek view of the cosmos.
The myths of Prometheus provide further grist to the cataclysmic mill. According to Hesiod, Zeus had chained Prometheus to a pillar and sentenced him to an eternity of torture by an eagle. But this age-old tale was elaborated upon later by the dramatist Aeschylus, who described how Zeus had chained Prometheus to ‘the Caucasus Mountain’, and plunged it into the Underworld amidst earthquakes, thunderbolts and violent storms, which shook the foundations of Heaven and Earth. Prometheus would remain in the Underworld for an eternity, or at least until the end of the age when a further cataclysm might elevate him from the murky depths.
The concept of world ages was of tremendous importance in the Greek myths. The first world age had begun when Ouranos impregnated Gaia and then returned to Heaven, taking up residence on Mount Olympus. The second world age had been instigated when Kronos castrated Ouranos and replaced him upon Mount Olympus. And the third world age had begun when Zeus deposed Kronos (it was made ever lasting after he vanquished Typhoeus and the Giants).
Significantly, each of these world ages began with, and was ended by, a cataclysm. And it was hinted that the present world age, too, might be ended by a cataclysm, which would herald another new age in the cycle.
In parallel with these world ages were the ages of man. According to Hesiod, the present race of man (the iron race) had been preceded by three earlier races – the golden race, the silver race, and the bronze race respectively. Each of these three peoples had been destroyed by cataclysms, at the command of the gods, the most recent of which had been the flood of Deucalion. The disappearance of Atlantis, rather intriguingly, was dated by Plato to the third cataclysm before this flood of Deucalion.
The Deucalion myth is perhaps the best known of all the Greek cataclysm myths, owing to its resemblance to the Noah’s Ark story. Curiously, in the Greek myth, the hero Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha renew the race of man not by sexual means, but by throwing stones. The idea, as I explained in my book 'When The Gods Came Down' (2000), was that meteorites had been the seed of mankind – a further example of cataclysmic thought in the Greek myths.
In the light of this, it is no coincidence that Hesiod linked the battle of Zeus and the Titans to the founding of a meteorite cult. Kronos, he said, had swallowed the meteorite, but had been forced by Zeus to eject it, whereupon Zeus fixed it in the Earth at Delphi ‘to be a monument and a thing of wonder for mortal men’. This famous meteorite was known to the Greeks as ‘the great navel-stone of the Earth’.
Comets and Cataclysms
In recent decades, a number of eminent Hellenists, notably Walter Burkert and Martin West, have built up a mountain of evidence linking the Greek myths to the much older myths of the Near East, Mesopotamia in particular. It is their firmly held opinion that the Greek myths belong to an earlier time and to an earlier place.
Might the Greek myths reflect cataclysms from an earlier epoch? As readers of my previous books 'The Phoenix Solution' and 'When The Gods Came Down' will be well aware, the myths of Egypt and Mesopotamia are indeed pervaded by cataclysmic ideas. One thinks, for example, of the Babylonian Enuma Elish in which Marduk defeats the sky-goddess Tiamat. Or the Akkadian myths in which Ninurta defeats the evil god Zu. Or the Deluge myths in The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atra-Hasis Epic. Or the myths of the sky falling and the gods descending from Heaven – these being widespread in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. Whilst the oldest versions of these myths date to around 2350-2000 BC, it is surely the case that they herald from the very earliest periods of Egyptian and Sumerian civilisations.
What inspired such ideas? The answer, almost certainly, is man’s experiences with comets, bolides and meteorites. In a series of recent studies, the scientists Victor Clube and Bill Napier have argued that Encke’s Comet and the Taurid meteor stream are the remnants of a huge comet, Proto-Encke, that broke apart in our solar system around eighty thousand years ago. In their 1990 book 'The Cosmic Winter', Clube and Napier plotted a series of dates at which the Earth’s orbit would have been intersected by the orbit of the comet’s debris, producing a high risk of cataclysmic collisions.
Significantly, one of these dates, c. 3900-3600 BC, marked the formative phase of the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations. I cite Clube and Napier’s description of what ancient man would have witnessed in the skies: ‘The slow evolution of the cometary orbits ensures that, at a few brief epochs in the past, the orbital tracks of the major comet and Earth intersected. Close encounters with a major, active fragment, over those centuries, must have been spectacular if not terrifying, with the comet nucleus, brighter than Venus, crossing the sky in a few hours, accompanied by a complex, striated red tail bisecting the sky.
Meteor storms of ferocious intensity, recurring annually when the Earth crossed the debris of the comet, must have taken place during those epochs, the shooting stars blazing out from a small region of sky in Taurus or Aries. On some such occasions the sky must have been filled with brilliant fireballs, such storms lasting for several hours. Some of these fireballs would on occasion reach the upper atmosphere or the ground, and there would be explosions – there could be no doubting the association of these spectacular phenomena with the supreme being in the sky.’
In Clube and Napier’s theory, we have a catalyst and a time scale that provides a very plausible explanation for the cataclysmic ideas in ancient religion and myths. And yet, if we are yet to make sense of it all, there remains one vital puzzle piece that still needs to be grasped.
The Exploded Planet Hypothesis
It is all very well proposing that historical comets were the trigger for cataclysmic myths, but the fact of the matter is that ancient myths rarely describe cataclysms in historical terms. Rather, the fundamental theme, shared by the myth-makers of Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia, was that the cataclysms occurred at the beginning of time, when the seeds of life were first sown in the Earth. It follows, by definition, that these cataclysms could not have been witnessed by any man and thus should not be described as historical cataclysms. On the contrary, they may best be described as mythical cataclysms – imaginary events which, even so, were held to be true as a matter of unquestioning faith (a perfect analogy, here, is the modern concept of the Big Bang). The point is fundamentally important and yet, until now, it seems to have eluded everybody.
What appears to have happened is that ancient man witnessed cataclysms, such as those triggered by Comet Proto-Encke, and then drew upon those experiences to generate a hypothesis concerning the beginning of the world and the origins of life. The outcome of these deliberations, revealed in my books 'The Phoenix Solution' and 'When The Gods Came Down', was the Exploded Planet Hypothesis – the idea that a living planet had exploded and sown the seeds of life in the Earth. But this hypothesis then became a dogma in the hands of the Egyptians and Sumerians, whose religions may best be described as ‘Exploded Planet cults’. Just as Christians, today, believe that Jesus died on the cross and came back to life again, so did the Egyptians and Sumerians believe that a living planet had died in Heaven and come back to life again.
Because the Exploded Planet was, by nature, invisible, ancient peoples worshipped it by means of visible symbols (such as the Sun, Moon and stars) and thereby sowed the seeds for later confusion. Nevertheless, the myth-makers made sure that the ‘true story’ of the Exploded Planet would never be forgotten. It shows through, for example, in the belief in Heaven as an Earth-like planet (particularly evident in Egyptian tombs), and in the description of Heaven and Earth as ‘twins’, and in the use of identical metaphors to refer to both Heaven and Earth.
The same ilk of clues feature in the Greek myths, too. In Theogony, Hesiod referred to Ouranos, the ‘Mountain of Heaven’, as ‘one equal to’ Gaia, the Earth, implying that Ouranos, too, was a planet. And in the Iliad, Homer had Zeus boast of how he could reconstitute an Earth-like planet in Heaven:
“Or come on, try it, gods... Hang a golden rope down from Heaven, and all you gods and goddesses take hold of it: but you could not pull Zeus down from Heaven to the ground... But whenever I had a mind to pull in earnest, I could haul you up, earth and sea and everything; then I could hitch the rope on the peak of Olympus, so that everything, once more, should hang in mid-air.”
Whether Homer knew it or not, he had described the Exploded Planet to a tee, as indeed would several famous philosophers of the 6th-4th centuries BC.
Anaximander, for example, described how all things had begun with the tearing apart of a mysterious mass called ‘the Unlimited’. A nuclear reaction inside the Unlimited had caused it to produce a sphere of flame which first surrounded it and then exploded into rings of fire. These rings of fire had then fallen to Earth and become buried in the Underworld, whence they gave birth to the fiery lights of the heavens – the Sun, Moon and stars.
Empedocles, in a similar vein, described how all things had begun with a God-Sphere, which had been torn apart by the forces of Strife. ‘Strife waxed mightily in the members of the Sphere’, he said: ‘they all trembled in turn.’ As a result of this discord, the elements of earth, air, fire and water had been born, culminating in all material things on the Earth.
Anaxagoras, meanwhile, suggested that, at the beginning of time, the Universe had tilted towards the south ‘in order that some parts might become uninhabitable and others habitable’. Thus his famous line: ‘All things were together’. After a visit to Egypt, he returned to Greece to declare that meteorites had seeded the beginning of all life on Earth.
And then there was Plato, the author of the Atlantis story. In his famous Theory of Forms, he envisaged all things on Earth as being corrupt copies of perfect originals which existed in the heavenly ‘world of Forms’. This world of the perfect archetypes was an invisible, metaphysical construct, which lay beyond the visible heavens. In Phaedo, Plato described it explicitly as an Earth-like planet, which he called ‘the true Heaven, the true Light and the true Earth’. Scholars, by their own admission, have been baffled by these ideas, but it must be said that the Theory of Forms is the Exploded Planet cult to a tee.
Many of Plato’s ideas were Pythagorean in origin, and it is no coincidence that a Pythagorean theory of cosmogony dominates Plato’s Timaeus, in which the story of Atlantis is told. Here, the ‘world of Forms’ is personified by the Demiourgos (God) who creates the visible Universe as a sphere in his own spherical image. The story is a cosmogonical riddle, intended for initiates who had the ‘eyes to see’ and the ‘ears to hear’. But what, we might ask, is it doing in the middle of the story about Atlantis?
The answer, revealed in 'The Atlantis Secret', is that Atlantis was no lost continent or lost civilisation, but something far more important – a metaphor for the lost planet that stood at the heart of the ancient religions. How did this metaphor work? The answer is not immediately obvious, and I would rather not give the game away in this article lest I spoil the fun for the reader of my book. Suffice to say, however, that Plato was no historian or geographer, but a mystic. Therefore, when he declared that the story of Atlantis was ‘true’, he had a mystical ‘truth’ in mind. To Plato, the true Atlantis lay in Heaven, in the invisible world of God and the gods.
Cataclysms of the Greeks
In Plato’s Timaeus, the myth of Phaethon is followed by the story of Atlantis – the island-continent that sank into the sea following a cataclysm of earthquakes and floods. The story, according to Plato, was true. But in what sense was it true? In search of an answer to this ever perplexing mystery, and curious to learn more about the foundations of Western philosophy, I initiated a study into the ancient Greek myths in their entirety. The result is my new book 'The Atlantis Secret' (to be published 8th October 2001) which not only contains a complete decoding of the Atlantis story, but also a complete decoding of all Greek myths, mysteries and mysticism.
What is the link between Atlantis and the Greek myths? The answer, in a nutshell, is that they all convey a true story about cataclysms. A few examples will set the scene.
In Hesiod’s Theogony, the creation of the Universe stemmed from an original fall of the sky, when Ouranos, the ‘Mountain of Heaven’, descended and impregnated Gaia, Mother Earth. In Hesiod’s words: ‘Great Ouranos came, bringing on Night, and desirous of love, he spread himself over Gaia (Earth), stretched out in every direction.’
As a result of this impregnation, terrible monsters were born inside the womb of Gaia, causing her to groan as a result of the ‘tight-pressed’ forces inside her. One of these Titans-gods was Kronos, who castrated Ouranos and ascended to heavenly Mount Olympus to become its new ruler. Hesiod then goes on to describe Kronos impregnating Gaia (in her name of Rhea), after which there occurred a cataclysmic struggle between the Titans of Kronos and an alliance of gods led by Zeus:
‘The Hundred-handers then engaged the Titans in grim slaughter, with sheer cliffs in their stalwart hands... the boundless sea roared terribly round about, the Earth crashed loudly, and the broad Heaven quaked and groaned. Tall Olympus was shaken to its foundations by the onrush of the immortals; the heavy tremors from their feet reached misty Tartarus, as did the shrill din of the indescribable onset and the powerful bombardment. So it was when the two sides discharged their woe-laden missiles at each other.’
The battle raged on, finely poised, until Zeus himself entered the affray. He plunged down from Olympus (where he had been acting as cupbearer to Kronos) and threw his whole might against the Titans:
‘With continuous lightning flashes Zeus went, and the bolts flew thick and fast amid thunder and lightning from his stalwart hand, trailing holy flames. All around, the life-bearing Earth rumbled as it burned... The whole land was seething, and the streams of Oceanus, and the undraining sea. The hot blast enveloped the chthonic Titans; the indescribable flames reached the divine heavens... it was just as if Earth and the broad Heaven above were coming together.’
As a result of this battle, Kronos and his Titans were deposed from Olympus and consigned to Tartarus (the innermost depths of the Earth). Included among these Titans were the four brothers Atlas, Prometheus, Epimetheus and Menoitios, who provide yet further examples of cataclysmic thought in Greek religion.
Atlas, for example, was confined at the ends of the Earth, where Zeus forced him to support the Heaven, either with his head, hands and shoulders, or in the form of Mount Atlas, or by supporting the pillars ‘that hold Earth and Heaven together in opposition’. Atlas’ role was to maintain the world order of Zeus by preventing the Heaven from collapsing again onto the Earth. Clearly, the idea of cataclysms was fundamental to the Greek view of the cosmos.
The myths of Prometheus provide further grist to the cataclysmic mill. According to Hesiod, Zeus had chained Prometheus to a pillar and sentenced him to an eternity of torture by an eagle. But this age-old tale was elaborated upon later by the dramatist Aeschylus, who described how Zeus had chained Prometheus to ‘the Caucasus Mountain’, and plunged it into the Underworld amidst earthquakes, thunderbolts and violent storms, which shook the foundations of Heaven and Earth. Prometheus would remain in the Underworld for an eternity, or at least until the end of the age when a further cataclysm might elevate him from the murky depths.
The concept of world ages was of tremendous importance in the Greek myths. The first world age had begun when Ouranos impregnated Gaia and then returned to Heaven, taking up residence on Mount Olympus. The second world age had been instigated when Kronos castrated Ouranos and replaced him upon Mount Olympus. And the third world age had begun when Zeus deposed Kronos (it was made ever lasting after he vanquished Typhoeus and the Giants).
Significantly, each of these world ages began with, and was ended by, a cataclysm. And it was hinted that the present world age, too, might be ended by a cataclysm, which would herald another new age in the cycle.
In parallel with these world ages were the ages of man. According to Hesiod, the present race of man (the iron race) had been preceded by three earlier races – the golden race, the silver race, and the bronze race respectively. Each of these three peoples had been destroyed by cataclysms, at the command of the gods, the most recent of which had been the flood of Deucalion. The disappearance of Atlantis, rather intriguingly, was dated by Plato to the third cataclysm before this flood of Deucalion.
The Deucalion myth is perhaps the best known of all the Greek cataclysm myths, owing to its resemblance to the Noah’s Ark story. Curiously, in the Greek myth, the hero Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha renew the race of man not by sexual means, but by throwing stones. The idea, as I explained in my book 'When The Gods Came Down' (2000), was that meteorites had been the seed of mankind – a further example of cataclysmic thought in the Greek myths.
In the light of this, it is no coincidence that Hesiod linked the battle of Zeus and the Titans to the founding of a meteorite cult. Kronos, he said, had swallowed the meteorite, but had been forced by Zeus to eject it, whereupon Zeus fixed it in the Earth at Delphi ‘to be a monument and a thing of wonder for mortal men’. This famous meteorite was known to the Greeks as ‘the great navel-stone of the Earth’.
Comets and Cataclysms
In recent decades, a number of eminent Hellenists, notably Walter Burkert and Martin West, have built up a mountain of evidence linking the Greek myths to the much older myths of the Near East, Mesopotamia in particular. It is their firmly held opinion that the Greek myths belong to an earlier time and to an earlier place.
Might the Greek myths reflect cataclysms from an earlier epoch? As readers of my previous books 'The Phoenix Solution' and 'When The Gods Came Down' will be well aware, the myths of Egypt and Mesopotamia are indeed pervaded by cataclysmic ideas. One thinks, for example, of the Babylonian Enuma Elish in which Marduk defeats the sky-goddess Tiamat. Or the Akkadian myths in which Ninurta defeats the evil god Zu. Or the Deluge myths in The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Atra-Hasis Epic. Or the myths of the sky falling and the gods descending from Heaven – these being widespread in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Egypt. Whilst the oldest versions of these myths date to around 2350-2000 BC, it is surely the case that they herald from the very earliest periods of Egyptian and Sumerian civilisations.
What inspired such ideas? The answer, almost certainly, is man’s experiences with comets, bolides and meteorites. In a series of recent studies, the scientists Victor Clube and Bill Napier have argued that Encke’s Comet and the Taurid meteor stream are the remnants of a huge comet, Proto-Encke, that broke apart in our solar system around eighty thousand years ago. In their 1990 book 'The Cosmic Winter', Clube and Napier plotted a series of dates at which the Earth’s orbit would have been intersected by the orbit of the comet’s debris, producing a high risk of cataclysmic collisions.
Significantly, one of these dates, c. 3900-3600 BC, marked the formative phase of the Sumerian and Egyptian civilisations. I cite Clube and Napier’s description of what ancient man would have witnessed in the skies: ‘The slow evolution of the cometary orbits ensures that, at a few brief epochs in the past, the orbital tracks of the major comet and Earth intersected. Close encounters with a major, active fragment, over those centuries, must have been spectacular if not terrifying, with the comet nucleus, brighter than Venus, crossing the sky in a few hours, accompanied by a complex, striated red tail bisecting the sky.
Meteor storms of ferocious intensity, recurring annually when the Earth crossed the debris of the comet, must have taken place during those epochs, the shooting stars blazing out from a small region of sky in Taurus or Aries. On some such occasions the sky must have been filled with brilliant fireballs, such storms lasting for several hours. Some of these fireballs would on occasion reach the upper atmosphere or the ground, and there would be explosions – there could be no doubting the association of these spectacular phenomena with the supreme being in the sky.’
In Clube and Napier’s theory, we have a catalyst and a time scale that provides a very plausible explanation for the cataclysmic ideas in ancient religion and myths. And yet, if we are yet to make sense of it all, there remains one vital puzzle piece that still needs to be grasped.
The Exploded Planet Hypothesis
It is all very well proposing that historical comets were the trigger for cataclysmic myths, but the fact of the matter is that ancient myths rarely describe cataclysms in historical terms. Rather, the fundamental theme, shared by the myth-makers of Greece, Egypt and Mesopotamia, was that the cataclysms occurred at the beginning of time, when the seeds of life were first sown in the Earth. It follows, by definition, that these cataclysms could not have been witnessed by any man and thus should not be described as historical cataclysms. On the contrary, they may best be described as mythical cataclysms – imaginary events which, even so, were held to be true as a matter of unquestioning faith (a perfect analogy, here, is the modern concept of the Big Bang). The point is fundamentally important and yet, until now, it seems to have eluded everybody.
What appears to have happened is that ancient man witnessed cataclysms, such as those triggered by Comet Proto-Encke, and then drew upon those experiences to generate a hypothesis concerning the beginning of the world and the origins of life. The outcome of these deliberations, revealed in my books 'The Phoenix Solution' and 'When The Gods Came Down', was the Exploded Planet Hypothesis – the idea that a living planet had exploded and sown the seeds of life in the Earth. But this hypothesis then became a dogma in the hands of the Egyptians and Sumerians, whose religions may best be described as ‘Exploded Planet cults’. Just as Christians, today, believe that Jesus died on the cross and came back to life again, so did the Egyptians and Sumerians believe that a living planet had died in Heaven and come back to life again.
Because the Exploded Planet was, by nature, invisible, ancient peoples worshipped it by means of visible symbols (such as the Sun, Moon and stars) and thereby sowed the seeds for later confusion. Nevertheless, the myth-makers made sure that the ‘true story’ of the Exploded Planet would never be forgotten. It shows through, for example, in the belief in Heaven as an Earth-like planet (particularly evident in Egyptian tombs), and in the description of Heaven and Earth as ‘twins’, and in the use of identical metaphors to refer to both Heaven and Earth.
The same ilk of clues feature in the Greek myths, too. In Theogony, Hesiod referred to Ouranos, the ‘Mountain of Heaven’, as ‘one equal to’ Gaia, the Earth, implying that Ouranos, too, was a planet. And in the Iliad, Homer had Zeus boast of how he could reconstitute an Earth-like planet in Heaven:
“Or come on, try it, gods... Hang a golden rope down from Heaven, and all you gods and goddesses take hold of it: but you could not pull Zeus down from Heaven to the ground... But whenever I had a mind to pull in earnest, I could haul you up, earth and sea and everything; then I could hitch the rope on the peak of Olympus, so that everything, once more, should hang in mid-air.”
Whether Homer knew it or not, he had described the Exploded Planet to a tee, as indeed would several famous philosophers of the 6th-4th centuries BC.
Anaximander, for example, described how all things had begun with the tearing apart of a mysterious mass called ‘the Unlimited’. A nuclear reaction inside the Unlimited had caused it to produce a sphere of flame which first surrounded it and then exploded into rings of fire. These rings of fire had then fallen to Earth and become buried in the Underworld, whence they gave birth to the fiery lights of the heavens – the Sun, Moon and stars.
Empedocles, in a similar vein, described how all things had begun with a God-Sphere, which had been torn apart by the forces of Strife. ‘Strife waxed mightily in the members of the Sphere’, he said: ‘they all trembled in turn.’ As a result of this discord, the elements of earth, air, fire and water had been born, culminating in all material things on the Earth.
Anaxagoras, meanwhile, suggested that, at the beginning of time, the Universe had tilted towards the south ‘in order that some parts might become uninhabitable and others habitable’. Thus his famous line: ‘All things were together’. After a visit to Egypt, he returned to Greece to declare that meteorites had seeded the beginning of all life on Earth.
And then there was Plato, the author of the Atlantis story. In his famous Theory of Forms, he envisaged all things on Earth as being corrupt copies of perfect originals which existed in the heavenly ‘world of Forms’. This world of the perfect archetypes was an invisible, metaphysical construct, which lay beyond the visible heavens. In Phaedo, Plato described it explicitly as an Earth-like planet, which he called ‘the true Heaven, the true Light and the true Earth’. Scholars, by their own admission, have been baffled by these ideas, but it must be said that the Theory of Forms is the Exploded Planet cult to a tee.
Many of Plato’s ideas were Pythagorean in origin, and it is no coincidence that a Pythagorean theory of cosmogony dominates Plato’s Timaeus, in which the story of Atlantis is told. Here, the ‘world of Forms’ is personified by the Demiourgos (God) who creates the visible Universe as a sphere in his own spherical image. The story is a cosmogonical riddle, intended for initiates who had the ‘eyes to see’ and the ‘ears to hear’. But what, we might ask, is it doing in the middle of the story about Atlantis?
The answer, revealed in 'The Atlantis Secret', is that Atlantis was no lost continent or lost civilisation, but something far more important – a metaphor for the lost planet that stood at the heart of the ancient religions. How did this metaphor work? The answer is not immediately obvious, and I would rather not give the game away in this article lest I spoil the fun for the reader of my book. Suffice to say, however, that Plato was no historian or geographer, but a mystic. Therefore, when he declared that the story of Atlantis was ‘true’, he had a mystical ‘truth’ in mind. To Plato, the true Atlantis lay in Heaven, in the invisible world of God and the gods.
Trail of the Dragon
The mystery of the origins of the red dragon symbol, now on the flag of Wales, has perplexed many historians, writers and romanticists, and the archæological community generally has refrained from commenting on this most unusual emblem, claiming it does not concern them. In the ancient Welsh language it is known as 'Draig Goch' - 'red dragon', and in "Y Geiriadur Cymraeg Prifysgol Cymru", the "University of Wales Welsh Dictionary", (Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 1967, p. 1082) there are translations for the various uses of the Welsh word 'draig'. Amongst them are common uses of the word, which is today taken just to mean a 'dragon', but in times past it has also been used to refer to 'Mellt Distaw' - (sheet lightning), and also 'Mellt Didaranau' - (lightning unaccompanied by thunder).
But the most interesting common usage of the word in earlier times, according to this authoritative dictionary, is 'Maen Mellt' the word used to refer to a 'meteorite'. And this makes sense, as the Welsh word 'maen' translates as 'stone', while the Welsh word 'mellt' translates as 'lightning' - so literally a 'lightning-stone'. That the ancient language of the Welsh druids has words still in use today which have in the past been used to describe both a dragon and also a meteorite, is something that greatly helps us to follow the destructive 'trail of the dragon' as it was described in early Welsh 'riddle-poems'.
This is especially true of the "Hanes Taliesin", a riddle-poem that is so full of astronomical terms it is obvious that they were deliberately used by the composer - but to what end? Could they have been used to encode a druidic astro-mythology that was accessible only to 'initiates'?
In the mid 6th. century A.D. the ancient Cymric empire of the native Britons, that at one time had stretched from Cornwall in the south to Strathclyde in the north, was rapidly diminishing. And it was at this time that the bard who called himself Taliesin (radiant brow) first read his riddle-poem, "Hanes Taliesin" ("The History of Taliesin"), to King Maelgwn Gwynedd, who, like the bard, had been a student of St Illtud at the ancient druid college, later called Llanilltud Fawr, in Morganwg. Was King Maelgwn Gwynedd the only one in his 6th century Conwy Eisteddfod who was meant to understand the riddle-poem?. Or was it also a gathering of initiates from all over the island?
Of comparatively recent origin on the Welsh national flag, the association of the dragon with the country of Wales dates much further back - to the start of the European ‘Dark Age’; the times of King Arthur and the enigmatic Merlyn, neither of whom have ever been proven to be definitively mythical nor historical characters.
The exact nature and sequence of events in the mid-6th. century A.D. that gave rise to the period we refer to as the European ‘Dark Age’ is still a matter for speculation amongst historians and archæologists. Over the past 20 years or so, certain paleo-climatologists have begun comparing notes with archæologists and astronomers, and interestingly, in the absence of written records, many have begun to look a little more closely at mythology in their efforts to corroborate the findings of their researches. While much of this recent bout of inter-disciplinary brainstorming has focussed on the 6th.C. AD start of the European Dark Age, earlier dates are also of great interest to those embroiled in this veritable ‘paradigm shift’.
Archæologist and Dendrochronologist, Mike Baillie, of Queens University, Belfast, has compiled a '7,500-year tree-ring chronology' of Irish bog oaks, which offers an accurate picture of the weather on a year-by-year basis throughout those millennia. His 1999 book, "Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets", traces the history of cometary dust-trail activity from those epochs by the indicators evident in 'narrowest tree-ring events'. And this has been looked at in much greater detail over the past six years, culminating in his September 2005 book, "The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology", co-authored with QUB colleague, Patrick McCafferty.
Each year a tree puts on another ring, and the better the weather preferred by the tree, the wider the ring for that year. One of the most striking features of this most accurate of dating methods is its ability to detect past climatic downturns evident in the narrow tree-rings that bunch together over several consecutive years - indicating poor annual growth and an environmental downturn.
Beginning in the year A.D. 536, and continuing through until A.D. 545, the dendrochronology record reveals a dramatic ‘narrowest-rings event’ that is corroborated by some of the findings of the Greenland Ice Sheet Projects. There, a significant absense of any tell-tale volcanic ‘acid spike’ in the ice-cores record suggests an altogether different cause - dustloading of the stratosphere by minute particles of dust and other cometary debris.
Climatologists and astronomers concur that this event bears all the hallmarks of a 'cosmic winter’ scenario - when dust in the stratosphere blots out the Sun, lowering the global temperature, hindering plant growth and in so doing undermining agricultural societies.
This has happened a number of times as a result of volcanic eruptions, but it can also result from ‘dust-loading’ of the stratosphere caused when the Earth’s orbital path encounters the trails of cometary debris that literally boils off the ice-and-rubble comets as they approach the Sun on their journeys through our solar system. Indeed, recently, on September 3rd, 2004, a small asteroid which disintegrated in the stratosphere above Antarctica deposited sufficient micron-sized dust particles to cause ‘local cooling, and much speculation as to the possible effects on the ozone layer.
Much of the make-up of comets is sub-micron dust along with frozen water, methane and other gasses, as well as various organic molecules, pebbles, stones, and boulders of metal and rocks measuring from a few feet wide to bolides many miles in diameter. The dust in small quantities burns up harmlessly as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere giving rise to what we term ‘shooting stars’, with larger grains often providing the most spectacular multiple ‘fireball’ displays. Much denser cometary debris trails can over-load the upper atmosphere with ‘dust veils’, both locally and globally, causing ‘cosmic winters’ similar to those caused by volcanic activity, and nuclear war scenarios.
The larger rocks and boulders can bombard the Earth causing impact craters that throw their ejected debris up into the atmosphere with much the same effect. While air-bursting meteorites can cause huge fireballs and intense blast waves that can devastate thousands of square miles around the area of detonation, as happened in the Tunguska region of Siberia on the 30th of June 1908.
In recent years certain astronomers have increasingly come to appreciate that encoded in the folklore and mythologies of many cultures are the accurate observations of ancient skywatchers. Almost all tell of times when death and mass destruction came from the skies, events that are often portrayed as ‘celestial battles’ between what they variously depicted as ‘the Gods’. And curiously the imagery in these ‘myths’ have many common features, even between the mythologies of cultures widely spaced in time and location.
For example, in Appendix 1 of Basil Clarke’s 1973 translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Vita Merlini” ("Life of Merlyn"), he comments on the Lailoken tales, and the particular story of the encounter with St Kentigern. It is believed that Lailoken and Merlyn were really the same character - Lailoken in the Scottish tradition, and Merlyn in the Welsh. Having rushed out of the woods a naked and hairy madman, Lailoken/Merlyn is asked by St Kentigern what has driven him to “...wander alone in this lonely place and keep company with the beasts of the woods”[1].
He replies to St. Kentigern that he felt great guilt, because he believed he had been the cause of the many deaths resulting from the battle of Arfderydd, saying:
“In that fight the sky began to split above me, and I heard a tremendous din, a voice from the sky saying to me, ‘Lailochen, Lailochen, because you alone are responsible for the blood of all these dead men, you alone will bear the punishment for the misdeeds of all. For you will be given over to the angels of Satan, and until the day of your death you will have communion with the creatures of the wood.’ But when I directed my gaze towards the voice I heard, I saw a brightness too great for human senses to endure. I saw, too, numberless martial battalions in the heaven like flashing lightning, holding in their hands fiery lances and glittering spears which they shook most fiercely at me.”[2]
In Welsh Merlyn is called Myrddyn, and the Welsh town of Carmarthen is called in Welsh, CaerFyrddyn, meaning 'the fortress of Merlyn'. Some fifteen miles or so northeast of Carmarthen is an oddly-named place called Llwyn Wormwood - odd because in Welsh there is a word for wormwood, 'wermod', and because this is in one of the least anglicised areas of rural Wales.
Another place called Llwyn Wormwood is situated just over 10 miles to the southeast, not far from the Welsh market town of Llandovery. Could these places shed any new light on the Merlyn ‘vision’ referred to in the Basil Clarke 1973 translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Vita Merlini” ("Life of Merlyn")? And more importantly, was the character known as Merlyn a witness to the mid-6th century event evident in the tree-ring record?
Since the spectacular events of July 16 1994, when the newly discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which had split into more than twenty pieces as it passed Jupiter in 1993, had returned to bombard Jupiter’s surface over the following few days, astronomers have speculated nervously at the probable fate of our own civilisation had those impacts happened with planet Earth instead ...
The number of known impact craters on Earth is growing all the time as satellite imaging technology advances, and the growing list of impact sites dated from the current inter-glacial period in which we live (the Holocene) leaves even the most ardent of catastrophist sceptics in no dount that it has happened many times before - and it most certainly will again ...
Over the past decade or more, astronomers have taken ever more seriously the very real threat from Earth-crossing asteroids and from cometary debris trails. In January 2000 the British government commissioned a report into the threat from Near Earth Objects (NEOs), the report was published in August 2000. The setting up of the commission of enquiry was the result of continuous lobbying by a growing inter-disciplinary body of concerned astronomers, climatologists, archæologists, anthropologists and geologists.
Certain of them have moved towards looking for the recollections of ancient bombardment events in the mythologies and oral traditions of the world’s many past cultures. These endeavours have brought to the surface many similar tales to that of the ‘Vision of Merlyn' described above, and in many geographically widespread cultures of the archaic world.
In particular, the collection of ancient Chinese astronomical observations contained in the wooden chronicle known as the "Bamboo Annals" have been shown to contain many details of comets, fireballs, and especially planetary conjunctions, the accuracy of which can now be verified by the ability to re-create the ancient skies presented by recent advances in computer technology. Some modern astronomers find this ancient archive invaluable, and have been using it to correlate the ‘observations’ made by the skywatchers of contemporary cultures in other parts of the world.
Likewise, the Sumerian cuneiform tablets have been shown to have accurately recorded these most terrifying of ‘temporary celestial events’, while classical writings such as the "Epic of Gilgamesh", and numerous passages from the "Old Testament", continue to be decoded in similar astronomical fashion. In the "Book of Revelations" (Ch8 vs. 10-11), there is mention of star named ‘Wormwood’, which makes the waters bitter, creating a wasteland similar to the ‘wastelands’ of Arthurian legend. Many now believe that this was a reference to a future encounter with a comet, whose past catastrophic encounters, and 'periodic return', may have been well known to John of Patmos, the author of the "Book of Revelations".
The ancient Chinese depicted comets as ‘fiery dragons’ flying across the sky. Increasingly, anthropologists, archæologists and now also astronomers, are speculating that the ‘plumed serpent’ of the Aztecs and the Mayans, and the many tales of ‘winged serpents’ in the traditions of numerous other ancient peoples, may also be referring to comets or large asteroids that in the past had disintegrated in the upper atmosphere producing enormous ‘fireballs’, reminiscent of the spectacularly terrifying and destructive multiple bombardments of past epochs. As the 'smoke trails' left by these fireballs begin to break up, distorted by air currents in the atmosphere, they take on the eerie appearance of a snake - a veritable 'serpent in the sky'.
Victor Clube and Bill Napier, for the frontispiece plate of their ground-breaking book, "The Cosmic Serpent", about the past and present threat to our planet from bombardments of cometary debris, used a nineteenth-century French caricature of a comet tearing the Earth apart. Along with it were the words:
Dis (evil) aster (star)
Despite their being two of the world's leading astro-physicists, in Chapter 8 of the book they laid out the reasons for their comprehensive study of world mythologies, where they found numerous examples of 'cometary imagery' in the ancient myths of many peoples:
"The earliest recorded myths are those of combat, between a god or hero and a dragon. The dragon was a familiar figure in Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Babylon, India, China, North America and elsewhere. Usually, he has the form of a winged serpent. He is a gigantic monster; he spouts fire and smoke; bellows and hisses; he throws rocks, and is the creator or terrible destruction; and his home is in the sky."
The description of the end of Atlantis given by Plato in the "Timaeus" and "Critias" dialogues bears striking resemblance to what many scientists are now agreed would be the inevitable result of an oceanic impact by a disintegrating comet or large asteroid. The resultant 'tsunami', or tidal waves, would easily reach 2000 ft. high as they approached land, wiping out any and all coastal settlements. The deluge traditions, of which there are literally hundreds worldwide, appear in this light to be variations on Plato’s account, and could even be actual observation-based tales, eye-witness accounts of the same, or similar, events.
Another good example of this is the 'myth' about the winged horse, Pegasus, who is said to have been conceived when his mother, the once beautiful Medusa, was overwhelmed in a tidal wave caused by the passion of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea and storms. Exactly which 'celestial event’ this may eventually be shown to refer to is a matter for conjecture, but possibly the most famous legend about Pegasus might give a lead.
Bellerophon was ancient Corinth’s most famous hero, and he was set the task of slaying the Chimera - a monster variously described as having 'the body of a goat, the tail of a dragon, and the head of a lion, which belched out sulphur, smoke and flames' . In order to help Bellerophon to overcome the Chimera, the goddess Athena gave him a golden bridle with which to tame Pegasus, which he then rode across the skies to southern Turkey where the Chimera had her cave, not far from the modern border with northern Syria.
The constellation of Pegasus can be found in the northern sky above Pisces, in the direction of Andromeda, and there is evidence that the bright blue-white star, Markab, which marks the horse’s shoulder, was important to ancient skywatchers, as was the red giant star, Scheat, which marks the horse’s leg. Whether the legend of Pegasus, Bellerophon and the Chimera is simply an invented folk tale as some would believe, or a descriptive observation of cometary activity in that part of the ancient heavens, we will probably not know until astronomers produce a plausible model, retro-calculated for those times.
Another possible example of a temporary celestial event encoded in mythology, and one often quoted in this context, is the story of the constellation Eridanus - known to the Babylonians as the ‘river of the night’. This is one of the longest constellations in the sky, starting at the feet of Orion, which can be seen in both hemispheres, and winding down almost to the celestial South Pole. Only the stars Acamar and Zaurak can easily be seen from northern latitudes, while Achernar, the ninth brightest star in the heavens, can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a blue giant star known as ‘the end of the river’, and is invisible even in the Mediterranean area.
It was commonplace in many ancient cultures to regard all celestial phenomena as having their earthly counterparts, and vice versa. So the Babylonians had their terrestrial River Eridanus, and in their mythology, as with others in the Mediterranean area, Phaethon, the foolish son of the Sun god, Helios, pleaded with his father to allow him to drive his blazing chariot across the sky for one day:
“With the inexperienced hands of Phaethon on the reins, the Sun's bright horses bolted through the heavens, scorching the Earth and drying up the rivers. North Africa was turned into the Sahara, and to save the universe, which would have been destroyed by flames, Zeus struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt, and he plunged headlong, like a shooting star, into the waters of the Eridanus far below, his auburn hair aflame.”
There are many similar legends, oral traditions, and later written mythologies describing temporary celestial events in this manner. And, it is simply because these were ‘temporary' celestial events that they were regarded as important enough to be worth recording, and passing on to future generations, orally at first, then later in writing which was inevitably 'encoded' from our modern perspective.
There is ample archæological evidence that ancient peoples worldwide were preoccupied with events in the skies, and almost all the various megalithic structures that have survived the past several millennia, on all continents, show remarkable degrees of astronomical observation to have been considered in their siting and construction. Combined with the ancient traditions of ‘death and destruction coming from the skies', many of which appear contemporaneous with the periods of the building of many of these structures, one possible motivation of the megalith builders could well have been to predict the imminent return of these periodic meteor storms and accompanying fireball events. The most likely of all motives being simply that of 'fear'.
The sheer terror at past bombardments, and the very real fear of future bombardments, would certainly have preoccupied those societies that had experienced the destructiveness of such catastrophic encounters. Given that astronomers and climatologists now concur such meteoritic bombardments and ‘dust veils’ can cause abrupt climate changes, cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunami, bringing famine, pestilence and plague that can destroy whole civilisations, it is little wonder that there are ample indications in the dendrochronology records of numerous past events.
Yet there is sparse archæological evidence available at present. Or more likely the evidence exists but is not recognised as such by archæologists. This is due in no small part to the resistance within the archæological community to attempts at the revision of current models of prehistory that is called for in the light of this new inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the past in the context of a 'catastrophically dynamic solar system history'. Regrettably, there are still many in the archæological community who continue to resist the very idea that ancient peoples were competent skywatchers. Critics often point to obscure computer models purporting to show that, at some date or another, one celestial body or another will be seen to rise or set at 'any' orientation in an easterly or westerly direction.
Sadly this misses the point altogether. Oral traditions, rituals and mythologies of many ancient cultures often focus on 'specific marker stars' and constellations, whose rising heralded the imminent solsticial and equinoctial sunrises. The same is true of other stars and constellations that were of great significance to those particular cultures. But, much more importantly, when the major bombardments had ceased to be a regular occurrence, certain 'marker stars' and star groups, for example The Pleiades, may well have signalled the rising of the ‘radiants’ of the greatly-feared daytime Taurid meteor storms, especially if they were the last feint stars to be seen just before sunrise.
But it is not only in mythology that we find hints of major traumatic periods in the history of human civilisation. The chroniclers of old recorded troubled times at the very same epochs that the tree-rings tell their story of environmental downturns which had dramatic effects on human populations. The dendrochronology records show narrowest-ring events at 3195 BC, 2345 BC, 1628 BC, 1159 BC, 207 BC, and at AD 536-545 - the start of the ‘European Dark Age’. In fact, many researchers in a variety of the historical sciences now believe that the widespread and simulataneous collapse of Bronze Age societies around the world came about as a result of our planet's encounters with cometary debris streams, and the decoding of astronomical observations in the mythologies of classical times is playing a major role.
Gildas, who was writing at approximately 540 AD, says that the island of Britain was on fire from sea to sea " ... until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island and was licking the western ocean with its fierce red tongue."[5] . While in "The Life of St. Teilo" contained in the "Llandaf Charters", of St. Teilo, who had recently been made Bishop of Llandaf Cathedral in Morganwg, South Wales, it says:
" ... however he could not long remain, on account of the pestilence which nearly destroyed the whole nation. It was called the Yellow Pestilence, because it occasioned all persons who were seized by it to be yellow and without blood, and it appeared to men a column of a watery cloud, having one end trailing along the ground, and the other above, proceeding in the air, and passing through the whole country like a shower going through the bottom of valleys. Whatever living creatures it touched with its pestiferous blast, either immediately died, or sickened for death ... and so greatly did the aforesaid destruction rage throughout the nation, that it caused the country to be nearly deserted". [6]
St. Teilo is recorded as having left South Wales for Brittany to escape the Yellow Pestilence, and that it lasted for some 11 years. It was at this time that the Saxons returned, reportedly unopposed, into the eastern areas of the 'Arthurian wastelands’, begging the question, could the ‘vision’ of Myrddin (Merlyn) have been of a fiery comet - later depicted as a red dragon? Owen Morien Morgan’s “History of Wales” gives the dates for the birth of St. Kentigern as AD 514, with his death at AD 601. So it is quite plausible that 'Merlyn’s vision’ could well refer to a ‘temporary celestial event’ that was the cause of the climatic downturn evident in the ‘narrowest tree-ring' chronologies for AD 536 to 545.
The French archæologist, Marie-Agnes Courty, presented a paper at the Society for Inter-Disciplinary Studies’ July 1997 conference at Cambridge University, in which she first detailed the findings of excavations at a site in northern Syria, at Tell Leilan. This was the first time ever that an archæological excavation had been initiated where the main purpose was to examine the stratigraphical record of the area with a view to searching for evidence of ‘scorched earth’ due to a suspected episode of extra-terrestrial ‘fireball bombardment'.
She and her team found much evidence of microscopic glass spherules typical of melted sand and rock which is caused by the intense heat resulting from an asteroid impact or air-burst. She recommended further excavations there and at other sites. It would make sense that attention should be focussed on sites once occupied at dates where the tree-ring chronologies show evidence of abrupt climate changes - as at Tell Leilan in northern Syria, where the ‘burn event’ has now been dated by Courty as immediately prior to 2345 BC, a ‘narrowest tree-ring’ date.
Another increasingly important criteria that should be considered when defining ideal sites for conducting such excavations are that these could well benefit from being undertaken in areas where ancient traditions tell of ‘celestial battles between the gods', and/or are in the areas where events such as the 'Merlyn vision' may have occurred. The problem, though, is one of adequately localising these myths, and identifying appropriate sites of ancient settlement at specific dates indicated in the dendrochronology records to excavate.
One such site is St. Peter’s Church on Mynydd Y Gaer (Fortress Mountain), in Morganwg, South Wales. An excavation at the church in 1990 directed by Dr Eric Talbot, who for 22 years was head of Glasgow University’s Archæology Dept., uncovered evidence that human bones had been found " ... melted onto the stones ... " [7]. St. Peter’s Church is just 11½ miles from Llandaf Cathedral, but is situated atop one of the many mountains in South Wales, and they would have taken the brunt of any cometary fireball bombardment, with the valleys below possibly being devastated by heavy drifting clouds of sulphurous gases (fire and brimstone?).
The resultant crop failures would have brought famine, mass migrations of the survivors, and outbreaks of diseases which could easily have reached plague proportions given that combination of circumstances. Certainly these events are remembered in the traditions and folklore of the area.
Though little recognised now, this area of South Wales had been an important administrative centre for quite some time before the Romans came, and continued to be so up until the ‘event’ that gave rise to the 'Yellow Pestilence' in the mid-6th century AD. It marked the seat of the Kings of Morganwg (called by the Romans, Siluria) - an area that at one time stretched from the river Severn in the east, to Caerfyrddyn in the southwest.
But Morganwg was just one kingdom in a vast Cymric (Welsh) empire in early Britain that at one time had reached as far as Strathclyde, where the Lailoken version of the 'Merlyn Vision’ had its location. This ‘empire’ had been jointly administered from Wroxeter, now on the Welsh/English border, as well as from sites in Morganwg to the south. So important had Wroxeter been prior to the Roman invasion, that after capturing it they built Watling Street directly to it.
Following the circa AD 540 ‘event’, Wroxeter fell into disuse, as did the sites in Morganwg. None of them ever recovered, and it would seem that if it was a bombardment of fireballs with cometary dust-loading the upper atmosphere that caused the death and destruction at the start of the European ‘Dark Age’, then it covered a vast area of the island of Britain. And, as this ‘climatic downturn’ is recorded in the Irish and in the German bog-oak dendrochronologies, it is becoming apparent that the area affected covered a wide swathe of northwestern Europe as well - and probably even much further afield.
Astrophysicist, Victor Clube - whose books "Cosmic Serpent" and "Cosmic Winter" (co-authored with Bill Napier, now at Armagh Observatory) initiated the recent refocussing of astronomers on comets, asteroids, and especially dust-veils of cometary debris - has recently put forward a new model for a dynamic history of the solar system over the past 20,000 to 30,000 years. At some stage early on in this period they believe a giant comet entered the solar system, and after destabilising due to a sun-grazing orbit, was involved in a close encounter with the planet Mercury around 5,000 years ago. This ended its sun-grazing status, and it broke up producing the batch of meteoroid streams, or trails, known as the Taurid Complex. The orbital path of the Earth encounters this complex twice annually in June (daytime Taurids) and again in early November.
The postulated bombardments and dust-veils at around 3195 BC, another narrowest tree-ring date, would have wreaked havoc on both the local and global climate, and any and all cultures affected would have taken many decades, maybe even centuries, to recover. The sheer terror that 'multiple-Tunguska-class fireballs' would have instilled into the peoples of those times would have understandably motivated them towards building some form of observatories to help predict future meteor showers/storms as a matter of perceived urgency.
Stage I of the building of Stonehenge - the bank and ditch ‘henge’ itself - began within about 150 years of this. The gap in the henge to the north-east, as viewed from the centre, would have marked the direction from where the comet Encke would have appeared to rise around the Midsummer Solstice at that time. This theme was explored by the noted astronomer, Duncan Steel, at the July 1997 IIS Cambridge Conference. In the abstract of his paper entitled, "Before The Stones: Stonehenge I As A Cometary Catastrophe Predictor?", Dr Steel wrote:
"Astronomical hypotheses for the purpose(s) of megalithic monuments have mostly been implicitly based upon an assumption that the designers witnessed the same phenomena as those we observe in the sky today. This assumption is not well-based for phenomena having time-constants of order centuries or millennia, such as the populations of comets and meteoroids in the inner solar system and the ephemeral meteor showers and storms which they produce on the Earth. IRAS observations have indicated that Comet Encke has a trail (not tail) of debris some tens of millions of kilometres long, presumably produced since its latest period of activity began about 200 years ago.
One may further presume that the Taurid meteor showers we observe in this epoch are the result of the dispersal of trails produced in previous activity cycles which must stretch back to about 20,000 yr ago. When the comet, accompanied by such a trail, has a node close to 1 AU, one expects intense meteor storms to occur, perhaps accompanied by multiple Tunguska-type events if the disintegrating comet spawns massive lumps of debris.
Determination of the epochs of such events from backwards integrations is impossible due to (i) Chaotic orbital evolution; and (ii) Non-gravitational forces, but pairs of intersections (one at the ascending node, the other descending) are to be expected a few centuries apart and separated by 2500-3000 years. It is suggested here that one such pair occurred in 3600-3500 and 3200-3100 BC, provoking the construction of the Great Cursus and Stonehenge I.
From Stonehenge I, apparently the first construction at the famous site, as the comet neared the Earth it would have appeared to rise in the evening with a huge bright stripe crossing much of the sky, originating in the north-east. Passage through the trail would then result in celestial fireworks (and maybe worse); afterwards the comet and trail would have passed in the direction of the Sun, partially blocking sunlight for a few days.
In order for terrestrial intersection to have occurred in that epoch (late fourth millennium BC) the mean orbital period of the comet over the past 5,000 years would need to have been slightly less than at present, and might then be expected to have produced a 19 year periodicity in meteor storm events (six cometary periods).
It is suggested that Stonehenge I was built by the Windmill Hill people to allow the prediction of such events, from which they hid in the shelters we now call long- and round-barrows, and that the later developments at Stonehenge (phases II and II) by the Beaker people were a result of a misinterpretation of the original purpose of the site in terms of lunar and solar observations, a misinterpretation which was re-discovered by Newham, Hawkins and Hoyle in the 1960's." .
Meteor showers and storms are named after the constellations they appear to emanate from, hence the Taurid meteors appear to emanate from a ‘radiant’ within the constellation of Taurus. According to the Clube/Napier model, the Earth’s last major Taurid Complex encounter was between the two centuries A.D. 400 to 600.
If a comet, later depicted by various cultures around the globe as a 'fiery dragon', did indeed enter the solar system at some stage during the past 30,000 years, it may well have broken up into several smaller comets, each leaving trails of debris comprising both sub-micron dust and bolides many miles in diameter. Given that some 71% of the surface of our planet is covered with shallow seas and deeper oceans, the likelihood of oceanic impacts is much greater than that on dry land, and episodes of bombardment arising from this scenario are the likely origin of the many ‘deluge’ traditions that survive around the world. And, if this were the case, it would seem logical that from impact craters and ‘burnt earth’ deposits in stratigraphic layers, the “trail of the dragon” can be successfully followed through many millennia.
Encouragingly, these trails can be followed not just by the study of these physical evidences alone, but also by a thorough re-investigation of astronomically-encoded, myths, legends and oral traditions of many past cultures. Further analysis of the enigmatic astronomically-orientated megalithic structures left by the survivors of those cultures that past celestial bombardments have left devastated, could also provide useful data about the areas of the sky to which those survivors paid particular attention. Predicting the periodic returns of the comets and cometary debris trails responsible for the bombardments would have become the top prority - after immediate food and shelter needs, for any and all survivors ...
But the most interesting common usage of the word in earlier times, according to this authoritative dictionary, is 'Maen Mellt' the word used to refer to a 'meteorite'. And this makes sense, as the Welsh word 'maen' translates as 'stone', while the Welsh word 'mellt' translates as 'lightning' - so literally a 'lightning-stone'. That the ancient language of the Welsh druids has words still in use today which have in the past been used to describe both a dragon and also a meteorite, is something that greatly helps us to follow the destructive 'trail of the dragon' as it was described in early Welsh 'riddle-poems'.
This is especially true of the "Hanes Taliesin", a riddle-poem that is so full of astronomical terms it is obvious that they were deliberately used by the composer - but to what end? Could they have been used to encode a druidic astro-mythology that was accessible only to 'initiates'?
In the mid 6th. century A.D. the ancient Cymric empire of the native Britons, that at one time had stretched from Cornwall in the south to Strathclyde in the north, was rapidly diminishing. And it was at this time that the bard who called himself Taliesin (radiant brow) first read his riddle-poem, "Hanes Taliesin" ("The History of Taliesin"), to King Maelgwn Gwynedd, who, like the bard, had been a student of St Illtud at the ancient druid college, later called Llanilltud Fawr, in Morganwg. Was King Maelgwn Gwynedd the only one in his 6th century Conwy Eisteddfod who was meant to understand the riddle-poem?. Or was it also a gathering of initiates from all over the island?
Of comparatively recent origin on the Welsh national flag, the association of the dragon with the country of Wales dates much further back - to the start of the European ‘Dark Age’; the times of King Arthur and the enigmatic Merlyn, neither of whom have ever been proven to be definitively mythical nor historical characters.
The exact nature and sequence of events in the mid-6th. century A.D. that gave rise to the period we refer to as the European ‘Dark Age’ is still a matter for speculation amongst historians and archæologists. Over the past 20 years or so, certain paleo-climatologists have begun comparing notes with archæologists and astronomers, and interestingly, in the absence of written records, many have begun to look a little more closely at mythology in their efforts to corroborate the findings of their researches. While much of this recent bout of inter-disciplinary brainstorming has focussed on the 6th.C. AD start of the European Dark Age, earlier dates are also of great interest to those embroiled in this veritable ‘paradigm shift’.
Archæologist and Dendrochronologist, Mike Baillie, of Queens University, Belfast, has compiled a '7,500-year tree-ring chronology' of Irish bog oaks, which offers an accurate picture of the weather on a year-by-year basis throughout those millennia. His 1999 book, "Exodus to Arthur: Catastrophic Encounters with Comets", traces the history of cometary dust-trail activity from those epochs by the indicators evident in 'narrowest tree-ring events'. And this has been looked at in much greater detail over the past six years, culminating in his September 2005 book, "The Celtic Gods: Comets in Irish Mythology", co-authored with QUB colleague, Patrick McCafferty.
Each year a tree puts on another ring, and the better the weather preferred by the tree, the wider the ring for that year. One of the most striking features of this most accurate of dating methods is its ability to detect past climatic downturns evident in the narrow tree-rings that bunch together over several consecutive years - indicating poor annual growth and an environmental downturn.
Beginning in the year A.D. 536, and continuing through until A.D. 545, the dendrochronology record reveals a dramatic ‘narrowest-rings event’ that is corroborated by some of the findings of the Greenland Ice Sheet Projects. There, a significant absense of any tell-tale volcanic ‘acid spike’ in the ice-cores record suggests an altogether different cause - dustloading of the stratosphere by minute particles of dust and other cometary debris.
Climatologists and astronomers concur that this event bears all the hallmarks of a 'cosmic winter’ scenario - when dust in the stratosphere blots out the Sun, lowering the global temperature, hindering plant growth and in so doing undermining agricultural societies.
This has happened a number of times as a result of volcanic eruptions, but it can also result from ‘dust-loading’ of the stratosphere caused when the Earth’s orbital path encounters the trails of cometary debris that literally boils off the ice-and-rubble comets as they approach the Sun on their journeys through our solar system. Indeed, recently, on September 3rd, 2004, a small asteroid which disintegrated in the stratosphere above Antarctica deposited sufficient micron-sized dust particles to cause ‘local cooling, and much speculation as to the possible effects on the ozone layer.
Much of the make-up of comets is sub-micron dust along with frozen water, methane and other gasses, as well as various organic molecules, pebbles, stones, and boulders of metal and rocks measuring from a few feet wide to bolides many miles in diameter. The dust in small quantities burns up harmlessly as it enters the Earth’s atmosphere giving rise to what we term ‘shooting stars’, with larger grains often providing the most spectacular multiple ‘fireball’ displays. Much denser cometary debris trails can over-load the upper atmosphere with ‘dust veils’, both locally and globally, causing ‘cosmic winters’ similar to those caused by volcanic activity, and nuclear war scenarios.
The larger rocks and boulders can bombard the Earth causing impact craters that throw their ejected debris up into the atmosphere with much the same effect. While air-bursting meteorites can cause huge fireballs and intense blast waves that can devastate thousands of square miles around the area of detonation, as happened in the Tunguska region of Siberia on the 30th of June 1908.
In recent years certain astronomers have increasingly come to appreciate that encoded in the folklore and mythologies of many cultures are the accurate observations of ancient skywatchers. Almost all tell of times when death and mass destruction came from the skies, events that are often portrayed as ‘celestial battles’ between what they variously depicted as ‘the Gods’. And curiously the imagery in these ‘myths’ have many common features, even between the mythologies of cultures widely spaced in time and location.
For example, in Appendix 1 of Basil Clarke’s 1973 translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Vita Merlini” ("Life of Merlyn"), he comments on the Lailoken tales, and the particular story of the encounter with St Kentigern. It is believed that Lailoken and Merlyn were really the same character - Lailoken in the Scottish tradition, and Merlyn in the Welsh. Having rushed out of the woods a naked and hairy madman, Lailoken/Merlyn is asked by St Kentigern what has driven him to “...wander alone in this lonely place and keep company with the beasts of the woods”[1].
He replies to St. Kentigern that he felt great guilt, because he believed he had been the cause of the many deaths resulting from the battle of Arfderydd, saying:
“In that fight the sky began to split above me, and I heard a tremendous din, a voice from the sky saying to me, ‘Lailochen, Lailochen, because you alone are responsible for the blood of all these dead men, you alone will bear the punishment for the misdeeds of all. For you will be given over to the angels of Satan, and until the day of your death you will have communion with the creatures of the wood.’ But when I directed my gaze towards the voice I heard, I saw a brightness too great for human senses to endure. I saw, too, numberless martial battalions in the heaven like flashing lightning, holding in their hands fiery lances and glittering spears which they shook most fiercely at me.”[2]
In Welsh Merlyn is called Myrddyn, and the Welsh town of Carmarthen is called in Welsh, CaerFyrddyn, meaning 'the fortress of Merlyn'. Some fifteen miles or so northeast of Carmarthen is an oddly-named place called Llwyn Wormwood - odd because in Welsh there is a word for wormwood, 'wermod', and because this is in one of the least anglicised areas of rural Wales.
Another place called Llwyn Wormwood is situated just over 10 miles to the southeast, not far from the Welsh market town of Llandovery. Could these places shed any new light on the Merlyn ‘vision’ referred to in the Basil Clarke 1973 translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s “Vita Merlini” ("Life of Merlyn")? And more importantly, was the character known as Merlyn a witness to the mid-6th century event evident in the tree-ring record?
Since the spectacular events of July 16 1994, when the newly discovered comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, which had split into more than twenty pieces as it passed Jupiter in 1993, had returned to bombard Jupiter’s surface over the following few days, astronomers have speculated nervously at the probable fate of our own civilisation had those impacts happened with planet Earth instead ...
The number of known impact craters on Earth is growing all the time as satellite imaging technology advances, and the growing list of impact sites dated from the current inter-glacial period in which we live (the Holocene) leaves even the most ardent of catastrophist sceptics in no dount that it has happened many times before - and it most certainly will again ...
Over the past decade or more, astronomers have taken ever more seriously the very real threat from Earth-crossing asteroids and from cometary debris trails. In January 2000 the British government commissioned a report into the threat from Near Earth Objects (NEOs), the report was published in August 2000. The setting up of the commission of enquiry was the result of continuous lobbying by a growing inter-disciplinary body of concerned astronomers, climatologists, archæologists, anthropologists and geologists.
Certain of them have moved towards looking for the recollections of ancient bombardment events in the mythologies and oral traditions of the world’s many past cultures. These endeavours have brought to the surface many similar tales to that of the ‘Vision of Merlyn' described above, and in many geographically widespread cultures of the archaic world.
In particular, the collection of ancient Chinese astronomical observations contained in the wooden chronicle known as the "Bamboo Annals" have been shown to contain many details of comets, fireballs, and especially planetary conjunctions, the accuracy of which can now be verified by the ability to re-create the ancient skies presented by recent advances in computer technology. Some modern astronomers find this ancient archive invaluable, and have been using it to correlate the ‘observations’ made by the skywatchers of contemporary cultures in other parts of the world.
Likewise, the Sumerian cuneiform tablets have been shown to have accurately recorded these most terrifying of ‘temporary celestial events’, while classical writings such as the "Epic of Gilgamesh", and numerous passages from the "Old Testament", continue to be decoded in similar astronomical fashion. In the "Book of Revelations" (Ch8 vs. 10-11), there is mention of star named ‘Wormwood’, which makes the waters bitter, creating a wasteland similar to the ‘wastelands’ of Arthurian legend. Many now believe that this was a reference to a future encounter with a comet, whose past catastrophic encounters, and 'periodic return', may have been well known to John of Patmos, the author of the "Book of Revelations".
The ancient Chinese depicted comets as ‘fiery dragons’ flying across the sky. Increasingly, anthropologists, archæologists and now also astronomers, are speculating that the ‘plumed serpent’ of the Aztecs and the Mayans, and the many tales of ‘winged serpents’ in the traditions of numerous other ancient peoples, may also be referring to comets or large asteroids that in the past had disintegrated in the upper atmosphere producing enormous ‘fireballs’, reminiscent of the spectacularly terrifying and destructive multiple bombardments of past epochs. As the 'smoke trails' left by these fireballs begin to break up, distorted by air currents in the atmosphere, they take on the eerie appearance of a snake - a veritable 'serpent in the sky'.
Victor Clube and Bill Napier, for the frontispiece plate of their ground-breaking book, "The Cosmic Serpent", about the past and present threat to our planet from bombardments of cometary debris, used a nineteenth-century French caricature of a comet tearing the Earth apart. Along with it were the words:
Dis (evil) aster (star)
Despite their being two of the world's leading astro-physicists, in Chapter 8 of the book they laid out the reasons for their comprehensive study of world mythologies, where they found numerous examples of 'cometary imagery' in the ancient myths of many peoples:
"The earliest recorded myths are those of combat, between a god or hero and a dragon. The dragon was a familiar figure in Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Babylon, India, China, North America and elsewhere. Usually, he has the form of a winged serpent. He is a gigantic monster; he spouts fire and smoke; bellows and hisses; he throws rocks, and is the creator or terrible destruction; and his home is in the sky."
The description of the end of Atlantis given by Plato in the "Timaeus" and "Critias" dialogues bears striking resemblance to what many scientists are now agreed would be the inevitable result of an oceanic impact by a disintegrating comet or large asteroid. The resultant 'tsunami', or tidal waves, would easily reach 2000 ft. high as they approached land, wiping out any and all coastal settlements. The deluge traditions, of which there are literally hundreds worldwide, appear in this light to be variations on Plato’s account, and could even be actual observation-based tales, eye-witness accounts of the same, or similar, events.
Another good example of this is the 'myth' about the winged horse, Pegasus, who is said to have been conceived when his mother, the once beautiful Medusa, was overwhelmed in a tidal wave caused by the passion of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea and storms. Exactly which 'celestial event’ this may eventually be shown to refer to is a matter for conjecture, but possibly the most famous legend about Pegasus might give a lead.
Bellerophon was ancient Corinth’s most famous hero, and he was set the task of slaying the Chimera - a monster variously described as having 'the body of a goat, the tail of a dragon, and the head of a lion, which belched out sulphur, smoke and flames' . In order to help Bellerophon to overcome the Chimera, the goddess Athena gave him a golden bridle with which to tame Pegasus, which he then rode across the skies to southern Turkey where the Chimera had her cave, not far from the modern border with northern Syria.
The constellation of Pegasus can be found in the northern sky above Pisces, in the direction of Andromeda, and there is evidence that the bright blue-white star, Markab, which marks the horse’s shoulder, was important to ancient skywatchers, as was the red giant star, Scheat, which marks the horse’s leg. Whether the legend of Pegasus, Bellerophon and the Chimera is simply an invented folk tale as some would believe, or a descriptive observation of cometary activity in that part of the ancient heavens, we will probably not know until astronomers produce a plausible model, retro-calculated for those times.
Another possible example of a temporary celestial event encoded in mythology, and one often quoted in this context, is the story of the constellation Eridanus - known to the Babylonians as the ‘river of the night’. This is one of the longest constellations in the sky, starting at the feet of Orion, which can be seen in both hemispheres, and winding down almost to the celestial South Pole. Only the stars Acamar and Zaurak can easily be seen from northern latitudes, while Achernar, the ninth brightest star in the heavens, can only be seen in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a blue giant star known as ‘the end of the river’, and is invisible even in the Mediterranean area.
It was commonplace in many ancient cultures to regard all celestial phenomena as having their earthly counterparts, and vice versa. So the Babylonians had their terrestrial River Eridanus, and in their mythology, as with others in the Mediterranean area, Phaethon, the foolish son of the Sun god, Helios, pleaded with his father to allow him to drive his blazing chariot across the sky for one day:
“With the inexperienced hands of Phaethon on the reins, the Sun's bright horses bolted through the heavens, scorching the Earth and drying up the rivers. North Africa was turned into the Sahara, and to save the universe, which would have been destroyed by flames, Zeus struck Phaethon with a thunderbolt, and he plunged headlong, like a shooting star, into the waters of the Eridanus far below, his auburn hair aflame.”
There are many similar legends, oral traditions, and later written mythologies describing temporary celestial events in this manner. And, it is simply because these were ‘temporary' celestial events that they were regarded as important enough to be worth recording, and passing on to future generations, orally at first, then later in writing which was inevitably 'encoded' from our modern perspective.
There is ample archæological evidence that ancient peoples worldwide were preoccupied with events in the skies, and almost all the various megalithic structures that have survived the past several millennia, on all continents, show remarkable degrees of astronomical observation to have been considered in their siting and construction. Combined with the ancient traditions of ‘death and destruction coming from the skies', many of which appear contemporaneous with the periods of the building of many of these structures, one possible motivation of the megalith builders could well have been to predict the imminent return of these periodic meteor storms and accompanying fireball events. The most likely of all motives being simply that of 'fear'.
The sheer terror at past bombardments, and the very real fear of future bombardments, would certainly have preoccupied those societies that had experienced the destructiveness of such catastrophic encounters. Given that astronomers and climatologists now concur such meteoritic bombardments and ‘dust veils’ can cause abrupt climate changes, cataclysmic earthquakes and tsunami, bringing famine, pestilence and plague that can destroy whole civilisations, it is little wonder that there are ample indications in the dendrochronology records of numerous past events.
Yet there is sparse archæological evidence available at present. Or more likely the evidence exists but is not recognised as such by archæologists. This is due in no small part to the resistance within the archæological community to attempts at the revision of current models of prehistory that is called for in the light of this new inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the past in the context of a 'catastrophically dynamic solar system history'. Regrettably, there are still many in the archæological community who continue to resist the very idea that ancient peoples were competent skywatchers. Critics often point to obscure computer models purporting to show that, at some date or another, one celestial body or another will be seen to rise or set at 'any' orientation in an easterly or westerly direction.
Sadly this misses the point altogether. Oral traditions, rituals and mythologies of many ancient cultures often focus on 'specific marker stars' and constellations, whose rising heralded the imminent solsticial and equinoctial sunrises. The same is true of other stars and constellations that were of great significance to those particular cultures. But, much more importantly, when the major bombardments had ceased to be a regular occurrence, certain 'marker stars' and star groups, for example The Pleiades, may well have signalled the rising of the ‘radiants’ of the greatly-feared daytime Taurid meteor storms, especially if they were the last feint stars to be seen just before sunrise.
But it is not only in mythology that we find hints of major traumatic periods in the history of human civilisation. The chroniclers of old recorded troubled times at the very same epochs that the tree-rings tell their story of environmental downturns which had dramatic effects on human populations. The dendrochronology records show narrowest-ring events at 3195 BC, 2345 BC, 1628 BC, 1159 BC, 207 BC, and at AD 536-545 - the start of the ‘European Dark Age’. In fact, many researchers in a variety of the historical sciences now believe that the widespread and simulataneous collapse of Bronze Age societies around the world came about as a result of our planet's encounters with cometary debris streams, and the decoding of astronomical observations in the mythologies of classical times is playing a major role.
Gildas, who was writing at approximately 540 AD, says that the island of Britain was on fire from sea to sea " ... until it had burned almost the whole surface of the island and was licking the western ocean with its fierce red tongue."[5] . While in "The Life of St. Teilo" contained in the "Llandaf Charters", of St. Teilo, who had recently been made Bishop of Llandaf Cathedral in Morganwg, South Wales, it says:
" ... however he could not long remain, on account of the pestilence which nearly destroyed the whole nation. It was called the Yellow Pestilence, because it occasioned all persons who were seized by it to be yellow and without blood, and it appeared to men a column of a watery cloud, having one end trailing along the ground, and the other above, proceeding in the air, and passing through the whole country like a shower going through the bottom of valleys. Whatever living creatures it touched with its pestiferous blast, either immediately died, or sickened for death ... and so greatly did the aforesaid destruction rage throughout the nation, that it caused the country to be nearly deserted". [6]
St. Teilo is recorded as having left South Wales for Brittany to escape the Yellow Pestilence, and that it lasted for some 11 years. It was at this time that the Saxons returned, reportedly unopposed, into the eastern areas of the 'Arthurian wastelands’, begging the question, could the ‘vision’ of Myrddin (Merlyn) have been of a fiery comet - later depicted as a red dragon? Owen Morien Morgan’s “History of Wales” gives the dates for the birth of St. Kentigern as AD 514, with his death at AD 601. So it is quite plausible that 'Merlyn’s vision’ could well refer to a ‘temporary celestial event’ that was the cause of the climatic downturn evident in the ‘narrowest tree-ring' chronologies for AD 536 to 545.
The French archæologist, Marie-Agnes Courty, presented a paper at the Society for Inter-Disciplinary Studies’ July 1997 conference at Cambridge University, in which she first detailed the findings of excavations at a site in northern Syria, at Tell Leilan. This was the first time ever that an archæological excavation had been initiated where the main purpose was to examine the stratigraphical record of the area with a view to searching for evidence of ‘scorched earth’ due to a suspected episode of extra-terrestrial ‘fireball bombardment'.
She and her team found much evidence of microscopic glass spherules typical of melted sand and rock which is caused by the intense heat resulting from an asteroid impact or air-burst. She recommended further excavations there and at other sites. It would make sense that attention should be focussed on sites once occupied at dates where the tree-ring chronologies show evidence of abrupt climate changes - as at Tell Leilan in northern Syria, where the ‘burn event’ has now been dated by Courty as immediately prior to 2345 BC, a ‘narrowest tree-ring’ date.
Another increasingly important criteria that should be considered when defining ideal sites for conducting such excavations are that these could well benefit from being undertaken in areas where ancient traditions tell of ‘celestial battles between the gods', and/or are in the areas where events such as the 'Merlyn vision' may have occurred. The problem, though, is one of adequately localising these myths, and identifying appropriate sites of ancient settlement at specific dates indicated in the dendrochronology records to excavate.
One such site is St. Peter’s Church on Mynydd Y Gaer (Fortress Mountain), in Morganwg, South Wales. An excavation at the church in 1990 directed by Dr Eric Talbot, who for 22 years was head of Glasgow University’s Archæology Dept., uncovered evidence that human bones had been found " ... melted onto the stones ... " [7]. St. Peter’s Church is just 11½ miles from Llandaf Cathedral, but is situated atop one of the many mountains in South Wales, and they would have taken the brunt of any cometary fireball bombardment, with the valleys below possibly being devastated by heavy drifting clouds of sulphurous gases (fire and brimstone?).
The resultant crop failures would have brought famine, mass migrations of the survivors, and outbreaks of diseases which could easily have reached plague proportions given that combination of circumstances. Certainly these events are remembered in the traditions and folklore of the area.
Though little recognised now, this area of South Wales had been an important administrative centre for quite some time before the Romans came, and continued to be so up until the ‘event’ that gave rise to the 'Yellow Pestilence' in the mid-6th century AD. It marked the seat of the Kings of Morganwg (called by the Romans, Siluria) - an area that at one time stretched from the river Severn in the east, to Caerfyrddyn in the southwest.
But Morganwg was just one kingdom in a vast Cymric (Welsh) empire in early Britain that at one time had reached as far as Strathclyde, where the Lailoken version of the 'Merlyn Vision’ had its location. This ‘empire’ had been jointly administered from Wroxeter, now on the Welsh/English border, as well as from sites in Morganwg to the south. So important had Wroxeter been prior to the Roman invasion, that after capturing it they built Watling Street directly to it.
Following the circa AD 540 ‘event’, Wroxeter fell into disuse, as did the sites in Morganwg. None of them ever recovered, and it would seem that if it was a bombardment of fireballs with cometary dust-loading the upper atmosphere that caused the death and destruction at the start of the European ‘Dark Age’, then it covered a vast area of the island of Britain. And, as this ‘climatic downturn’ is recorded in the Irish and in the German bog-oak dendrochronologies, it is becoming apparent that the area affected covered a wide swathe of northwestern Europe as well - and probably even much further afield.
Astrophysicist, Victor Clube - whose books "Cosmic Serpent" and "Cosmic Winter" (co-authored with Bill Napier, now at Armagh Observatory) initiated the recent refocussing of astronomers on comets, asteroids, and especially dust-veils of cometary debris - has recently put forward a new model for a dynamic history of the solar system over the past 20,000 to 30,000 years. At some stage early on in this period they believe a giant comet entered the solar system, and after destabilising due to a sun-grazing orbit, was involved in a close encounter with the planet Mercury around 5,000 years ago. This ended its sun-grazing status, and it broke up producing the batch of meteoroid streams, or trails, known as the Taurid Complex. The orbital path of the Earth encounters this complex twice annually in June (daytime Taurids) and again in early November.
The postulated bombardments and dust-veils at around 3195 BC, another narrowest tree-ring date, would have wreaked havoc on both the local and global climate, and any and all cultures affected would have taken many decades, maybe even centuries, to recover. The sheer terror that 'multiple-Tunguska-class fireballs' would have instilled into the peoples of those times would have understandably motivated them towards building some form of observatories to help predict future meteor showers/storms as a matter of perceived urgency.
Stage I of the building of Stonehenge - the bank and ditch ‘henge’ itself - began within about 150 years of this. The gap in the henge to the north-east, as viewed from the centre, would have marked the direction from where the comet Encke would have appeared to rise around the Midsummer Solstice at that time. This theme was explored by the noted astronomer, Duncan Steel, at the July 1997 IIS Cambridge Conference. In the abstract of his paper entitled, "Before The Stones: Stonehenge I As A Cometary Catastrophe Predictor?", Dr Steel wrote:
"Astronomical hypotheses for the purpose(s) of megalithic monuments have mostly been implicitly based upon an assumption that the designers witnessed the same phenomena as those we observe in the sky today. This assumption is not well-based for phenomena having time-constants of order centuries or millennia, such as the populations of comets and meteoroids in the inner solar system and the ephemeral meteor showers and storms which they produce on the Earth. IRAS observations have indicated that Comet Encke has a trail (not tail) of debris some tens of millions of kilometres long, presumably produced since its latest period of activity began about 200 years ago.
One may further presume that the Taurid meteor showers we observe in this epoch are the result of the dispersal of trails produced in previous activity cycles which must stretch back to about 20,000 yr ago. When the comet, accompanied by such a trail, has a node close to 1 AU, one expects intense meteor storms to occur, perhaps accompanied by multiple Tunguska-type events if the disintegrating comet spawns massive lumps of debris.
Determination of the epochs of such events from backwards integrations is impossible due to (i) Chaotic orbital evolution; and (ii) Non-gravitational forces, but pairs of intersections (one at the ascending node, the other descending) are to be expected a few centuries apart and separated by 2500-3000 years. It is suggested here that one such pair occurred in 3600-3500 and 3200-3100 BC, provoking the construction of the Great Cursus and Stonehenge I.
From Stonehenge I, apparently the first construction at the famous site, as the comet neared the Earth it would have appeared to rise in the evening with a huge bright stripe crossing much of the sky, originating in the north-east. Passage through the trail would then result in celestial fireworks (and maybe worse); afterwards the comet and trail would have passed in the direction of the Sun, partially blocking sunlight for a few days.
In order for terrestrial intersection to have occurred in that epoch (late fourth millennium BC) the mean orbital period of the comet over the past 5,000 years would need to have been slightly less than at present, and might then be expected to have produced a 19 year periodicity in meteor storm events (six cometary periods).
It is suggested that Stonehenge I was built by the Windmill Hill people to allow the prediction of such events, from which they hid in the shelters we now call long- and round-barrows, and that the later developments at Stonehenge (phases II and II) by the Beaker people were a result of a misinterpretation of the original purpose of the site in terms of lunar and solar observations, a misinterpretation which was re-discovered by Newham, Hawkins and Hoyle in the 1960's." .
Meteor showers and storms are named after the constellations they appear to emanate from, hence the Taurid meteors appear to emanate from a ‘radiant’ within the constellation of Taurus. According to the Clube/Napier model, the Earth’s last major Taurid Complex encounter was between the two centuries A.D. 400 to 600.
If a comet, later depicted by various cultures around the globe as a 'fiery dragon', did indeed enter the solar system at some stage during the past 30,000 years, it may well have broken up into several smaller comets, each leaving trails of debris comprising both sub-micron dust and bolides many miles in diameter. Given that some 71% of the surface of our planet is covered with shallow seas and deeper oceans, the likelihood of oceanic impacts is much greater than that on dry land, and episodes of bombardment arising from this scenario are the likely origin of the many ‘deluge’ traditions that survive around the world. And, if this were the case, it would seem logical that from impact craters and ‘burnt earth’ deposits in stratigraphic layers, the “trail of the dragon” can be successfully followed through many millennia.
Encouragingly, these trails can be followed not just by the study of these physical evidences alone, but also by a thorough re-investigation of astronomically-encoded, myths, legends and oral traditions of many past cultures. Further analysis of the enigmatic astronomically-orientated megalithic structures left by the survivors of those cultures that past celestial bombardments have left devastated, could also provide useful data about the areas of the sky to which those survivors paid particular attention. Predicting the periodic returns of the comets and cometary debris trails responsible for the bombardments would have become the top prority - after immediate food and shelter needs, for any and all survivors ...
Dragons Ravage the Land
In "Lessons from Jupiter" (Southern Sky magazine, January/February 1995), Clube and David Asher wrote :
"Calculations based on an orbit related to that of P/Encke reveal intersections with the Earth's orbit around AD 600 and before that AD 400, so that a swarm would have been near the Earth's orbit for a duration of a few centuries around that epoch, the time of the European Dark Age. This then is a critical extended period when we might well expect several multi megaton [explosive] events, indeed a great many if we consider the globe as a whole. The perspective is evidently one in which we expect the Roman Empire to have gone into decline owing to multiple-Tunguska bombardment causing great tracts of land to be deserted and whole communities or nations to be suddenly dislocated. Of necessity, the period becomes one of barbaric movements." Chinese historical records of AD 540 say : "Dragons fought in the pond of the K'uh o. They went westward....In the places they passed, all the trees were broken. " The calculations for the Taurids suggest that we pass through the core of the meteor stream approximately every 2,500 years - today, we are passing through the outer edges. The last two occasions when we passed through the core were in 2200 - 2000 BC and in AD 400 - 600. The epoch around AD 3000 looks like being a fun time too.
In 1983, the orbiting IRAS infra-red satellite discovered cometary "trails" (not tails), representing debris along the path of various short-period comets. These trails consist of debris, most of which would be microscopic in size, but how many large objects are there in the trails? If there are many large objects in these trails, then Duncan Steel notes in his above-mentioned book :
"Calculations based on an orbit related to that of P/Encke reveal intersections with the Earth's orbit around AD 600 and before that AD 400, so that a swarm would have been near the Earth's orbit for a duration of a few centuries around that epoch, the time of the European Dark Age. This then is a critical extended period when we might well expect several multi megaton [explosive] events, indeed a great many if we consider the globe as a whole. The perspective is evidently one in which we expect the Roman Empire to have gone into decline owing to multiple-Tunguska bombardment causing great tracts of land to be deserted and whole communities or nations to be suddenly dislocated. Of necessity, the period becomes one of barbaric movements." Chinese historical records of AD 540 say : "Dragons fought in the pond of the K'uh o. They went westward....In the places they passed, all the trees were broken. " The calculations for the Taurids suggest that we pass through the core of the meteor stream approximately every 2,500 years - today, we are passing through the outer edges. The last two occasions when we passed through the core were in 2200 - 2000 BC and in AD 400 - 600. The epoch around AD 3000 looks like being a fun time too.
In 1983, the orbiting IRAS infra-red satellite discovered cometary "trails" (not tails), representing debris along the path of various short-period comets. These trails consist of debris, most of which would be microscopic in size, but how many large objects are there in the trails? If there are many large objects in these trails, then Duncan Steel notes in his above-mentioned book :
- "A large fraction of the objects on Earth-crossing orbits, of all dimensions, are the daughter products from the break-up of a giant comet some time during the past 100,000 years, dynamical studies suggesting around 20,000 years as likely. All that is suggested here is a break-up similar to that undergone by P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 in 1992, except by a comet at least 100 kilometres across and in an orbit crossing from Jupiter to the Earth.The core of the complex...evolves to have a node near 1 AU every millennium or so, at which time the Earth is bombarded by many [large] objects in episodes at certain times of year. It is these events that dominate the hazard to humankind. Such an episode would last for a century or two."
The Piora Oscillation was an abrupt cold and wet period in the climate history of the Holocene Epoch; it is generally dated to the period of c. 3200 to 2900 BCE.[1] Some researchers associate the Piora Oscillation with the end of the Atlantic climate regime, and the start of the Sub-Boreal, in the Blytt-Sernander sequence of Holocene climates.
The spatial extent of the change is unclear; it does not show up as a major, or even identifial, event in hemispheric temperature reconstructions.
The phenomenon is named after the Val Piora or Piora Valley in Switzerland, where it was first detected; some of the most dramatic evidence of the Piora Oscillation comes from the region of the Alps.[2] Glaciers advanced in the Alps, apparently for the first time since the Holocene climatic optimum; the Alpine tree line dropped by 100 meters. Yet the climate change extended far beyond the Alps and Europe. It affected what is now the New England region of North America, where hemlock and elm trees suffered a dramatic decline[citation needed]. Similar evidence comes from California and elsewhere; some changes in flora proved permanent[citation needed]. In the Middle East, the surface of the Dead Sea rose nearly 100 meters (300 feet), then receded to a more usual level. A few commentators have associated the climate changes of this period with the end of the Uruk period, as a Dark Age associated with the floods of the Gilgamesh epic and Noah's flood of the Book of Genesis.[3]
The Piora Oscillation has also been linked to the domestication of the horse. In Central Asia, a colder climate favored the use of horses: "The horse, since it was so adept at foraging with snow on the ground, tended to replace cattle and sheep."[4] The Piora period seems associated with a period of colder drier air over the Western and Eastern Mediterranean, and may have depressed rainfalls as far afield as the Middle East. It is also associated with a sudden onset of drier weather in the central Sahara.
The cause or causes of the Piora Oscillation are debated. A Greenland ice core, GISP2, shows a sulfate spike and methane trough c. 3250 BCE, suggesting an unusual occurrence — either a volcanic eruption or a meteor or an asteroid impact event. Other authorities associate the Piora Oscillation with other comparable events, like the 8.2 kiloyear event, that recur in climate history, as part of a larger 1500-year climate cycle.
The spatial extent of the change is unclear; it does not show up as a major, or even identifial, event in hemispheric temperature reconstructions.
The phenomenon is named after the Val Piora or Piora Valley in Switzerland, where it was first detected; some of the most dramatic evidence of the Piora Oscillation comes from the region of the Alps.[2] Glaciers advanced in the Alps, apparently for the first time since the Holocene climatic optimum; the Alpine tree line dropped by 100 meters. Yet the climate change extended far beyond the Alps and Europe. It affected what is now the New England region of North America, where hemlock and elm trees suffered a dramatic decline[citation needed]. Similar evidence comes from California and elsewhere; some changes in flora proved permanent[citation needed]. In the Middle East, the surface of the Dead Sea rose nearly 100 meters (300 feet), then receded to a more usual level. A few commentators have associated the climate changes of this period with the end of the Uruk period, as a Dark Age associated with the floods of the Gilgamesh epic and Noah's flood of the Book of Genesis.[3]
The Piora Oscillation has also been linked to the domestication of the horse. In Central Asia, a colder climate favored the use of horses: "The horse, since it was so adept at foraging with snow on the ground, tended to replace cattle and sheep."[4] The Piora period seems associated with a period of colder drier air over the Western and Eastern Mediterranean, and may have depressed rainfalls as far afield as the Middle East. It is also associated with a sudden onset of drier weather in the central Sahara.
The cause or causes of the Piora Oscillation are debated. A Greenland ice core, GISP2, shows a sulfate spike and methane trough c. 3250 BCE, suggesting an unusual occurrence — either a volcanic eruption or a meteor or an asteroid impact event. Other authorities associate the Piora Oscillation with other comparable events, like the 8.2 kiloyear event, that recur in climate history, as part of a larger 1500-year climate cycle.
Comets, Volcanoes, Earthquakes shape Proto-History
Doggerland
72,000 BC
Massive super volcano eruption of Toba, North Sumatra. Resulting in severe global cooling and massive loss of life. Confirmed by what is termed a genetic bottleneck. A few thousand human survivors. At this time Sapiens Sapiens is thought to have begun the move out of Africa. Yellowstone Park is current potential site for a super volcano eruption.
72,000 BC
Research conducted on the evolution of body lice from head lice, using the molecular clock method, has suggested an origin for clothing in Africa around this date. The Toba super volcano eruption would have ejected massive quantities of volcanic dust into the atmosphere resulting in dramatic global cooling, giving humans in Africa good reason to make clothes to keep warm.
62,000 BC
First sign of Sapiens Sapiens (modern man) buried with respect, in modern manner with red ochre, near Lake Mungo, Australia. Evidence suggests similar limited migrations reached the America's from West Africa.
57,500 BC
North Atlantic Ash Zone 2. Major volcanic activity on the Mid Atlantic Ridge in the region of Iceland.
50,000 BC
Next oldest discovery of Sapiens Sapiens, a child burial in Upper Egypt. Ethiopia key area for man.
50,000 BC
Genetic analysis of the male Y chromosome of all people living on the planet, suggest a common male sapiens sapiens ancestor at this date.
45,000 BC
Ochre pencils, carved bone objects, beads made from ostrich egg shells, were found with stone tools at a site in the Loiyangalani river valley in Tanzania, making them at least 45,000 BC, and probably much older.
42,000 BC
Signs of mining, field systems and farming on the Vaal River, South Africa. Production of intricately carved bone and stone tools and other artefacts, such as fish hooks, axes, beads, figurines and cave paintings from sites in Eurasia, which post date evidence of earlier comparable skills in Africa.
42,000 BC to 16,000 BC
Signs of a dramatic rise in the size and quality of Sapiens Sapiens tool kit, great artistic and hunter gatherer skills, together with improved diet. Significant change, after millions of years or negligible progress, with an increase in genetic mutations as modern man enters and establishes himself in Europe.
39,000 BC
Supernova event - arrival of radiation blast - preceded by huge gravity waves, which unsettle the earths crust, causing increase in volcanic activity. At that time, global radiocarbon increased suddenly to delta 14C = 150 percent, which equals a 250 percent increase in radiocarbon.
31,000 BC
Supernova event - arrival of the supernova shockwave - The delta 14C decreased up until that time, when another sharp increase occurred. The delta 14C shot up by 175 percent
25,000 BC
Sulatrean (Cro-Magnon) peoples on the Eastern Atlantic seaboard sail round the Atlantic both ways in walrus skinned, wooden framed boats, delivering advanced flint working skills to peoples on the Western Atlantic.
24,000 BC to 13,000 BC
Climatic desiccation of Australia, Sahara and other parts of the world, with water locked up in the ice of the Ice Age. Sea levels some 450 feet below current levels, but larger vertical crustal movements.
20,000 BC
Wild barley and other grass seeds were being milled for bread by the Sea of Galilee in Israel.
19,000 BC
This date is given to what is termed the Ice Age Maximum, with few humans north of Southern France.
18,000 BC
First signs of Goats domesticated in North Africa. Areas suitable for man far more limited than today
14,000 to 10,500 BC
Supernova event - arrival of the debris cloud - Radiocarbon again decreased to near normal levels up until that time, when a third sharp increase occurred.
10,860 BC and 10,740 BC
Two dramatic rises in temperature, following major debris impacts. Mass extinctions, worst for 3.5 million years, followed by a plunge in temperatures. World wide geological ash zone 15 - 35mm in depth, making barrier between Clovis and Fulsom peoples in North America. - Tectonic uplift and great floods causing Lake Victoria to discharge into the Nile. This led to a massive extension of the high level lakes and a surplus of water into the semi arid Sahel, and the Sahara region. It is suggested that the Earth's atmosphere and that of Mars was severely damaged and depleted by impacts from this debris cloud around this time.
13,000 BC to 12,000 BC
Farming at four Isnan sites at Naquada, Dishna and at Tushka, 125 miles up river from Aswan in Egypt. Thrived for 1,000 years and then suddenly disappeared - no evidence of domesticated seeds.
12,600 BC to 10,800 BC
Bolling or Allerod warming event, confirmed by maximum extent of glaciers when ice retreats and ice melt discharges start. Termed Windermere Interstadial, as warm as today, till intense heat events.
12,000 BC
Prior to this date the whole of the northern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea appears to have been occupied by herb dominated steppe. The only area where evergreen oak, pistachio, olive and wild wheat's and barley's survived together, was Southern Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. A key glacial refuge for important plants.
11,000 BC
Wild rye seeds selected and propagated for cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates in Syria.
10,700 BC to 9,600 BC
Termed Allerod or Younger Dryas, there was a dramatic fall in temperature to a level as cold as the Ice Age minimum. Rise in sea levels temporally reversed, with water locked up in ice caps and glaziers.
10,000 BC
First signs of cultivation began in the eastern Mediterranean region, at the end of the last ice age. Durable stone houses at Wadi Hammeh 27 Natufian site. The mass extinctions of a wide range of species, and dramatic changes in climate, presented hostile conditions under which surviving humans were forced to turn to all possible means of providing and storing food for their families.
9,250 BC
Current suggested first date for Kharsag (The Sumerian head enclosure or Eden) in Southern Lebanon.
9,200 BC
Domesticated fig, quite different to wild varieties, 10 miles north of Jericho, south of Mount Hermon.
9,000 BC
Jericho, oldest town, quality stone and construction work. Warm climate below sea level in rift valley.
9,000 BC
Göbekli Tepe an early Neolithic site in south eastern Turkey. The houses are round megalithic buildings. The walls are made of un-worked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic roof supports of limestone, that are up to 3 m high, together with a bigger pair of pillars in the centre of the structures. The floors are made of burnt lime, and there is a low bench running along the whole of the exterior wall. The immensely strong structures were built into the hillside, providing the cometary debris blast protection, typical of such structures built for several thousand years round the world. Similar defensive structures existed at Jerf al Ahmar and Noavoli Cori. No traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found at these sites The inhabitants were hunter gatherers.
9,000 to 7,500 BC
The first signs of sophisticated humans and the domestication of plants and animals being dispersed into new areas of the Fertile Crescent. This included the range of founder crops, and the introduction into Cyprus of domesticated Mesopotamian fallow deer, with sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Hunter gatherers change to farmers, at some sites such as Mureybet, in less than 100 years.
9,000 tto 8,000 BC
First signs of farming and domestication of wild plants such as squash on the tropical coast of Ecuador and rice along the marshy banks of the Yangtze in China.
8,900 BC to 7,500 BC
The first signs of sophisticated and domesticated plants and animals being dispersed into new areas of the Fertile Crescent. This included the range of founder crops, and the introduction into Cyprus of the domesticated Mesopotamian fallow deer, with sheep, goats and cattle.
8,500 BC
Advance of woodland vegetation in Eastern Turkey and Western Iran, not completed until 3,500 BC.
8,500 BC to 5,000 BC
A range of sophisticated technologies appear. At Jericho, Catul Huyuk and Sabi-Abyad (30 acres) craftsmanship skills are demonstrated both in creating objects and structures and in the careful selection of materials. Polished obsidian, copper smelting, metal working, electro plating and the superb quality Halaf ceramics.
8,300 BC
Occupation of Tell Qarqur on the Orontes river at the northern edge of the Ghab Valley in NW Syria.
8,200, 5,400 and 2,000 BC
Catastrophic and sudden droughts leading to the rapid drying up of many of Africa's lakes, leaving layers of dead fish in the sediments. Evidence of sudden global catastrophic events effecting climate.
7,000 BC
A mixed fermented wine of rice, honey and fruit was being drunk in Northern China.
7,000 BC
Oldest dated remains on the 13-hectacre Catalhoyuk site in Southern Turkey, containing hundreds of buildings packed tightly together with common walls, and with entrances through the roofs. British archaeologist James Mellaart, then at the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, estimated that it was home for 10,000 people. Christian O'Brien identified fruit fly chromosomes drawn on the walls of one of the key buildings. Catalhoyuk is not a one off, similar Stone Age towns or cities, such as Mureybet in Syria, started to turn up all over the eastern Mediterranean. The manner in which these very early permanent habitation structures are clustered together in egg box fashion suggests that they would have provided greater protection from blasts associated with known episodic cometary debris entering the earths atmosphere. Similar design for superb megalithic structures in Malta 4,500 BC.
7,000 BC
High and wild stage of the Nile peaks through the reduction of rainfall at the two key river sources.
6,000 BC
Strikingly large houses uncovered during excavations at Tell el-Oueili a few kilometres east of Uruk. Occupation of a well planned 20ha Neolithic village at Sha'ar Hagolan, with paved streets, monumental courtyard size houses, sophisticated social organisation and one of the richest collections of pre-historic art ever found.
5,500 BC
Copper mining/trade at Gaza - Later early Egyptian Dynasty's require payment for Sinai copper in gold.
4,500 BC
Pulse of trading emanating from southern Mesopotamia. Southern pottery and other artefacts suddenly show up all over the region, as far a field as the Mediterranean and the Arabian peninsular.
4,500 BC to 3,250 BC
Recalibrated dates for the city of Uruk, which by 3,500 BC had grown into a true city, covering 2.5 square kilometres and housing a population estimated at 50,000. The five miles of city walls were said to have enclosed areas of one third housing, one third orchards, and one third clay pits. World trade and shipping, together with superb social organization and administration. Schools taught not only language and writing, but also sciences of the day, botany, zoology, geography and mathematics. Literary works of the past were studied and copied.
4,000 BC
Highest water level at Lake Chad. Central Sahara blooms from the Nile to the Atlantic.
4,000 BC (pre)
The remains of a spectacularly large building, with walls a metre and a half thick and a huge doorway opening out into a courtyard, was uncovered at the lower levels of Tell Brak, ancient regional Akkadian capital city of Nagar, in northern Mesopotamia, gateway to Anatolia.
3,700 BC
At Tell Hamoukar occupation mound in eastern Syria, 8 kilometres from the Iraqi border, archaeologist McGuire Gibson identified a town of 12 hectares enclosed by a defensive city wall. Inside the wall are remains of a large building containing a series of large mud brick ovens indicating that food was prepared on an industrial scale.
4,000 BC to 2,000 BC
Climatic desiccation creates the modern Sahara, Arabian and Thar (Indus area) deserts. People move into the Nile Valley from the early settlements west of the Nile. At this time Mesopotamia dries out, with monsoon rains moving south. Pressures on successful farming and by increasing populations, lead to major social unrest, and forced migrations to more favorable areas.
2,750 BC
Aryan Bak Sing tribes migrate from Sumer to Northern India and to China down the silk road. They also diffuse to other parts of the world setting up new civilizations, or improving old ones in Europe and the Americas.
2,700 BC
Iron Smelting at KenanTepe, Eastern Turkey.
2,350 BC
Well researched and documented evidence of the final collapse of the great Bronze Age Civilizations, due to massive global cometary debris explosions, specifically affecting the area from the Mediterranean to India, leading to global changes in climate, and further desiccation of the main deserts. Sumer as a political entity ceases to exist.
72,000 BC
Massive super volcano eruption of Toba, North Sumatra. Resulting in severe global cooling and massive loss of life. Confirmed by what is termed a genetic bottleneck. A few thousand human survivors. At this time Sapiens Sapiens is thought to have begun the move out of Africa. Yellowstone Park is current potential site for a super volcano eruption.
72,000 BC
Research conducted on the evolution of body lice from head lice, using the molecular clock method, has suggested an origin for clothing in Africa around this date. The Toba super volcano eruption would have ejected massive quantities of volcanic dust into the atmosphere resulting in dramatic global cooling, giving humans in Africa good reason to make clothes to keep warm.
62,000 BC
First sign of Sapiens Sapiens (modern man) buried with respect, in modern manner with red ochre, near Lake Mungo, Australia. Evidence suggests similar limited migrations reached the America's from West Africa.
57,500 BC
North Atlantic Ash Zone 2. Major volcanic activity on the Mid Atlantic Ridge in the region of Iceland.
50,000 BC
Next oldest discovery of Sapiens Sapiens, a child burial in Upper Egypt. Ethiopia key area for man.
50,000 BC
Genetic analysis of the male Y chromosome of all people living on the planet, suggest a common male sapiens sapiens ancestor at this date.
45,000 BC
Ochre pencils, carved bone objects, beads made from ostrich egg shells, were found with stone tools at a site in the Loiyangalani river valley in Tanzania, making them at least 45,000 BC, and probably much older.
42,000 BC
Signs of mining, field systems and farming on the Vaal River, South Africa. Production of intricately carved bone and stone tools and other artefacts, such as fish hooks, axes, beads, figurines and cave paintings from sites in Eurasia, which post date evidence of earlier comparable skills in Africa.
42,000 BC to 16,000 BC
Signs of a dramatic rise in the size and quality of Sapiens Sapiens tool kit, great artistic and hunter gatherer skills, together with improved diet. Significant change, after millions of years or negligible progress, with an increase in genetic mutations as modern man enters and establishes himself in Europe.
39,000 BC
Supernova event - arrival of radiation blast - preceded by huge gravity waves, which unsettle the earths crust, causing increase in volcanic activity. At that time, global radiocarbon increased suddenly to delta 14C = 150 percent, which equals a 250 percent increase in radiocarbon.
31,000 BC
Supernova event - arrival of the supernova shockwave - The delta 14C decreased up until that time, when another sharp increase occurred. The delta 14C shot up by 175 percent
25,000 BC
Sulatrean (Cro-Magnon) peoples on the Eastern Atlantic seaboard sail round the Atlantic both ways in walrus skinned, wooden framed boats, delivering advanced flint working skills to peoples on the Western Atlantic.
24,000 BC to 13,000 BC
Climatic desiccation of Australia, Sahara and other parts of the world, with water locked up in the ice of the Ice Age. Sea levels some 450 feet below current levels, but larger vertical crustal movements.
20,000 BC
Wild barley and other grass seeds were being milled for bread by the Sea of Galilee in Israel.
19,000 BC
This date is given to what is termed the Ice Age Maximum, with few humans north of Southern France.
18,000 BC
First signs of Goats domesticated in North Africa. Areas suitable for man far more limited than today
14,000 to 10,500 BC
Supernova event - arrival of the debris cloud - Radiocarbon again decreased to near normal levels up until that time, when a third sharp increase occurred.
10,860 BC and 10,740 BC
Two dramatic rises in temperature, following major debris impacts. Mass extinctions, worst for 3.5 million years, followed by a plunge in temperatures. World wide geological ash zone 15 - 35mm in depth, making barrier between Clovis and Fulsom peoples in North America. - Tectonic uplift and great floods causing Lake Victoria to discharge into the Nile. This led to a massive extension of the high level lakes and a surplus of water into the semi arid Sahel, and the Sahara region. It is suggested that the Earth's atmosphere and that of Mars was severely damaged and depleted by impacts from this debris cloud around this time.
13,000 BC to 12,000 BC
Farming at four Isnan sites at Naquada, Dishna and at Tushka, 125 miles up river from Aswan in Egypt. Thrived for 1,000 years and then suddenly disappeared - no evidence of domesticated seeds.
12,600 BC to 10,800 BC
Bolling or Allerod warming event, confirmed by maximum extent of glaciers when ice retreats and ice melt discharges start. Termed Windermere Interstadial, as warm as today, till intense heat events.
12,000 BC
Prior to this date the whole of the northern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea appears to have been occupied by herb dominated steppe. The only area where evergreen oak, pistachio, olive and wild wheat's and barley's survived together, was Southern Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan. A key glacial refuge for important plants.
11,000 BC
Wild rye seeds selected and propagated for cultivation at Abu Hureyra on the Euphrates in Syria.
10,700 BC to 9,600 BC
Termed Allerod or Younger Dryas, there was a dramatic fall in temperature to a level as cold as the Ice Age minimum. Rise in sea levels temporally reversed, with water locked up in ice caps and glaziers.
10,000 BC
First signs of cultivation began in the eastern Mediterranean region, at the end of the last ice age. Durable stone houses at Wadi Hammeh 27 Natufian site. The mass extinctions of a wide range of species, and dramatic changes in climate, presented hostile conditions under which surviving humans were forced to turn to all possible means of providing and storing food for their families.
9,250 BC
Current suggested first date for Kharsag (The Sumerian head enclosure or Eden) in Southern Lebanon.
9,200 BC
Domesticated fig, quite different to wild varieties, 10 miles north of Jericho, south of Mount Hermon.
9,000 BC
Jericho, oldest town, quality stone and construction work. Warm climate below sea level in rift valley.
9,000 BC
Göbekli Tepe an early Neolithic site in south eastern Turkey. The houses are round megalithic buildings. The walls are made of un-worked dry stone and include numerous T-shaped monolithic roof supports of limestone, that are up to 3 m high, together with a bigger pair of pillars in the centre of the structures. The floors are made of burnt lime, and there is a low bench running along the whole of the exterior wall. The immensely strong structures were built into the hillside, providing the cometary debris blast protection, typical of such structures built for several thousand years round the world. Similar defensive structures existed at Jerf al Ahmar and Noavoli Cori. No traces of domesticated plants or animals have been found at these sites The inhabitants were hunter gatherers.
9,000 to 7,500 BC
The first signs of sophisticated humans and the domestication of plants and animals being dispersed into new areas of the Fertile Crescent. This included the range of founder crops, and the introduction into Cyprus of domesticated Mesopotamian fallow deer, with sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. Hunter gatherers change to farmers, at some sites such as Mureybet, in less than 100 years.
9,000 tto 8,000 BC
First signs of farming and domestication of wild plants such as squash on the tropical coast of Ecuador and rice along the marshy banks of the Yangtze in China.
8,900 BC to 7,500 BC
The first signs of sophisticated and domesticated plants and animals being dispersed into new areas of the Fertile Crescent. This included the range of founder crops, and the introduction into Cyprus of the domesticated Mesopotamian fallow deer, with sheep, goats and cattle.
8,500 BC
Advance of woodland vegetation in Eastern Turkey and Western Iran, not completed until 3,500 BC.
8,500 BC to 5,000 BC
A range of sophisticated technologies appear. At Jericho, Catul Huyuk and Sabi-Abyad (30 acres) craftsmanship skills are demonstrated both in creating objects and structures and in the careful selection of materials. Polished obsidian, copper smelting, metal working, electro plating and the superb quality Halaf ceramics.
8,300 BC
Occupation of Tell Qarqur on the Orontes river at the northern edge of the Ghab Valley in NW Syria.
8,200, 5,400 and 2,000 BC
Catastrophic and sudden droughts leading to the rapid drying up of many of Africa's lakes, leaving layers of dead fish in the sediments. Evidence of sudden global catastrophic events effecting climate.
7,000 BC
A mixed fermented wine of rice, honey and fruit was being drunk in Northern China.
7,000 BC
Oldest dated remains on the 13-hectacre Catalhoyuk site in Southern Turkey, containing hundreds of buildings packed tightly together with common walls, and with entrances through the roofs. British archaeologist James Mellaart, then at the British Institute of Archaeology in Ankara, estimated that it was home for 10,000 people. Christian O'Brien identified fruit fly chromosomes drawn on the walls of one of the key buildings. Catalhoyuk is not a one off, similar Stone Age towns or cities, such as Mureybet in Syria, started to turn up all over the eastern Mediterranean. The manner in which these very early permanent habitation structures are clustered together in egg box fashion suggests that they would have provided greater protection from blasts associated with known episodic cometary debris entering the earths atmosphere. Similar design for superb megalithic structures in Malta 4,500 BC.
7,000 BC
High and wild stage of the Nile peaks through the reduction of rainfall at the two key river sources.
6,000 BC
Strikingly large houses uncovered during excavations at Tell el-Oueili a few kilometres east of Uruk. Occupation of a well planned 20ha Neolithic village at Sha'ar Hagolan, with paved streets, monumental courtyard size houses, sophisticated social organisation and one of the richest collections of pre-historic art ever found.
5,500 BC
Copper mining/trade at Gaza - Later early Egyptian Dynasty's require payment for Sinai copper in gold.
4,500 BC
Pulse of trading emanating from southern Mesopotamia. Southern pottery and other artefacts suddenly show up all over the region, as far a field as the Mediterranean and the Arabian peninsular.
4,500 BC to 3,250 BC
Recalibrated dates for the city of Uruk, which by 3,500 BC had grown into a true city, covering 2.5 square kilometres and housing a population estimated at 50,000. The five miles of city walls were said to have enclosed areas of one third housing, one third orchards, and one third clay pits. World trade and shipping, together with superb social organization and administration. Schools taught not only language and writing, but also sciences of the day, botany, zoology, geography and mathematics. Literary works of the past were studied and copied.
4,000 BC
Highest water level at Lake Chad. Central Sahara blooms from the Nile to the Atlantic.
4,000 BC (pre)
The remains of a spectacularly large building, with walls a metre and a half thick and a huge doorway opening out into a courtyard, was uncovered at the lower levels of Tell Brak, ancient regional Akkadian capital city of Nagar, in northern Mesopotamia, gateway to Anatolia.
3,700 BC
At Tell Hamoukar occupation mound in eastern Syria, 8 kilometres from the Iraqi border, archaeologist McGuire Gibson identified a town of 12 hectares enclosed by a defensive city wall. Inside the wall are remains of a large building containing a series of large mud brick ovens indicating that food was prepared on an industrial scale.
4,000 BC to 2,000 BC
Climatic desiccation creates the modern Sahara, Arabian and Thar (Indus area) deserts. People move into the Nile Valley from the early settlements west of the Nile. At this time Mesopotamia dries out, with monsoon rains moving south. Pressures on successful farming and by increasing populations, lead to major social unrest, and forced migrations to more favorable areas.
2,750 BC
Aryan Bak Sing tribes migrate from Sumer to Northern India and to China down the silk road. They also diffuse to other parts of the world setting up new civilizations, or improving old ones in Europe and the Americas.
2,700 BC
Iron Smelting at KenanTepe, Eastern Turkey.
2,350 BC
Well researched and documented evidence of the final collapse of the great Bronze Age Civilizations, due to massive global cometary debris explosions, specifically affecting the area from the Mediterranean to India, leading to global changes in climate, and further desiccation of the main deserts. Sumer as a political entity ceases to exist.
- Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike WHEN DID HUMANS RETURN AFTER LAST ICE AGE?
Technological advances have allowed researchers at Oxford University and London's Natural History Museum to date the bones more accurately. Previous radiocarbon dates suggested a wide span of occupation of within 1000-1500 years. The new dates show a much narrower range of dates, corresponding precisely to climate warming, providing evidence that the archaeological material in the cave could have accumulated over perhaps as little as two to three human generations, centred on 14,700 years ago.
Professor Chris Stringer, Natural History Museum Palaeontologist, commented: ' We were puzzled that the human bones we excavated in Gough's Cave about 20 years ago, including those that may have been cannibalised, seemed to be up to a thousand years different in age. The new dating methods show instead that the butchery and consumption of both horses and humans occurred in a very short space of time, about 14,700 years ago. So as Europe rapidly defrosted, family groups probably followed herds of horses into Britain across grasslands where the North Sea is today.' - Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike GOUGHS CAVE (CHEDDAR) The Cheddar Gorge in Somerset was one of the first sites inhabited by humans when they returned to Britain towards the end of the last Ice Age.
New radiocarbon dates on bones from Gough's Cave show people were living there some 14,700 years ago.
The results confirm the site's great antiquity and suggest human hunters re-colonised Britain at a time of rapid climate warming.
From 24,000 years ago, an ice sheet extended over much of Britain.
Beyond that ice sheet, in southern Britain and much of northern France, the environment resembled a polar desert. Evidence suggests these inhospitable conditions kept people out of north-west Europe for more than 9,000 years. - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike A NEW TRIGGER FOR ICE AGE RETREAT
About 14,600 years ago, a huge pulse of freshwater drained from continental ice sheets into the world�s oceans. Over 500 years, a discharge equivalent to five Amazon Rivers raised sea level by 20 meters ?marking one of the most dramatic chapters in Earth�s episodic climb out of the last Ice Age. Traditionally, paleoclimatologists have thought that the meltwater came from the Laurentide Ice Sheet, responding to an abrupt warming of the northern hemisphere called the Bolling-Allerod.
The first evidence for a massive meltwater pulse came from Barbados in 1989. Dating of remnant corals in Barbados that had lived near the ocean surface prior to the meltwater deluge indicated that the pulse occurred 14,235 years ago, several hundred years after the onset of the Bolling-Allerod warming. - Swarm A SYNCHRONOUS HIGH AND LOW-LATITUDE NORTH ATLANTIC CLIMATE CHANGE DURING THE LAST DEGLACIATION
- Swarm A:Cl - 1/2 Strikes MORE ON ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE: THE H1 TO BA TRANSITION
- Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike WHEN DID HUMANS RETURN AFTER LAST ICE AGE?
- THE 11,600 BC STRIKE - Swarm B' - 13,600 YA
- THE YOUNGER DRYAS
Note: 13.65 kyr BP aka YA (during the Bolling/Allerod)
- THE YOUNGER DRYAS
- THE 11,000 BC STRIKE- Swarm B - 13,000 YA
Lamb 1977 reported a Global Climatic Boundary at 2760 BP. The Younger Dryas cold period began 12,679 BP and by subtracting the radio carbon 2760 BP date provides the nominal 9919 years (supposedly two Vulcan orbital revolutions. The error uncertainty in the 2760 BP date is (2735 to 2788) cal.yr BP and the net error in the difference is +/- 32 years. Vulcan's period computed from the comet impacts that may have caused these two weather changes and is half this interval, or 4959.5 +/- 16 years. Vulcan's theoretical period computed by this web site 4969.0 years is two times this value is = 9938 +/- 11.5 years (one sigma error) compared to the 9919 +/- 32 year value from the comet induced weather change data. The impacts are thought to come from the B:Cl-2.- THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE: AN HOUR-LONG STORM STARTED A MINI ICE AGE, SAY SCIENTISTS - 2nd April 2010
An hour-long hailstorm from space bombarded the Earth 13,000 years ago - plunging the planet into a mini-ice age, scientists claimed today.
The catastrophe was caused by a disintegrating comet and saw the planet sprayed by thousands of frozen boulders made of ice and dust.
The collisions wiped out huge numbers of animal species all over the world, disrupted the lives of our stone age ancestors and triggered a freeze that lasted more than 1,000 years.
Scientists have long been puzzled by what caused a sudden cooling of up to 8C (14F) just as the Earth was warming up at the end of the last ice age. - EVIDENCE FOR AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT 12,900 YEARS AGO THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE MEGAFAUNAL EXTINCTIONS AND THE YOUNGER DRYAS COOLING - R. B. Firestone et al.
Communicated by Steven M. Stanley, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, July 26, 2007 (received for review March 13, 2007) - NEW EVIDENCE OF ICE AGE COMET FOUND IN ICE CORES - March 30, 2010
A new study cites spikes of ammonium in Greenland ice cores as evidence for a giant comet impact at the end of the last ice age, and suggests that the collision may have caused a brief, final cold snap before the climate warmed up for good.
In the April Geology, researchers describe finding chemical similarities in the cores between a layer corresponding to 1908, when a 50,000-metric-ton extraterrestrial object exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, and a deeper stratum dating to 12,900 years ago. They argue that the similarity is evidence that an object weighing as much as 50 billion metric tons triggered the Younger Dryas, a millennium-long cold spell that began just as the ice age was loosing its grip (SN: 6/2/07, p. 339).
The presence of ammonium suggests that the Tunguska object was most likely a comet, rather than asteroids or meteoroids, Melott says. Any object slung into the Earth�s atmosphere from space typically moves fast enough to heat the surrounding air to about 100,000?Celsius, says Melott, so hot the nitrogen in the air splits and links up with oxygen to form nitrates. And indeed, nitrates are found in snow around the Tunguska blast. But ammonium, found along with the nitrates, contains hydrogen that most likely came from an incoming object rich in water ?like an icy comet.
More than a century after the impact, scientists are still debating what kind of object blew up over Tunguska in 1908. They also disagree about whether an impact or some other climate event caused the Younger Dryas at the end of the ice age. But the presence of ammonium in Greenland ice cores at both times is accepted.
�There�s a remarkable peak of ammonium ions in ice cores from Greenland at the beginning of the Younger Dryas,?comments Paul Mayewski, a glaciologist at the University of Maine in Orono who was not involved in the new study. The new findings are �a compelling argument that a major extraterrestrial impact occurred then,?he notes.
Whenever a comet strikes Earth�s atmosphere, it leaves behind a fingerprint of ammonium, the researchers propose. Immense heat and pressure in the shock wave spark the creation of ammonia, or NH3, from nitrogen in the air and hydrogen in the comet. Some of the ammonium, or NH4+, ions generated during subsequent reactions fall back to Earth in snow and are preserved in ice cores, where they linger as signs of the cataclysmic event. - COMET CREATED TINY DIAMONDS AND KILLED THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH - Oct 8, 2010
UCSB professor's study shows evidence of impact causing mass extinction
"There is a layer in the ice with a great abundance of diamonds," said Kennett in a press release. "Most exciting to us is that this is the first layer of diamonds ever found in glacial ice anywhere on Earth. The diamonds are so tiny that they can only be observed with special, highly magnifying microscopes. They number in the trillions."
This study fuels the heated debate that scientists have been having about diamonds, comets and mammoths since last year. In 2009, Kennett discovered similar nanodiamonds on Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara that first suggested that a comet impact caused extinction.
This sparked a debate from other scientists, who disputed that an impact could create shock waves powerful enough to turn rocks into diamonds and trigger the mini-Ice Age that killed the mammoths and other large mammals. Some were also unconvinced that the researchers even found diamonds at all, although three separate labs confirmed their composition. Other research studies were published with results that contradicted Kennett�s conclusions. - 'DEEP FREEZE' DIDN'T AFFECT SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE - 8 September 2010
Approximately 13,000 years ago, as the last ice age was winding down, Earth's Northern Hemisphere reverted to a near-glacial period called the Younger Dryas. Temperatures dropped by 15?C, and giant ice sheets again advanced south from the Arctic. But things were much different in the Southern Hemisphere. New data reveal that the globe's bottom half continued to warm its way out of the ice age, even as the north temporarily plunged back into a another deep freeze.
And geomorphologist Martin Kirkbride of the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom says the study pinpoints "the timing of glacier advances as precisely as is technologically possible." That's very important, he says, for understanding how ocean circulation transmitted climate change across Earth's surface at the end of the ice age. - REVISITING THE YOUNGER DRYAS - 17 July 2010
Several of the key features of the study include:
1. The global mean cooling of the LGM relative to the peak of our current interglacial is approximately 5�C as a minimum value. It is likely larger than this since many of the records are from the ocean which are typically less sensitive to temperature change than landmasses, and further, adiabatic cooling of marine air advected over land masses would result from the ~120 m reduction in sea level. The cooling is global in scale and largest at high latitudes, as expected from polar amplification.
2. In contrast, during the YD, there is much more spatial heterogeneity as the North became colder and drier (increasing with latitude) while the South became warmer and wetter in the opposite sense. The global mean cooling during the YD is only ~0.6�C . The tropics cooled by 2.5�C (with an error of about a degree in either direction) at the LGM, yet exhibited very little temperature change during the YD. Thus, while the YD was a global scale climate change event with widespread signatures, it was not a widespread global cooling event.
3. The timing of the LGM and peak interglacial is synchronized between hemispheres on orbital timescales, which the authors attribute primarily to the global radiative forcing provided by CO2. As has been noted in the past, the CO2 lags the onset of deglaciation in most records, as this is paced by summer insolation changes. However the CO2 still acts as the dominant temperature- change influence throughout the deglacial period and provides an effective means to communicate temperature anomalies to the tropics. On the other hand, the YD exhibits the well-known bipolar see-saw effect which involves a reduction in northward heat transport, which warms the South. The see-saw is best expressed in the mid to high latitudes, although the see-saw model is a poor descriptor for the tropical variability.
As a conclusion, over the last couple of years, there has now been growing evidence that an event similar to the YD is not �unique?but instead is a common theme across various deglacial events; this provides evidence against the necessity for a �catastrophic trigger,?and while it may be the case that a comet or some other catastrophe occurs at each termination, that seems improbable. - DID A SIGNIFICANT CLIMATE CHANGE EVENT, KNOWN AS YOUNGER DRYAS, IMPACT CLIMATE AROUND THE GLOBE? - July 22, 2008
"The whole point is that this was a time of rapid environmental transition that we do not understand the cause for," says Lowell. "One of the primary things you have to understand before you can attribute cause is how widespread the event was. That's a question my work in the Southern hemisphere has been associated with.
"It just might be that we don't have the necessary dating techniques to make these determinations."
There are only a handful of known locations in the Southern hemisphere (one of which is Quelccaya) where samples for both kinds of testing can be obtained at the same site. - NEW STUDY CHALLENGES CLOVIS COMET CATASTROPHE THEORY - 2010-09-30
- UA ARCHAEOLOGIST, COLLEAGUES FIND NO EVIDENCE OF CATASTROPHIC IMPACT - September 30, 2010
- PREHISTORIC FIRST HUMANS IN NORTH AMERICA WERE NOT WIPED OUT BY A COMET - 1st October 2010
- MINI-ICE AGE DEBATE ROCKING GEOLOGY WORLD - September 11, 2010
Comets are believed by some experts to have wiped out megafauna species - NO EVIDENCE FOR ANCIENT COMET OR CLOVIS CATASTROPHE, ARCHAEOLOGISTS SAY -
- NANODIAMONDS DISCOVERED IN GREENLAND ICE SHEET - 2010-09-09
Nanosize diamonds have been discovered in the Greenland ice sheet, according to a study reported by scientists in a recent online publication of the Journal of Glaciology. The finding adds credence to the controversial hypothesis that fragments of a comet struck across North America and Europe approximately 12,900 years ago.
"There is a layer in the ice with a great abundance of diamonds," said co- author James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara. "Most exciting to us is that this is the first such discrete layer of diamonds ever found in glacial ice anywhere on Earth, including the huge polar ice sheets and the alpine glaciers. The diamonds are so tiny that they can only be observed with special, highly magnifying microscopes. They number in the trillions."
The event also corresponds with the time of extinction of many large animals across North America, including mammoths, camels, horses and the saber tooth cat.
There is also evidence of widespread wildfires at that time, said Kennett. An associated sharp climatic cooling called the Younger Dryas cooling is also recorded widely over the northern hemisphere.
A high proportion of the nanosize diamonds in the Greenland ice sheet exhibit hexagonal mineral structure, and these are only known to occur on Earth in association with known cosmic impact events, said Kennett. This layer of diamonds corresponds with the sedimentary layer known as the Younger Dryas Boundary, dating to 12,900 years ago. - CLUE TO HOW LAST ICE AGE ENDED - Sep. 8, 2010
As the last ice age was ending, about 13,000 years ago, a final blast of cold hit Europe, and for a thousand years or more, it felt like the ice age had returned. But oddly, despite bitter cold winters in the north, Antarctica was heating up. For the two decades since ice core records revealed that Europe was cooling at the same time Antarctica was warming over this thousand-year period, scientists have looked for an explanation. - SCIENTIST SMACKDOWN: NO PROOF THAT A COMET KILLED THE MAMMOTHS? - August 31st, 2010
Nearly 13,000 years ago, North American megafauna like the mammoths and giant sloths�and even human groups like the people of the Clovis culture? disappeared as the climate entered a cold snap. - ARIZONA'S MAMMOTH HUNTERS -- OUT WITH A WHIMPER OR A BANG? - April 14, 2010
Did a change in climate or an extraterrestrial impact bring an end to the beasts and people that roamed the Southwest shortly after the last ice age?
When the last ice age came to an end approximately 13,000 years ago and the glaciers covering a large portion of the North American continent began melting and retreating toward the north, a sudden cooling period known as the "Big Freeze" or, more scientifically, the Younger Dryas, reversed the warming process and caused glaciers to expand again. Even though this cooling period lasted only for 1,300 years, a blink of an eye in geologic timeframes, it witnessed the disappearance of an entire fauna of large mammals.
The big question, according to Haynes, is 'Why did those animals go extinct in a very short geological timeframe?'"
"When you go out and look at the sediments deposited during that time, you see this black layer we call the Black Mat. It contains the fossilized remains of a massive algae bloom, indicating a short period of water table rise and cool climate that kept the moisture in the soil. Below the Black Mat, you find all kinds of fossils from mammoths, bison, mastodons, Dire wolves and so forth, but when you look right above it &' nothing."
Scientists have suggested several scenarios to account for the rapid Pleistocene extinction event. Some ascribe it to the rapid shift toward a cooler and dryer during the "Big Freeze," causing widespread droughts.
Does this mean the results obtained by Haynes and his coworkers rule out the possibility of a cosmic event?
"No, it doesn't," Haynes said. "It just doesn't make it very likely." - DID A COMET TRIGGER A MINI ICE AGE? - 5 April 2010
Known as 'the Younger Dryas', it has been also called the Big Freeze and the Last Blast of the Ice Age - but for researchers trying to understand the Earth's ancient climate, it's one of the big mysteries of the field.
Around 12,900 years ago, Earth was on a steadily warming trend after almost 100,000 years of harsh glaciation, during which ice sheets placed a swathe of the northern hemisphere under a dead hand, extending their thrall as far as south as New England and Wales.
Unexpected plunge in temperature
But just as the glaciers were beginning to retreat, and an easier life at last beckoned for Earth's tiny population of humans, everything went into reverse.
Temperatures fell dramatically by up to 8�C, heralding a cruel winter that would last 1,300 years. But what caused it?
Earth collided with debris from a vast comet, measuring 50 to 100 km across, that had wandered into the inner Solar System some 30,000 years ago before breaking up, says Bill Napier, a professor at Cardiff University's Astrobiology Centre.
The impact unleashed a firestorm that blanketed the atmosphere with ash and dust, reducing heat and light from the Sun, Napier suggests in Monthly Notices, a journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
What is worrying, adds Napier, is that our planet still crosses the path of the remaining orbiting cometary rubble, a well-observed, although still enigmatic, phenomenon called the Taurid Complex. Many of these fragments are tiny and their burnup in the atmosphere, causing periodic showers of meteo
Scepticism from astronomers
Other astronomers, though, have railed at this theory.
At the time, they note, the Solar System had been largely cleansed of the monster rocks of its infancy, and the chance of a collision with an object of this magnitude was a thousand to one against.
Unless there is a Vulcan in the outer solar system to draw in Kuiper Belt objects, that is. - WHAT CAUSED THE YOUNGER DRYAS COLD EVENT? - April 2010, v. 38, no. 4
The Younger Dryas Cold Event (ca. 12.9?1.6 ka) has long been viewed as the canonical abrupt climate event (Fig. 1). The North Atlantic region cooled during this interval with a weakening of Northern Hemisphere monsoon strength.
Greenland ice cores also show ammonium (NH4+) increases during the Tunguska event and the Younger Dryas (Fig. 1B). While biomass burning is implicated for the Younger Dryas increase (e.g., Firestone et al., 2007), the amount of burning during the Tunguska event is too small to account for the ammonium increase of >200 ppb (Melott et al., 2010). Another alternative, involving direct ammonium deposition from the bolide, still fails to account for the observed Tunguska increase. The authors thus suggest a third mechanism called the Haber process that could account for both the Younger Dryas and Tunguska increases, in which, under high pressure, nitrogen and hydrogen can form ammonia. For the Tunguska increase, a potential impact with permafrost could provide the hydrogen, whereas the Laurentide Ice Sheet itself might be the hydrogen source for the Younger Dryas impact. - SCIENTIST SMACKDOWN: EVIDENCE OF A MAMMOTH-KILLING COMET, OR BUG POOP? - June 23rd, 2010
It makes for a good movie: 12,900 years ago, a comet slams into Earth, igniting forest fires across North America and sending the planet into a thousand cold years, killing off mammoths, giant sloths, and a bunch of other big mammals. But scientists have fiercely debated whether such a movie, about the cause of the planet-wide cooling period called the Younger Dryas, should be documentary or science fiction - THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE: AN HOUR-LONG STORM STARTED A MINI ICE AGE, SAY SCIENTISTS - 02nd April 2010
An hour-long hailstorm from space bombarded the Earth 13,000 years ago - plunging the planet into a mini-ice age, scientists claimed today.
The catastrophe was caused by a disintegrating comet and saw the planet sprayed by thousands of frozen boulders made of ice and dust.
The collisions wiped out huge numbers of animal species all over the world, disrupted the lives of our stone age ancestors and triggered a freeze that lasted more than 1,000 years.
The theory is the brainchild of Professor Bill Napier, from Cardiff University, who says it explains the mysterious period of extinction around 11,000 BC. Scientists have long been puzzled by what caused a sudden cooling of up to 8C (14F) just as the Earth was warming up at the end of the last ice age.
The change in climate caused retreating glaciers to advance once again, and coincided with the extinction of 35 families of North American mammals.
The collision left behind tell tale traces in the rocks - including a black 'mat' of soot an inch thick thought to have been created by continental wide wildfires.
Microscopic 'nanodiamonds' created in massive shocks and only found in meteorites or impact craters have also been discovered dating back to the disaster
These findings have led to claims that a 2.5mile long comet or asteroid smashed into the ice sheet covering what is now Canada and the northern US. But other scientists say the chances of the Earth being struck by such a large object only 13,000 years ago are one thousand to one against. And they say a single impact cannot explain such widespread fires.
Happens up to 12 to 15 times every ten thousand years. - Swarm B:CL-1 - 12,800 YA to 12,900 YA
- NEW EVIDENCE OF ICE AGE COMET FOUND IN ICE CORES - March 30, 2010
In the April Geology, researchers describe finding chemical similarities in the cores between a layer corresponding to 1908, when a 50,000-metric-ton extraterrestrial object exploded over Tunguska, Siberia, and a deeper stratum dating to 12,900 years ago. They argue that the similarity is evidence that an object weighing as much as 50 billion metric tons triggered the Younger Dryas, a millennium-long cold spell that began just as the ice age was loosing its grip (SN: 6/2/07, p. 339).
Whenever a comet strikes Earth�s atmosphere, it leaves behind a fingerprint of ammonium, the researchers propose. Immense heat and pressure in the shock wave spark the creation of ammonia, or NH3, from nitrogen in the air and hydrogen in the comet. Some of the ammonium, or NH4+, ions generated during subsequent reactions fall back to Earth in snow and are preserved in ice cores, where they linger as signs of the cataclysmic event. - SIGNS OF GIANT COMET IMPACTS FOUND IN CORES - March 30th, 2010
Copious ammonium may be evidence of a 50-billion-ton strike at the end of the ice age - SCIENTISTS FIND SIGNS OF 13,000-YEAR-OLD EXTINCTION EVENT - January 02, 2009
Comet may have exploded over planet, causing fires, die-offs, researchers say
The idea that a comet may have caused catastrophic climate change and extinction relatively recently in Earth�s long history suggests scientists shouldn�t dismiss the possibility of it happening again, Wolbach said.
�Should we be doing more to try to deflect future asteroids, or is that too sci- fi??she said. �If this is true and there was an impact 12.9 thousand years ago, obviously this is not something that�s just a theoretical idea, it�s a real thing.? - GEMS POINT TO COMET AS ANSWER TO ANCIENT RIDDLE - January 2, 2009
Something dramatic happened about 12,900 years ago, and the continent of North America was never the same. A thriving culture of Paleo-Americans, known as the Clovis people, vanished seemingly overnight. Gone, too, were most of the largest animals: horses, camels, lions, mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, ground sloths and giant armadillos.
In just the last few years, there has arisen a controversial scientific hypothesis to explain this chain of events, and it involves an extraterrestrial calamity: a comet, broken into fragments, turning the sky ablaze, sending a shock wave across the landscape and scorching forests, creatures, people and anything exposed to the heavenly fire.
Now the proponents of this apocalyptic scenario say they have found a new line of evidence: nanodiamonds. They say they have found these tiny structures across North America in sediments from 12,900 years ago, and they argue that the diamonds had to have been formed by a high-temperature, high-pressure event, such as a cometary impact. - GEMS SHOW COMET HIT CONTINENT, SCIENTISTS SAY - January 2, 2009
Diamonds are generally considered a sign of love and devotion, but a thin layer of microscopic diamonds a couple of feet beneath the surface of North America represents a far more horrific tale - one of fire, flood and devastation that extinguished woolly mammoths and dealt a blow to early civilization, scientists reported today.
According to the theory - which has its critics - as the comet broke apart, it rained fire over the entire continent, igniting the plains and forests and creating choking clouds of smoke.
Heat from the explosions and fires melted substantial portions of the Laurentide glacier in Canada, sending waves of water down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico. That caused changes in Atlantic Ocean currents, which started a 1,300-year ice age known as the Younger Dryas.
Battered by fire and ice, as many as 35 species of mammals including American camels, mammoths, mastodons, the short-faced bear, the giant beaver, the dire wolf and the American lion either immediately vanished or were so depleted in number that humans hunted them to extinction.
The humans themselves, a Paleo-Indian grouping known as the Clovis culture for the distinctive spear points they employed, suffered a major population drop, disappearing in many areas for hundreds of years. - JOURNEYS WITH GEORGE: DID A COMET CAUSE THE CAROLINA BAYS?
These elliptical, wetland depressions, often rimmed with white, crystalline sand, are sprinkled along much of the North Carolina coast and parts of the eastern seaboard from Georgia to the District of Columbia. To Howard and those who share both his interest and his theory, these droplet-shaped dents (often choked with bay trees, hence the name) were most likely caused by a life- obliterating comet that landed on earth about 13,000 years ago: in geologic terms, quite recently. Howard wants to prove this, and he wants the world to take note.
Yes a comet caused the Carolina Bays, but 11,600 years ago, not 13,000 years ago. - EXPLODING ASTEROID THEORY STRENGTHENED BY NEW EVIDENCE LOCATED IN OHIO, INDIANA Geological evidence found in Ohio and Indiana in recent weeks is strengthening the case to attribute what happened 12,900 years ago in North America -- when the end of the last Ice Age unexpectedly turned into a phase of extinction for animals and humans ?to a cataclysmic comet or asteroid explosion over top of Canada.
A comet/asteroid theory advanced by Arizona-based geophysicist Allen West in the past two years says that an object from space exploded just above the earth�s surface at that time over modern-day Canada, sparking a massive shock wave and heat-generating event that set large parts of the northern hemisphere ablaze, setting the stage for the extinctions.
Now University of Cincinnati Assistant Professor of Anthropology Ken Tankersley, working in conjunction with Allen West and Indiana Geological Society Research Scientist Nelson R. Schaffer, has verified evidence from sites in Ohio and Indiana ?including, locally, Hamilton and Clermont counties in Ohio and Brown County in Indiana ?that offers the strongest support yet for the exploding comet/asteroid theory.
The only plausible scenario available now for explaining their presence this far south is the kind of cataclysmic explosive event described by West�s theory. "We believe this is the strongest evidence yet indicating a comet impact in that time period," says Tankersley. - THE END OF AN (ICE) AGE
University researchers Douglas Kennett and Jon Erlandson are part of a group of scientists proposing that a comet or asteroid hit North America about 13,000 years ago - near the end of the last ice age - and contributed to major events in the continent's history, including the die-off of horses, mammoths and other large mammals around the same time. - ICE AGE COMET THEORY CAUSES BIG BANG - Some say it hit U.S. 13,000 years ago
Now a research group that includes two University of Oregon scientists is proposing a more dramatic cause for the extinctions: A 3-mile-wide comet or asteroid exploded over Canada or slammed into the continent about 13,000 years ago.
University of Oregon archaeologists Douglas Kennett and Jon Erlandson are among about two dozen scientists who say the impact also could have led to the abrupt cooling known as the Younger Dryas, which lasted 1,200 years.
The researchers laid out their proposed theory recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. They say the evidence is in a 2-inch-thick carbon-rich black mat found in about 50 sites across North America.
Their article says the layer contains grains with iridium, carbon spherules and fullerenes packed with concentrations of helium 3, "all of which are evidence for an extraterrestrial impact" about 12,900 years ago and the raging wildfires that followed.
They suggest that heat from the detonation or impact may have set off wildfires across the continent and destabilized the vast Laurentide Ice Sheet that covered much of Canada and the northern United States. The melting of ice may have led to a flood of fresh water, changing ocean currents in the North Atlantic and contributing to the cooling climate that reduced human populations and added to the demise of the animals.
No giant crater has been found from the impact, but the scientists say the comet may have broken into smaller pieces and detonated in various places.
"If a comet hit the Laurentide Ice Sheet, it would not have left a big crater," Erlandson said. "It's ice on ice, and it's going to throw up enormous amounts of shattered ice and debris." - EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT WIPED OUT LIFE DURING ICE AGE
What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes.
But now, a new study has reported evidence of a comet or low-density object barrelling toward Earth, exploding in the upper atmosphere and triggering a devastating swath that wiped out most of the large animals, their habitat and humans of that period.
"The detonation either fried them or compressed them because of the shock wave. It was a mini nuclear winter," said Ted Bunch, NAU adjunct professor of geology and former NASA researcher who specializes in impact craters.
Till date, no one has found a giant crater in the Earth that could attest to such a cataclysmic impact 13,000 years ago.
But the research team has offered evidence of a comet, two and a half to three miles in diameter, that detonated 30 to 60 miles above the earth, triggering a massive shockwave, firestorms and a subsequent drastic cooling effect across most of North America and northern Europe.
"The comet may have broken up into smaller pieces as it neared the Earth and then these pieces detonated in various places above two continents," Bunch said. - RESEARCH TEAM SAYS EXTRATERRESTRIAL IMPACT TO BLAME FOR ICE AGE EXTINCTIONS 24-Sep-2007 -
What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home.
A team of international researchers, including two Northern Arizona University geologists, reports evidence that a comet or low-density object barreling toward Earth exploded in the upper atmosphere and triggered a devastating swath of destruction that wiped out most of the large animals, their habitat and humans of that period. - WERE ANCIENT AMERICANS WIPED OUT BY METEOR STRIKE?
Some 12,900 years ago disaster struck the North American continent. The Earth's climate, which had been getting steadily warmer at the tail end of the retreating Ice Age, suddenly dropped catastrophically. The megafauna, such as camels and mammoth died out. And the first people to populate the American landscape saw their numbers drop by an estimated 75%. A number of explanations have been offered for why this happened. One of the latest is that cataclysmic event thought to have caused several other upheavals in the Earth's history, an impact from outer space.
Some event took place at the start of what we now call the Younger Dryas period, that had a violent effect on the Earth's climate world wide. While the temperature dropped in the north, the hunter-gatherers of the Levant and Middle East saw their surroundings stricken by severe drought. Many hold that this drought was the impetus for the invention of agriculture in this region, rich in easily domesticated plants and animals, setting mankind on the road to urbanisation, trade, and modern civilisation. The Clovis people were not so lucky.
The melting glaciers that had covered Canada and large swaths of the United States had formed a giant fresh water sea, called Lake Agassiz, bigger than all of the present-day Great Lakes combined, in the center of North America. The remaining glaciation formed a dam, preventing a gradual run-off into the Atlantic. At some point, 12,900 years ago, that dam burst, and enormous quantities of cold fresh water drained into the North Atlantic in a deluge.
And now some scientists are theorising that an impact might have contributed to three events almost 13,000 years ago, the sudden cold period, the disappearance of 35 large species of mammals (the horse and camel actually evolved in the Americas, and survived by crossing the Bering land bridge, heading the opposite way as the migrating humans, before they became extinct in their native environment), and the collapse of the Clovis culture. The demise of the megafauna could be explained by the Clovis hunters driving them to extinction. And the traditional Lake Agassiz deluge and the subsequent colder climate would suffice to explain the rest. But great systemic breakdowns are ususally not due to a single isolated event, but to a confluence of blows. While the system might have survived one, the second, or even third, proves fatal.
At the joint assembly of the American Geophysical Union, which came together in Acapulco, Mexico on the 24th of May this year, a group of researchers presented their findings, which pointed to a major impact event on the North American continent at close to the start of the Younger Dryas period. A comet, some five kilometres across, entered the Earth's atmosphere, and exploded above the northern ice sheet, causing, among other damage, the catastrophic deluge of melt-water into the Atlantic.
While they have been unable to point to any central impact crater, this could be explained by the bolide disintegrating in the air, and the principal strike zone being covered by glaciation. They also point to four large trenches below the present Great Lakes as possible testaments to the impact. The so called Carolina bays, located in line with the lakes, as well as thousands of smaller features along the Atlantic coast, might also have been a result of the impact. But some geologists protest that there are other, and far more plausible explanations for these features.
All we know for sure is that the number of arrowheads, and probably the number of people, fall by 75% following this period. The America that emerged from the catastrophe, would be totally different from the one that had once been.
And so it might be again. - COMET THEORY COLLIDES WITH CLOVIS RESEARCH
Archaeologists have long known that the great beasts of the age - the wooly mammoth and mastodon - suddenly disappeared around the same time period (12,900 - 12,800 years ago), but little was known about their demise. It was thought to be the result of over-hunting by Clovis man or climate change associated with a new ice age.
The notion that a comet collided with Earth and caused these events was farfetched until recently, when the group of scientists began looking for evidence of a comet impact, which they call the Younger - Dryas Event. They turned to Goodyear and the pristine Clovis site of Topper.
They found iridium and plenty of it," said Goodyear. "The high concentrations were much higher than you would normally see in the background of the earth's crust. That tends to be an indicator of a terrestrial impact from outer space."
The researchers also found high iridium concentrations at six other Clovis sites throughout North America, as well as in and along the rims of the Carolina Bays, the elliptically shaped depressions that are home to an array of flora and fauna along South Carolina's coast.
The Younger- Dryas Event suggests that a large comet exploded above Canada, creating a storm of fiery fragments that rained over North America. The fragments could have easily killed the giant mammals of the day, as well as Clovis man. - DID COMET START DEADLY COLD SNAP?
A comet or some other extraterrestrial object appears to have slammed into northern Canada 12,900 years ago and triggered an abrupt and catastrophic climate change that wiped out the mammoths and many other prehistoric creatures, according to a team of U.S. scientists.
The sediment layer formed 12,900 years ago and coincides with both the extinction of the animals and the onset of a mini-ice age that lasted more than 1,000 years, say Ms. Becker and her colleagues from several U.S. universities and research labs. They say they are increasingly convinced the impact, extinction and cold snap are all related.
According to their scenario, a comet or large meteoroid generated a shock wave and threw massive amounts of debris, heat and gas into the atmosphere. This set off wildfires that raced across grasslands in southern North America, depriving the mammoths and other grazing animals of food.
The impact and heat also destabilized the ice sheet that blanketed Canada at the time, creating a flood of melt water that poured into the North Atlantic, according to their theory. The pulse of fresh water then shut down the ocean currents carrying heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, leading to an abrupt cooling. The resulting "mini-ice age" in the Northern Hemisphere, known as the Younger Dryas, lasted more than a thousand years. - CATASTROPHIC COMET CHILLED AND KILLED ICE AGE BEASTS (AND CLOVIS PEOPLE)
An extraterrestrial object with a three-mile girth might have exploded over southern Canada nearly 13,000 years ago, wiping out an ancient Stone Age culture as well as megafauna like mastodons and mammoths.
The blast could be to blame for a major cold spell called the Younger Dryas that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period of time spanning from about 1.8 million years ago to 11,500 years ago.
"Based on the distribution of material, it looks like this impact probably occurred in southern Canada near the Great Lakes, over what at that time would have been a major glacier, the Laurentide ice sheet," said one of the presenters, Richard Firestone of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
They couldn't find a distinct crater, suggesting the comet burst in the air rather than slamming into Earth. Even an airburst should leave its mark, so the scientists think the Laurentide Ice Sheet absorbed much of the impact.
During the last catastrophic animal extinction, more than three-fourths of the large Ice Age animals, including woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers and giant bears, died out. Scientists have debated for years over the cause of the extinction, with both of the major hypotheses�human overhunting and climate change�insufficient to account for the mega die-off.
An extraterrestrial explosion could have triggered a wave of massive wildfires that reduced to ashes the mastodons of the day, say the scientists. At one site called Murray Springs in Arizona, a well-known Clovis site, the scientists found megafauna covered by the comet debris.
The evidence for a comet impact is substantial. - OREGON RESEARCHERS INVOLVED IN NEW CLOVIS-AGE IMPACT THEORY
- COMET MAY HAVE DOOMED MAMMOTHS
- ICE AGE ENDS SMASHINGLY: DID A COMET BLOW UP OVER EASTERN CANADA?
Evidence unearthed at more than two dozen sites across North America suggests that an extraterrestrial object exploded in Earth's atmosphere above Canada about 12,900 years ago, just as the climate was warming at the end of the last ice age. The explosion sparked immense wildfires, devastated North America's ecosystems and prehistoric cultures, and triggered a millennium-long cold spell, scientists say.
The long axes of the great majority of the Carolina Bays point toward locations near the Great Lakes and in Canada�a hint that the extraterrestrial object disintegrated over those locales, says Howard.
Because scientists "haven't discovered a large, smoking hole" left by the event, the object that blew up in the atmosphere probably was a comet, says West.
Heat from the event would have set off wildfires across the continent, the scientists suggest. The heat and shock from the explosion probably broke up portions of the ice sheet smothering eastern Canada at the time, they add. The flood of fresh water into the North Atlantic that resulted would have interrupted ocean currents that bring warmth to the region, and thick clouds of smoke and soot in the air would have intensified cooling across the Northern Hemisphere.
The inferred date of the event matches the beginning of a 1,200-year-long cold spell that geologists call the Younger Dryas, which in its first few decades saw temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere drop as much as 10�C. - ICE AGE BLAST 'RAVAGED AMERICA'
A controversial new idea suggests that a large space rock exploded over North America 13,000 years ago. The blast may have wiped out one of America's first Stone Age cultures as well as the continent's big mammals such as the mammoth and the mastodon.
The blast, from a comet or asteroid, caused a major bout of climatic cooling which may also have affected human cultures emerging in Europe and Asia. All, they argue, point to the explosion 12,900 years ago of an extraterrestrial object up to 5km across.
No crater remains, possibly because the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which blanketed thousands of sq km of North America during the last Ice Age, was thick enough to mask the impact.
Another possibility is that it exploded in the air.
Professor James Kennett, from the University of California in Santa Barbara (UCSB), said the explosion could be to blame for the extinction of several large North American mammals at the end of the last Ice Age. - DID A COMET HIT GREAT LAKES REGION, FRAGMENT HUMAN POPULATIONS, 12,900 YEARS AGO?
The researchers propose that a known reversal in the world's ocean currents and associated rapid global cooling, which some scientists blame for the extinction of multiple species of animals and the end of the Clovis Period, was itself the result of a bigger event. While generally accepted theory says glacial melting from the North American interior caused the shift in currents, the new proposal points to a large extraterrestrial object exploding above or even into the Laurentide Ice Sheet north of the Great Lakes.
"Highest concentrations of extraterrestrial impact materials occur in the Great Lakes area and spread out from there," Kennett said. "It would have had major effects on humans. Immediate effects would have been in the North and East, producing shockwaves, heat, flooding, wildfires, and a reduction and fragmentation of the human population."
Kennett said that 35 animal genera went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene, with at least 15 clearly being wiped out close to 12,900 years ago. There would have been major ecological shifts, driving Clovis survivors into isolated groups in search of food and warmth. There is evidence, he said, that pockets of Clovis people survived in refugia, especially in the western United States. - S.C. SITE KEY IN CLIMATE-CHANGING ANCIENT COMET THEORY
According to the theory, a comet broke apart in the atmosphere above what is now eastern North America, producing massive, multiple explosions as its pieces slammed into the surface with more force than all the world's nuclear weapons combined.
The fallout from the explosions would have dusted the Earth with microscopic nanodiamonds, magnetic particles, iridium and black carbon. All of those substances have been found in a layer of soil, found continent-wide, dated to about 12,900 years ago.
The explosions and resulting climate change could explain the sudden disappearance of large mammals, such as mammoths and mastodons, at that same time period. Also, it could explain the abrupt end in the archaeological records of the Clovis people, the first to populate North America. - THE YOUNGER DRYAS
Note: 13.18 kyr BP (during the Bolling/Allerod) - SUPERNOVA STORM WIPED OUT MAMMOTHS?
If their supernova theory gains acceptance, it could explain why dozens of species on the continent became extinct 13,000 years ago. Mammoths and mastodons, both relatives of today's elephants, mysteriously died out then, as did giant ground sloths, a large-horned bison, a huge species of armadillo, saber-toothed cats, and many other animals and plants.
Supernovas are rare and usually very far away. Cyclical comet swarms caused by other triggers may not be, as we may find out this century. - FIRST FARMERS DISCOVERED
The first farmers grew wheat and rye 13,000 years ago in Syria and were forced into cultivating crops by a terrible drought, according to UK archaeologists. What he found was evidence for a terrible drought: "It was very sharp and would certainly have been felt within a human lifetime, perhaps even in the space of 10 or so years." Geologist call this period the Younger Dryas, a 1000-year spell of cold and dry weather with interrupted the planet's gradual warming from the last ice age. - MEGA-EXTINCTION? BLAME THE WEATHER
Guthrie proposes instead that changes in the world climate at the end of the Ice Age 13,000 years ago altered the frigid landscape of the far north into a steppe covered with grasses, where mammoths, horses, and other grazers flourished for 1000 years. Just as humans first appear in the archaeological fossil record 12,000 years ago, the climate began to shift, turning the steppe grasses into plants toxic to grazers. Horses went extinct about 1000 years before the mammoths, which disappeared well after humans appeared on the scene in the far north, Guthrie reports. - Quick Rise In Temperature (13,000 Years Ago Shonw On Graph) Sir Fred Hoyle: ICE The Ultimate Human Catastrophe: Op. Cit.; pp. 26, 27, 160. From G. R. Coope in A. E. Wright & F. Moseley (eds.) Ice Ages, Ancient & Modern; Seel House Press, 1971.
- SOME CAROLINA BAYS
- Swarm B:CL-2 - 12,729 YA or 12,679 BP
- EIGHTH YEAR REPORT 2009 CARBON SICENCE: PALEOCLIMATE
Sigman's group is also working to improve understanding of the mechanisms by which past ocean changes have interacted with conditions on land. As part of a long term collaboration with close colleague Gerald Haug, Professor in the Geological Institute at ETH Zurich, sediment from a German crater lake was used in a high resolution study of western European climate at the onset of the Younger Dryas cold period ~12,700 years ago. The Younger Dryas cold period was likely fundamentally driven by a sharp reduction in North Atlantic overturning circulation. However, previous climate model studies have suggested that the overturning circulation alone could not fully explain the degradation in European climate.
Data from the lake indicate an abrupt increase in winter storminess at the onset of the cold period, occurring from one year to the next at 12,679 yr BP, providing one of the best dated records of this climate transition. The storminess change is best explained by an abrupt change in the North Atlantic westerlies towards a stronger and more zonal jet due to a cooling of the subpolar North Atlantic. The reconstructed wind shift may explain the temporal coincidence of the overturning decrease with European cooling, providing an important part of the missing link between ocean and land. Lamb 1977 reported a Global Climatic Boundary at 2760 BP. 12,679 BP - 2760 BP is 9919 years (supposedly two Vulcan orbital revolutions. The error uncertainty in the 2760 BP date is not known. Other data pinpoints two Vulcan orbital reolutions to be 9939 +/- 1.4 years and 9938 +/- 11.5 years (one sigma error). 9919 and 9938 or 9939 years differ by only about 20 years out of almost ten thousand years. - HARSH CLIMATE CHANGE ONCE FELL SWIFTLY - Aug. 1, 2008
ow scientists believe they've pinpointed the exact time the northern hemisphere was plunged back into a deep freeze. Examining sediments preserved at the bottom of a remote lake in western Germany, they found that what's known as the Younger Dryas cold period took just a year to sweep across the continent, starting in the autumn, 12,679 years ago. - MINI ICE AGE TOOK HOLD OF EUROPE IN MONTHS - 11 November 2009
UST months - that's how long it took for Europe to be engulfed by an ice age.
Around 12,800 years ago the northern hemisphere was hit by the Younger Dryas mini ice age, or "Big Freeze". It was triggered by the slowdown of the Gulf Stream, led to the decline of the Clovis culture in North America, and lasted around 1300 years. Until now, it was thought that the mini ice age took a decade or so to take hold, on the evidence provided by Greenland ice cores. Not so, say William Patterson of the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, and his colleagues. The group studied a mud core from an ancient lake, Lough Monreagh, in western Ireland. Using a scalpel they sliced off layers 0.5 to 1 millimetre thick, each representing up to three months of time. No other measurements from the period have approached - LAST ICE AGE HAPPENED IN LESS THAN YEAR SAY SCIENTISTS
THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned.
Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.
Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago ?a very recent period on a geological scale.
The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe ?and soon. - THE YOUNGER DRYAS
Note: 12.64 kyr BP aka YA (during the Younger Dryas) - THE DRAGONSTORM PROJECT - Dennis Cox
After the end of the last ice age a large, fragmented comet caused a continental scale, impact firestorm that killed most of the life on the continent of North America, and broke up the Laurentide Ice Sheet causing a return to ice age conditions that lasted another thousand years. But the comet's fragments did far more than just melting some ice, setting things on fire, and killing everything. It rearranged the entire topography of the continent on a titanic, and stupendous, scale that defies the imagination. And all of the surface scars of that event, while dramatic and obvious, have been mistakenly identified as having been caused by something else entirely. It is the goal of The Dragonstorm Project to identify and document those mis-identified surface effects and scars. - A DIFFERENT KIND OF CATASTROPHE - Dennis Cox - December 28, 2009
The ground effects, and blast effected materials I�ve noticed, and cataloged all point to something that happened around the end of the last Ice age. I never set out to explain the Younger Dryas events. Rather, when I learned of work on the Younger Dryas Boundary layer, I realized they confirmed some of what I had found. It confirmed, if nothing else, that an event of the level of destruction I was looking at did indeed happen.
It turns out that the Tunguska object was only rare in that it arrived alone. And it was such a puny little thing. A large, highly fragmented comet consisting mostly of ices that are almost as violently explosive as hydrogen peroxide rocket fuel is a much more frightening kind of monster; and much more common. The form the planetary scaring takes is characterized as a non- volcanic melting event hot enough to make stone flow like water for a moment. And ballistic/kinetic shock has almost nothing to do with it.
Ignimbrites, literally �fire cloud rock? or tuff as they�re more commonly called, in satellite images, have the look of wet, fast flowing, concrete, or lumpy mud. They are always formed in an explosive event. So, as a blast effected material, they are a clear, and direct signature of the motions of the explosive event they formed in, no proxy required
Both are pretty extraordinary possibilities. The visual evidence is more supportive of the latter. But no matter what the source of the heat, and pressure; the more than 40,000 sq km of pristine, simultaneous, random- colliding-inter flowing, rivers of blast-generated ignimbrites, at the pinnacle of the stratigraphic column describes a geologically recent explosive event that was arguably the single most violent natural disaster in all of human existence. Yet, with the exception of a few prospectors looking for money rocks, it�s almost completely unstudied.
The real event makes the scaryest hollywood disaster movie of hell on Earth look like a childrens bedtime story.
- THE DAY THE EARTH FROZE: AN HOUR-LONG STORM STARTED A MINI ICE AGE, SAY SCIENTISTS - 2nd April 2010
- THE 10,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm A' - 12,600 YA
- RESEARCH RAISES FEAR OF DRAMATIC TEMEPRATURE CHANGE DURING WARMIND TREND - 2 October 1998
Ice core samples from Antarctica suggest that the warming trend that ended an ice age 12,500 years ago may have overtaken the Earth in only a few decades And White's team said the Antarctica ice cores show a temperature increase of about 20 degrees F within a few decades. - ICE CORE TIMELINE - 12,000 BP (before present) - Rapid Climate Change (9600 BC impact)
As this graph shows, one such jump occurred about 12,000 years ago, as the last glacial period (the Pleistocene) was giving way to our current warm "interglacial" period (the Holocene). Suddenly, possibly in less than five years, average temperatures, which were slightly cooler than today's, plunged by about 27�F, returning the world to near-glacial conditions. The Younger Dryas, as this freak period is known, lasted about 1,300 years before it returned--just as abruptly--to the temperatures typical of the period immediately preceding it. - Radiocarbon geochronological data indicates the Pleistocene/Holocene (the last glacial/inter-glacial) boundary at 10,300 +/- 200 radiocarbon years ago (or about 12,125 years ago) near a brief mini-glacial period. See: The New Encylopaedia Britannica; Encylopaedia Britannica Inc.; Chicago, 15 th edition - 1993; Vol. 19 (Geochronology - Nature of the Holocene record), pp. 860 - 870.
- RESEARCH RAISES FEAR OF DRAMATIC TEMEPRATURE CHANGE DURING WARMIND TREND - 2 October 1998
- THE 9,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm A - 11,600 YA
- Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike DANISH ARCTIC RESEARCH DATES ICE AGE
The result of a Danish ice drilling project has become the international standard for the termination of the last glacial period. It ended precisely 11,711 years ago.
�Our new, extremely detailed data from the examination of the ice cores shows that in the transition from the ice age to our current warm, interglacial period the climate shift is so sudden that it is as if a button was pressed? explains ice core researcher J�rgen Peder Steffensen, Centre for Ice and Climate at NBI at the University of Copenhagen. - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike NBI NEWS: GOLDEN SPIKE IN ICE CORE - Video
Ice Age ended exactly 11,703 years ago measured from 2000 AD. - Swarm A:Cl-1 StrikeDETERMINATION OF END OF THE ICE AGE?
To summarize, the term ice age is in the eye (or mind) of the beholder. In Denmark the ice age ended 11,703 years ago as arctic conditions vanished for good. Globally however, the ice age began to go away 18,000 years ago and was completely gone 8,000 or 9,000 years ago as the last pieces to the Scandinavian and Canadian ice sheets melted away. - Swarm A:Cl-1 StrikeWHAT CAUSED THE END OF THE ICE AGE?
The last cold ripple ended 11.711 years ago and as this ripple lies so close to the ice age�s general end, the ice age never returned and there have not been any ripples since. Fortunately. Because it takes circa 10.000 years for an ice age to gradually come to an end; but for a climate ripple (for example, the end of the Younger Dryas) the change in weather took, 25 years later, just one year, temperature wise. - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike THE YOUNGER DRYAS
Note: 11.81 kyr BP aka YA (during the Younger Dryas)
11.4 kyr BP aka YA (early Preboreal) - COMET THAT LAUNCHED NOAH'S ARK Tollmann, a geology professor at the University of Vienna, compared the numerous great flood myths, recorded in almost every prehistoric civilization, with the geological evidence for a comet impact at about the same time. He used the two sources of information to date the flood to about 9,600 BC.
- GIANT COMET LAUNCHED NOAH'S ARK
Two discoveries are central to his claim. One is the distribution of the splinters of molten rock thrown up by the impacts, known as tektites. There was, he said, a huge concentration of them in sediments laid down about 10,000 BC. Variations in the amounts in different parts of the world suggested Earth was hit by seven large fragments and many smaller ones.
Tollmann's findings are supported in principle by Clube. He has just published the results of 20 years research into comets and the way their paths through space intersect with the Earth's. He concludes that many of the big events in history were a result of collisions with comets or their debris. - DURHAM UNIVERSITY STUDIES CAUSES OF MAMMOTH EXTINCTION - Aug 18 2010
The decrease in productivity and extent of grassland is likely to have been the major contributor to the extinction of many large mammals across most of northern Eurasia and north-western North America by about 11,400 years ago, the onset of the present warm interglacial period. Although some species held on for several thousand years longer in very limited localities, their fate had effectively been sealed. - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike THEORY SUPPORTING THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT FLOOD
According to Plato, the island of Atlantis and the distant Mediterranean civilizations were completely destroyed in a single day and night of violent earthquakes and floods. They disappeared into the depths of the sea. And according to Plato, the Great Flood occurred around 11,400 years ago.
Analysis of staghorn coral (a coral that always grows in shallow water) provides evidence that the ocean level rose 400 feet since the end of the last Ice Age and the Ice Age came to an abrupt end 11,650 years ago. This occurred when global temperatures rose approximately 7o C. - DOES THE EARTH CHANGE ITS SHAPE ?
It is known that there was a diminish of the geomagnetic field at 12,400 BP, which is regarded as 10,400BC. - THE BIBLICAL FLOOD
Alexander Tollmann, "a professor in the institute of geology at the University of Vienna, compared the numerous myths of a great flood, recorded in almost every prehistoric civilisation, with the geological evidence for a comet impact at about the same time. He used the two sources of information to date the flood very precisely, to around the year 9,600 BC. - HISTORY
hat this entailed at one point a great flooding of all coastal regions on the, what you call, Atlantic areas and all those areas within that region called Mediterranean is true. For a great surge was felt under the sea creating waves unlike any ever seen. This surge also pushed forth much debris called ash. For two volcanoes then erupted creating much darkness. That this was followed by several days of rain is true, but that was not the cause of the flooding. For rather did the tidal surge supply the flood. Note that a tidal surge, not a tsunami, is claimed. This implies a rapid crustal shift. - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike ATLANTIS
In Plato's account, Atlantis was a naval power lying "in front of the Pillars of Hercules" that conquered many parts of Western Europe and Africa 9,000 years before the time of Solon, or approximately 9600 BC. After a failed attempt to invade Athens, Atlantis sank into the ocean "in a single day and night of misfortune".
Solon
Solon (ancient Greek:c. 638 BC?58 BC) was an Athenian statesman, lawmaker, and poet. - PLATO'S ATLANTIS Frequently Asked Questions
Whatever the case, it is becoming abundantly clear scientifically that the end of the last Ice Age was anything but smooth and gradual. If Plato invented the story of Atlantis, he was unbelievably lucky to date its demise when he did, since he knew nothing of Ice Ages.
Q. Since Plato lived circa. 350 B.C. and Atlantis sank circa. 9,700 B.C. (a gap of over 9,000 years), how did he happen to know about Atlantis?
Q. Did Plato ever use the words "continent," or "lost continent" to describe the land of Atlantis ?
A. No. The word Plato uses to describe the landmass of Atlantis is nesos, the Greek word for "island". Even though he calls it a "large island," - ATLANTIS EXPLAINED? YOU BE THE JUDGE.
In the dialogues Plato makes a point of explaining how a myth such as Pha�thon's ride can have a background in reality, reflecting meteorite impact events. He also gives an account of the paleogeography of Attika, and its geomorphologic evolution. The context of the tale of Atlantis is thus in talking about prehistory, and how memories are lost with time. A number of details in the tale regarding geography and prehistory have turned out to be true, although they were unknown at Plato's time.
In the last century we have learned very much about the events of the past, thanks to the developments of geology. Plato gave a date of 9600 BC for Atlantis. At that time the last ice age ended, the global sea level rose in the order of 125 m altogether, and the temperature rose in the order of 10�C. The details of this development are still being investigated by earth scientists, and some very sudden events may still not have been identified - THE SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS IN CUBA
British historian Andrew Collins is the author of GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, which in 2000 proposed that Cuba was the flagship of Plato's island empire. He reports on the recent discoveries of a lost city off Cuba, and its importance to the Atlantis legend.
Readers will be aware of the discovery deep beneath the Yucatan Channel, off the coast of Guanahacabibes in western Cuba, of what is purportedly a lost city. Hi-tech sonar equipment aboard the 'Ulises', a vessel owned by Canadian firm Advanced Digital Communications (ADC), detected a several-kilometre square area of what appear to be roads, pyramids and other building structures at a depth of 2,200 feet. Yet it was not until July 2001 that Paulina Zelitsky, the Russian-born leader of the expedition, got a chance to view the site first-hand.
The Carolina Bays Comet
The presence of around 500,000 elliptical craters, ranging from a few hundred metres to 11 kilometres in size, across the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, from New Jersey down to Miami, is perhaps the greatest clue. Modern theories are that these so-called Carolina Bays (after the states in which they were first noted during aerial surveys in the 1920s) were caused by a comet which entered the earth's atmosphere from the north-west over Alaska and disintegrated into millions of pieces that detonated above the ground, very much in the manner of the small comet which caused the Tunguska event in Siberia in June 1908. - THE SEARCH FOR ATLANTIS IN CUBA - FINALLY, SOME ANSWERS!! - UPDATE - March 02, 2008 The Carolina Bays Comet
The presence of around 500,000 elliptical craters, ranging from a few hundred metres to 11 kilometres in size, across the entire eastern seaboard of the United States, from New Jersey down to Miami, is perhaps the greatest clue. Modern theories are that these so-called Carolina Bays (after the states in which they were first noted during aerial surveys in the 1920s) were caused by a comet which entered the earth's atmosphere from the north-west over Alaska and disintegrated into millions of pieces that detonated above the ground, very much in the manner of the small comet which caused the Tunguska event in Siberia in June 1908. - CAROLINA BAYS GOUGED INTO THE GROUND AT A MAGNETIC REVERSAL - 28 Jul 09
Is it just a coincidence that more than two million huge holes were gouged into the ground - all at the same time - about 12,000 years ago at a magnetic reversal?
Today, the general consensus is that these massive elliptical scars were somehow created by a comet or meteorite exploding above the earth. - CAROLINA BAY'S THE MYSTERY
Carolina bay ecosystems are formed in elliptical depressions which occur abundantly across the surface of the earth. USA showered by a watery comet ~11,000 years ago, ending the GoldenAge of man in America.Carolina Baysfrom the Polynesian Pathways By Peter Marsh
From Andrew Collins book; "Gateway to Atlantis" we get the following interesting information.Many native American traditions tell of a moon fell out of the sky, onto the earth. During it's passage through the sky it looked like a feiry snake, there were terrible earth quakes and the day turned into night, there was a gigantic flood and a formidable rain that lasted many days, many people died.This most likely describes the impact of the comet that created the Carolina Bays.
Also from further south in the Carolinas we have the following veryinteresting tradition:"a star fell to the earth, and rain soonfollowed (oceanic impact, causing vast amounts of water toevaporate).Days and days of rain quenched the fire.Great holesburned in the earth by the fire were filled,forming a great inlandsea. - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike GALACTIC ENCOUNTERS, APOLLO OBJECTS AND ATLANTIS:
Ancient literature, impact results, possible location of Atlantis. The date given for the catastrophe, corresponding to circa 11.600 B.P. YA or 9,600 BC, fits well the commonly accepted starting time for the withdrawal of the global ices now estimated at 11,450 B.P. - CORROBORATING EVIDENCE ON THE REALITY OF ATLANTIS
Plato affirms that the demise of Atlantis took place "9,000 years before the times of Solon". Now, Solon visited Egypt at about 600 BC, which adds to a total of about 11,600 BP (Before Present). Now, this is precisely the date of the cataclysmic ending of the Pleistocene Ice Age, as given by the geologic record. So, we are led to conclude that Plato's date is correct, and that the Greek philosopher indeed knew what he was talking about. - CUBA VERSUS HISPANIOLA ?THE ATLANTIS DEBATE CONTINUES
Although the view that Hispaniola was ancient Atlantis has been given a boost again recently by Professor Emilio Spedicato of Bergamo University, I argue that the island of Atlantis described in Plato's Timaeus and Critias is the neighbouring island of Cuba (see the TRUE LOCATION section of the website). Even Emilio, after reading GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS, has admitted that Cuba is `a very good candidate' for the title of Atlantis. He further adds that `only archaeological work will perhaps solve the riddle.'
Yet just as Plato describes, it was drowned beneath the waves following `earthquakes and floods?of the sort proposed in connection with the Carolina Bays cometary impact of the ninth millennium BC (see GATEWAY TO ATLANTIS). - IRELAND IS LOST ISLAND OF ATLANTIS, SAYS SCIENTIST
- LOST CITY OF ATLANTIS 'FOUND' OFF THE COAST OF CYPRUS
- ATLANTIS EXPEDITION REVEALS STRUCTURES OFF CYPRUS
The sonar scans of manmade structures one mile below water off the southeast coast of Cyprus were presented here Thursday by Robert Sarmast, head of the Cyprus/Atlantis Expedition project for the first time.
Announcing the results of last year's expedition to find one of human kind's greatest mysteries, the legendary Atlantis, Sarmast presented three dimension underwater side-scan sonar pictures of structures 1.5 km below sea level, 80 km off the southeast coast of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean.
He said it was no coincidence that his team discovered a 3km long straight wall intersected at right angles by another wall, adding that this will silence any remaining skepticism about his longstanding claims that modern Cyprus is what remains of a much larger and now partly sunken mass which fits Plato's description of the ancient land of Atlantis. - PERHAPS A TSUNAMI SANK ATLANTIS
THERE occurred violent earthquakes and floods...the island of Atlantis disappeared in the depths of the sea." That was how Greek philosopher Plato described the destruction of the legendary city. Now new evidence suggests that he was writing about a devastating tsunami.
Plato describes destruction in a single day and night - not over a week, not over a century - pointing to one catastrophic event. He talks about violent earthquakes and flooding, implying there was ... - TSUNAMI CLUE TO 'ATLANTIS' FOUND
A submerged island that could be the source of the Atlantis myth was hit by a large earthquake and tsunami 12,000 years ago, a geologist has discovered.
Spartel Island now lies 60m under the sea in the Straits of Gibraltar, but some think it once lay above water. - ATLANTIS 'OBVIOUSLY NEAR GIBRALTAR' Jacques Collina-Girard, from the University of the Mediterranean in Aix-en- Provence, says it could have been sited on an island close to the Strait of Gibraltar, and would have vanished below the waves about 11,000 years ago - just as Plato said it did.
- SEAFLOOR SURVEY BUOYS ATLANTIS CLAIM
In a recent paper in Geology, Marc-Andre Gutscher of the European Institute for Marine Studies in Plouzan?gives details of one candidate for the lost city: the submerged island of Spartel, west of the Straits of Gibraltar.
The top of this isle lies some 60 metres beneath the surface in the Gulf of Cadiz, having plunged beneath the waves at the end of the most recent ice age as melting glaciers caused the sea level to rise.
Geological evidence has shown that a large earthquake and a tsunami hit this island some 12,000 years ago, at roughly the location and time indicated in Plato's writings.
The conference in Greece came to no firm conclusions about the city's existence. But researchers managed to agree on 24 criteria that a geographical area must satisfy in order to qualify as a site where Atlantis could have existed. The place must have accommodated such oddities as hot springs, northerly winds, elephants, enough people for an army of 10,000 chariots, and a ritual of bull sacrifice.
At present there are half a dozen candidates for Atlantis's location, each one with its own shortcomings. Some say that settling on a final answer may prove impossible. - SEA LEVEL STUDY REVEALS ATLANTIS CANDIDATE
Curiously, nobody has really taken seriously the most obvious location," Collina-Girard adds. According to Plato, Atlantis lay just in front of the Pillars of Hercules - what we now call the Strait of Gibraltar - and disappeared around 9000 BC. - ATLANTIS 11,600 YA DATE. Considers different analyses for the location of Atlantis.
- THE TRUE HISTORY OF ATLANTIS
- MAYA-MU-OLD-CIVILIZATIONS
- FORGET ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING, WE ARE ONE STEP AWAY FROM EXTINCTION
The impact in Hudson Bay sent up 200,000 cubic miles of the glacier, throwing off the icy debris that followed the pieces of the comet out across the continent. A rain of incandescent debris and chunks of steaming ice showered down across most of North America, Europe and Asia. Within minutes, the massive, low-flying clumps crashed into the Carolinas and the eastern seaboard, exploding into fireballs and gouging out the Carolina Bays, over 500,000 of them. Other lumps exploded across the plains from Nebraska and Kansas to Arizona.
The oceans, too, were targets. Thousands of ice chunks and clouds of slushy water hit the Atlantic, exploding with colossal detonations. The multiple concussions triggered immense underwater landslides off the Carolinas and Virginia, releasing thousands of cubic miles of mud. In turn, the mud unleashed a 1,000 foot high tidal wave that raced away towards Europe and Africa at 500 miles an hour. - ABSTRACTING ATLANTIS: SCIENTIST FIND EVIDENCE OF MAYAN UNDERWATER CITY - 03 Jun 2010
Today, we sit down with architectural historian and archaeologist Jes Alexander, who spearheaded the research team, to get the first-hand details of what could be a piece of real-life Atlantis.
Well, we believe we have found the remains of an ancient city on the sea floor in the Western Caribbean. It is important to note that we have yet to be to the site, but what we believe we have found is the remains of an ancient city that was formerly above sea level, and perhaps as much as 4500- 8000 years old. This has nothing to do with another site, found almost 10 years ago by a Canadian/Russian team working to map the sea floor near the Yucatan Peninsula. Their site is nearly 2 miles below the sea floor. The site we are working with is much shallower - in between 40 and 70 feet of water. We initially found anomalous objects by mapping a grid and searching the sea floor using simple Google Earth technology. As we zeroed in on the site location, we sought out other satellite imagery and ocean floor maps to arrive at this hypothesis.
In that part of the Caribbean, there could be several explanations. The most likely is very organic. During the end of the last Ice Age, it is known that as the polar ice caps melted, the ocean rose about 166 feet for every hundred years. If this city sat on the coastal plane, it is more likely that the sea lel rose to engulf the city than that the city sank to the sea floor. However, given the convergence of tectonic plates in the region, earthquakes can't be discounted. Lastly, there is believed to have been a massive meteor in the Atlantic about 11,000 years ago. The resulting tsunami could have contributed to the demise of the city. - FRENCH TEAM SAYS SATELLITE IMAGES REVEAL UNDERWATER CITY This new site was found using advanced satellite imagery, and is not in any way associated with the alleged site found by Zelitsky. According to the new team, "To be seen on satellite, our site is much shallower."
"You have to be careful working with satellite images in such a location. The digital matrix sometimes misinterprets its data, and shows ruins as solid masses. The thing is, we've found structure -- what appears to be a tall, narrow pyramid; large platform structures with small buildings on them; we've even found standing parallel post and beam construction in the rubble of what appears to be a fallen building. You can't have post and beam without human involvement." -- The Team's principal investigator.
"Whatever we've found does not belong to us. It belongs to the people of this island, and to the world at-large. If any pieces are brought to the surface, they belong in the hands of a museum." -- the Project Leader
At least these new photos have scope and detail in them. In fact, they're pretty amazing and suggest a metropolis. - FRENCH TEAM SAYS SATELLITE IMAGES REVEAL UNDERWATER CITY
About 12000 to 14000 years ago, the Earth had just encountered something that changed the climate dramatically. Soon after this mysterious event the ice caps started melting at both the North and South Poles. The oceans received this melting water and rose up to about where they are today.
Geologists think that the "trigger event" may have been something from space -- perhaps either an asteroid or comet that broke up and plunged into the ocean, causing atmospheric heating and huge tsunamis.
The theory that these cities were submerged around this time is supported by traces of some kind of impact that is visible on the East coast of America. Thousands of elliptical craters called "Carolina Bays" cover parts of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Virginia and Maryland. One age estimate for the craters is 10,500 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age.
The consensus of the scientific community was that this was a large asteroid that broke apart and crashed into the earth and Atlantic Ocean with tremendous energy. The time for this event has been placed at about 9000 years BCE.
STOP THE PRESSES! NEW EVIDENCE THIS IS A HOAX! - Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike SOME CAROLINA BAYS
- Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike 4 ?1.5 �C ABRUPT WARMING 11,270 YR AGO IDENTIFIED FROM TRAPPED AIR IN GREENLAND ICE - 8 February 2008
Nitrogen and argon isotopes in air trapped in a Greenland ice core (GISP2) show two prominent peaks in the interval 11,800?0,800 B.P., which indicate two large abrupt warming events. The first abrupt warming (10 ?4 �C) is the widely documented event at the end of the Younger Dryas. Here, we report on the second abrupt warming (4 ?1.5 �C), which occurred at the end of a short lived cooler interval known as the Preboreal Oscillation (11,270 ?30 B.P - 11,320 YA). A rapid snow accumulation increase suggests that the climatic transition may have occurred within a few years. - Swarm A:Cl-2 Strike SUDDEN CLIMATE TRANSITIONS DURING THE QUATERNARY
The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to- Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries.
Various mechanisms, involving changes in ocean circulation, changes in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases or haze particles, and changes in snow and ice cover, have been invoked to explain these sudden regional and global transitions. We do not know whether such changes could occur in the near future as a result of human effects on climate. Phenomena such as the Younger Dryas and Heinrich events might only occur in a 'glacial' world with much larger ice sheets and more extensive sea ice cover. However, a major sudden cold event did probably occur under global climate conditions similar to those of the present, during the Eemian interglacial, around 122,000 years ago. Less intensive, but significant rapid climate changes also occurred during the present (Holocene) interglacial, with cold and dry phases occurring on a 1500- year cycle, and with climate transitions on a decade-to-century timescale. In the past few centuries, smaller transitions (such as the ending of the Little Ice Age at about 1650 AD) probably occurred over only a few decades at most. All the evidence indicates that most long-term climate change occurs in sudden jumps rather than incremental changes.
A comet impact generating massive amounts of atmospheric dust will change Earth's weather rapidly. Hoyle postulates that the oceans act as a buffer, limiting these changes to around a decade of so.
- Swarm A:Cl-1 Strike DANISH ARCTIC RESEARCH DATES ICE AGE
- THE 8,300 BC STRIKE- Swarm B' - 10,300 YA
- THE CASE FOR SOLAR FORCING OF CLIMATE
High-resolution analyses of an early Holocene climate event may imply decreased solar forcing as an important climate trigger.
The authors assembled a wide range of lacustrine, tree-ring, ice-core and marine records that reveal a Northern Hemispheric - and possibly global - cooling event of less than 200 years duration with a 50-year cooling-peak centered at approximately 10,300 years BP. Just a couple more nudges and we should arrive at the seemingly inevitable conclusion that earth's climate on sub-Milankovitch timescales is tightly coupled to variable solar activity. Like the ones caused by comet impacts?
- THE CASE FOR SOLAR FORCING OF CLIMATE
- THE 7,800 BC STRIKE- Swarm B - 9,800 YA
- Exact dating of the B swarm Impacts two Vulcan revolutions ago: In an email dated 12/08/09, J�rgen Peder Steffensen, Ph.D. Center for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. has provided the following data for major climatic changes about ten thousand years ago.
- 7946 BC Max counting error 82 (+/-41, two sigma)
- DELTA 39 years +/- 1 year (two sigma)
- 7907 BC Max counting error 81 (+/-40.5, two sigma)
- DELTA 29 years +/- 0 years (two sigma)
- 7878 BC Max counting error 81 (+/-40.5, two sigma).
- DELTA 66 years +/- 2 years (two sigma)
- 7812 BC Max counting error 79 (+/-39.5, two sigma)
- DELTA 15 years +/- 0 years (two sigma)
- 7797 BC Max counting error 79 (+/-39.5, two sigma)
In an email from J�rgen Peder Steffensen dated 12/07/09
"I have been through our ECM record, which shows ice acidity. Unfortunately, we do not have sulfate measurments to substantiate whether these acid peaks are volcanic. In NGRIP ice core, continuous sulfate measurements began at 8,200 BC. ECM (electrical conductivity measurements) candidates: 7797 BC, 7812 BC, 7878 BC, 7907 BC and 7946 BC. All dates are based on the new chronology, GICC05 (Greenland Ice Core Chronology 2005). Maximum counting error MCE is 80 years (equivalent to 2 x sigma)."
In an email dated 12/09/09 Dr. Steffensen said:
"I would not be surprised if we had to move the 11,703 b2k some 20 years up or down based on future data; but I would be very surprised if we had to move the 11,703 b2k transition more than 50 years."
There is still some quibbling about the exact meaning of sigma here. - TOLLMANN'S HYPOTHETICAL BOLIDE
- DOGGERLAND - UNEXPLAINED MYSTERIES DISCUSSION FORUMS - PAGE 31
Figure 8.9 plots the location of the seven impact sites derived from geological evidence and legends. Two of these sites, in the Tasman and North Seas, have been identified as having mega-tsunami events around this time. The North Sea impact centre corresponds with the location of the Storegga slides described in Chapter 6. Here, the main tsunami took place 7,950 ?90 years ago. One of the better dates comes from wood lying above tektites in a sand dune along the South Coast of Victoria, Australia.
The tektites are associated with the Tasman Sea impact and date at 8,200 ?50 years before present. These dates place the Deluge Comet impact event--a term used by the Tollmanns--around 6200 BC.
This event does not stand alone during the Holocene. It has been repeated in recent times--a fact supported by Maori and Aborigine legends from New Zealand and Australia.
--Edward A. Byrant, from "More Recent Evidence from Legends and Myths", a review of Deluge Comet Impact Event 8,200 ?200 years ago (Kristan-Tollmann and Tollmann, 1992)
If this theory is anything close to what actually happened around 6100 BC, then there must have been a swarm of 'bolides' impacting on earth, creating havoc and destruction.
Those comets or bolides were seen across the earth, and my theory is that it was a comet outgassing sideways - creating a huge spiral shape in the heavens - and accompanied with smaller bolides.
These spiral shapes (or shapes depicted as concentric circles with a 'tail', and much later as circular labyrinths) were carved into rock by the people living back then, around 6100 BC. - CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT AND ROBERT LOMAS
URIEL'S MACHINE claims that the Book of Giants tells us that the Nephilim were witness to a cometary impact that involved the fragmentation of a comet nucleus which broke into seven pieces and careered into seven oceans of the world around 7545 BC. - JAPAN'S MYSTERIOUS SUBMERGED STONE STRUCTURES: New evidence suggests they may have been used by Man
Man-made, made by Nature, or did humankind finish what Nature started? These enigmatic, sunken stone structures off Okinawa, Japan, located 60 to 100 feet beneath the ocean surface, have the Japanese wondering if their homeland was once part of the lost continent of Mu.
How to date these sites? A few possible scenarios have been suggested. The sites may have been submerged when sea levels rose at the end of the last Ice Age as the continental ice sheets melted. Or, as Japan sits on the Ring of Fire, tectonic activity might have caused subsidence of the land. Or perhaps a combination of subsidence and inundation from rising sea levels, or some catastrophic event, dropped it, intact and upright, into the ocean. Teruaki Ishii, a professor of geology at Tokyo University, believes the site is partly man-made, partly natural, and suggests a date of 8,000 B.C., contemporary to the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Others have suggested a date of 12,000 years. - A NEW VIEW OF NOAH'S FLOOD
Using evidence from the archaeological record, they date the Ice Age comet impact at 7640 B.C. About that time, 10,000 species became extinct. Another high-energy series of comets seems to have impacted the planet in about 3150 B.C., and they speculate this caused Enoch's/Noah's flood. - SELECTED GEOMORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES IN AUSTRIA AND IN THE ALPS
TOLLMANN gives an interesting but controversial explanation for a series of landslides around Imst in the Tyrol. So an extraterrestial body has possibly caused the landslide. The impact might have shaken the surrounding mountains, triggering other landslides that would have once happened anyway. TOLLMANN dates the comet as 7550 B.C. and, referring to rich but controversial evidence, he claims that it was one small of seven large and some small fragments of a comet. The large ones struck the sea Some scientists (e.g. PREISINGER) argue, that the evidence TOLLMANN refers to is not secure, in particular the dendrochronological, ice-core and radio-isotope data. - MEETING HISTORY
To me the most interesting piece of information in 'Uriel's Machine' is an explanation of the flood that comes out of modern science rather than historical myth. It explains the persistence of race memory myths from all around the world and the dramatic decrease in biological and genetic diversity that occurred about 10,000 years ago. Contains Tollmann's picture. - SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF THE BIBLICAL FLOOD
The Tollmans research provided them with seven likely areas for seven ocean impacts. More evidence comes from the study of dendrochronology. They discovered a blip in the radio-carbon calibration curve relative to the Tunguska explosion in 1908, so looked for one to fit in with their own findings, and they again found an anomoly, a pronounced peak around 9500BP,or around 7000-8000 BC. Further evidence came from ice cores, taken and tested in 1980, which show a huge peak of nitric acid around 7640 BC. Nitric acid forms as the comet, or asteroid, burns through the atmosphere, burning the nitrogen in the air, thus falling as rain. This may also be linked to biblical descriptions of the flood in which the descriptions of 'bloody rainfall' are used. - DIE TOLLMANN-SINTFLUT
Die Marke des ... rund neuneinhalb Jahrtausende zur�ckliegenden Sintflut- Impaktes ergibt sich mit h�chster Wahrscheinlichkeit in dem Horizont von 7640 +/- 170 Jahre v. Chr., der ALLE �BRIGEN S�UREHORIZONTE DER GESAMTEN SERIE AN INTENSIT�T WEIT �BERTRIFFT."[ 9 ] - "VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE" or
"VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE"
Camp Century. Location Date BC. Cluster
- Unknown ? 7090?60 79 50
- Unknown ? 7240?60 124 80
- Unknown ? 7500?60 51 35
- Unknown ? 7640?70 412 260:
- Unknown ? 7710?70 69 45 B:
- Unknown ? 7810?70 73 45 B:
- Unknown ? 7910?70 95 60 B:
This is as if members of the B swarm striking 7810 BC were caught in a few hundred year orbit, striking again ~215 and ~645 years later with the worst being around 7640 BC. - COMETS, DRAGONS & PROPHETS OF DOOM
If a giant comet swarm were thrown into a short-period, Earth-crossing orbit, its disintegration under the effect of sunlight would release a copious amount of dust into the inner planetary system. Ploughing through such dust, the Earth would acquire a reflective blanket and cool by up to about 5 degrees, possibly sliding into a new ice age. Even after this phase, brief, sharp climatic coolings would be expected during epochs when the Earth passed annually through the comet's meteor stream. Precession of the cometary orbit, analogous to the slow wobble of a spinning top, is guaranteed to lead to epochs when the orbits of Earth and comet intersect. Passing through the 'IRAS trail', annual meteor storms of huge intensity would then be expected, with a correspondingly enhanced risk of a Tunguska-like impact, perhaps concentrated into brief but devastating swarms.
Something like this likely happened about 9910 years ago forming Tollman's series of impacts.
Numerous prophecies of doom, from Zoroaster to the Book of Revelation, clearly show celestial impact motifs: the Persian prophet Zoroaster (c. 500 BC) predicts a world-end in which "Ahriman (Satan) will make a comet strike the Earth causing a huge conflagration"; the Book of Revelation describes a huge burning mountain falling from the sky, dropping hail and fire on the Earth, while the Sun and Moon are darkened by smoke pouring from the abyss; Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by a rain of fire from Heaven, and so on. Cometary as well as meteor motifs are also found in these myths (for example, Revelation has a huge, red, multiple-headed dragon in the sky) and were recognized as such by ancient writers.
The concept that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs has seeped into popular culture over the past 15 years or so. Recently, the question: "Could it happen to us?," has also become a matter of increasing public interest.
- Exact dating of the B swarm Impacts two Vulcan revolutions ago: In an email dated 12/08/09, J�rgen Peder Steffensen, Ph.D. Center for Ice and Climate, Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen. has provided the following data for major climatic changes about ten thousand years ago.
- THE 6,800 BC STRIKE- Swarm A' - 8,800 YA
- THE 6,200 BC STRIKE- Swarm A - 8,200 YA
- NOW THE PENTAGON TELLS BUSH: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL DESTROY US
?Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
?Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
?Threat to the world is greater than terrorism
Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated. - (1) ENVIRONMENTAL CATASTOPHES AND RECOVERY IN THE HOLOCENE
The 8200 year BP event
SEE COMING EVENT - MORE RECENT EVIDENCE FROM LEGENDS AND MYTHS
Deluge Comet Impact Event 8,200 ?200 years ago (2) NEW EVIDENCE FOR GLOBAL NATURAL DISASTER AT ~ 8200 BP - 6 Feburary 1998
About 8,200 years ago, the world climate suddenly got colder and stayed that way for a few hundred years before temperatures returned to normal, according to a team of paleoclimatologists. "This event, which we are calling the 8K event, was short compared to other, more distant events, " says Anna Maria Agustsdottir, graduate student in geosciences, Penn State. "We see it in the Greenland ice cores as one of the biggest dips during the Holocene." - ANCIENT FLODO BROUGHT GULF STREAM TO A HALT Just over 8000 years ago, a huge glacial lake in Canada burst, and an estimated 100,000 cubic kilometres of fresh water rushed into the North Atlantic. Researchers now say they know for sure that this catastrophic event shut down the Gulf Stream and cooled parts of the northern hemisphere by several degrees for more than a hundred years.
Lake Agassiz was a giant lake that formed at the end of the last ice age as the huge Laurentide ice sheet melted (see a simulation of the process). The lake occupied most of the modern-day Canadian Midwest between the Hudson Bay and the US border. - "VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE"
Camp Century. Location Date BC. Cluster
- Unknown ? 6060?40 119 7 A: Cl - 1
- Unknown ? 6230?40 102 65 A: Cl - 2
- NOAH'S ARK FLOOD SPURRED EUROPEAN FARMING
An ancient flood some say could be the origin of the story of Noah's Ark may have helped the spread of agriculture in Europe 8,300 years ago by scattering the continent's earliest farmers, researchers said on Sunday.
Using radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence, a British team showed the collapse of the North American ice sheet, which raised global sea levels by as much as 1.4 meters, displaced tens of thousands of people in southeastern Europe who carried farming skills to their new homes.
"The flooding of the Black Sea was not well dated but we got it down to about 50 years," said Chris Turney, a geologist at the University of Exeter, who led the study. "As soon as the flooding is done, farming goes crazy across Europe."
Noah's flood occured about 5200 years ago. This was another flood.
- NOW THE PENTAGON TELLS BUSH: CLIMATE CHANGE WILL DESTROY US
- THE 5,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm C - 7,600 YA
- KAALI METEORITE CRATER FIELD
About 7,500 years ago, a huge rock from space came hurtling toward the earth, faster than a speeding rocket. Several kilometers above the earth's surface, the meteorite broke into pieces from the pressure and heat of the atmosphere. The resulting chunks collided into Saaremaa with the force of a small nuclear bomb, wreaking havoc on the landscape and possibly claiming numerous victims.
The explosion left nine total craters, now known as the Kaali Meteorite Crater Field. Some of these craters are quite small: one measures only twelve meters across and one meter deep. But the most interesting of the group is the largest crater, a gently sloping bowl filled with stagnant, murky water. - (8) MORE ON THE 4000 BP EVENT
Climate became dry stepwise with an abrupt transition from one stage to another during the entire Holocene and became driest since about 4,200 BP. Maximum dry climate spells occurred at about 12,000-10,000 BP and after about 4,200 BP. A dry climate event also existed at about 7,600 BP. Notice the 3,400-year gap between the 4,200 and 7,600 BP. Are there two comet clusters separated by 700 - 800 years in the A swarm? - THE CATASTROPHIC DELUGE WHICH ENTERED THE BLACK SEA, CIRCA 7,500 YEARS AGO
Two senior scientists from Columbia University have proposed a theory that a massive transfer of water occurred about 5600 BCE - over seven and a half millennia ago. They wrote: "Ten cubic miles of water poured through each day, two hundred times what flows over Niagara Falls." "The Bosporus flume roared and surged at full spate for at least three hundred days." 60,000 square miles of land were inundated. 1 The Black Sea shoreline significantly expanded to the north and east. The lake's its water level was raised many hundreds of feet. It changed from a fresh-water landlocked lake into a salt water lake connected to the world's oceans.
Circa 5650 to 5500 BCE: Warmth and rain returned once more. The New Euxine lake was still landlocked and fresh. But the Mediterranean Sea and Sea of Marmara had gradually risen to a level some 426 feet (130 meters) higher than the lake. It was held back only by a small rise of land at the Bosporus River -- now the Bosporus Straight near present-day Istanbul, Turkey.
- KAALI METEORITE CRATER FIELD
- THE 5,000 BC STRIKE- Swarm B' - 7,000 YA
- THE MAGNITUDE AND FREQUENCY OF TSUNAMI ALONG THE SOUTH COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
The first event probably occurred concomitantly with the rise of Holocene sea- level near modern levels around 7000 BP. The latest event occurred around 800 years BP although there is sufficient evidence to suggest that one event may have occurred just before European settlement. The recurrence interval of tsunami is now approaching one event every 600 years. - BIBLE 'CLUE' FOUND
Scientists have uncovered ancient ruins under the Black Sea indicating that people lived in the area before a cataclysmic flood. Some scientists have linked the 7,000-year-old event, thought to have been caused by waters bursting through from the Mediterranean Sea, to the Biblical story of Noah. - HOW 7,000-YEAR-OLD TEMPLES REVEAL THE ELABORATE CULTURE OF EUROPE
- FOUND: EUROPE'S OLDEST CIVILISATION
More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC.
- THE MAGNITUDE AND FREQUENCY OF TSUNAMI ALONG THE SOUTH COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
- THE 4,500 BC STRIKE- Swarm B - 6,500 YA
- THE 3,500 BC STRIKE- Swarm A' - 5,500 YA
- EVOLUTION - 1:2 "However, in 1971 it was studied through radiographs and discovered to be a complicated instrument having 30 gears, a planetarium that could determine the motions of the sun and the moon and determine their location in the past and where they would be in relation to the Earth in the future. Such complex instruments with differential gears did not appear in the West until 1575. Yet Ovid credited such an invention to Archimedes, the inventor and discoverer of the principle of gravity, in 300 B.C.
The author of the article in 'Omni' observed: "The oldest societies with a written record - Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley - seem to have emerged without any cultural antecedents, between 3400 and 3100 B.C. Seemingly out of nowhere there suddenly appeared a uniform code of laws, the wheel, knowledge of astronomy and agriculture Is it mere coincidence that three centers of enlightenment should emerge simultaneously at widely separated locations?"
We need to study all these ruins with a High Tech equipment for proof and understanding, to see if they were before, or after the Flood, . . . The World Before The Flood, they had all types of groupings as we have today, from High Tech to Primitive and this leaves the findings we are discovering today in our new Top Strata, which need to be qualified as: Before Flood (BF), and After Flood (AF). - BEFORE THE STONES: STONEHENGE I AS A COMETARY CATASTROPHE PREDICTOR? By Duncan Steel
It is suggested here that one such pair occurred in 3600-3500 and 3200-3100 BC, provoking the construction of the Great Cursus and Stonehenge I. - A 5,500-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY EMERGES
In the shadow of a much more recent war, a five-year excavation on the Syrian- Iraqi border has uncovered an ancient settlement of unexpected sophistication that was suddenly wiped out by invaders 5,500 years ago.
- EVOLUTION - 1:2 "However, in 1971 it was studied through radiographs and discovered to be a complicated instrument having 30 gears, a planetarium that could determine the motions of the sun and the moon and determine their location in the past and where they would be in relation to the Earth in the future. Such complex instruments with differential gears did not appear in the West until 1575. Yet Ovid credited such an invention to Archimedes, the inventor and discoverer of the principle of gravity, in 300 B.C.
- THE 3,000 BC STRIKE (Noah's Great Flood)- Swarm A - 5,000 YA
- WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT TSUNAMIS?
When key phrases in the Bible��s account of ��Noah��s Flood�� are properly translated they tell how a comet impact caused a tsunami, which in turn caused the Flood! Physical evidence for this event comes from the recent discovery of an 18-mile wide impact crater at the bottom of the Indian Ocean that dates back to the time of the Flood. This crater is called the Burckle Impact Crater.
A 2008 History Channel documentary about the discovery of this crater concludes, ��The cause of the Biblical Great Flood may have been a massive three-mile wide comet that crashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago.�� An impact this large would have caused an earthquake tens of thousands of times more powerful than the Japanese earthquake and waves about 1000 times higher. - MAJOR CLIMATE CHANGE OCCURRED 5,200 YEARS AGO: EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THAT HISTORY COULD REPEAT ITSELF - 16.12.2004
A professor of geological sciences at Ohio State and a researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center, Thompson points to markers in numerous records suggesting that the climate was altered suddenly some 5,200 years ago with severe impacts.
�Something happened back at this time and it was monumental,?Thompson said. �But it didn�t seem monumental to humans then because there were only approximately 250 million people occupying the planet, compared to the 6.4 billion we now have. �The evidence clearly points back to this point in history and to some event that occurred. It also points to similar changes occurring in today�s climate as well,?he said.�To me, these are things we really need to be concerned about.?
Evidence shows that around 5,200 years ago, solar output first dropped precipitously and then surged over a short period. It is this huge solar energy oscillation that Thompson believes may have triggered the climate change he sees in all those records. �The climate system is remarkably sensitive to natural variability,?he said. - DID A COMET CAUSE THE GREAT FLOOD?
Masse's epiphany came while poring over Hawaiian oral histories regarding the goddess Pele and wondering what they might reveal about the lava flows that episodically destroy human settlements and create new tracts of land. He reasoned that even though the stories are often clouded by exaggerations and mystical explanations, many may refer to actual incidents. He tested his hypothesis by cross-checking carbon-14 ages for the lava flows against dates included in royal Hawaiian genealogies. The result: Several flows matched up with the specific reigns associated with them in the oral histories. Other myths, Masse theorizes, hold similar clues.
Masse's biggest idea is that some 5,000 years ago, a 3-mile-wide ball of rock and ice swung around the sun and smashed into the ocean off the coast of Madagascar. The ensuing cataclysm sent a series of 600-foot-high tsunamis crashing against the world's coastlines and injected plumes of superheated water vapor and aerosol particulates into the atmosphere. Within hours, the infusion of heat and moisture blasted its way into jet streams and spawned super- hurricanes that pummeled the other side of the planet. For about a week, material ejected into the atmosphere plunged the world into darkness. All told, up to 80 percent of the world's population may have perished, making it the single most lethal event in history.
Kepler, Galileo, Newton (and especially his assistant Whiston) and Halley formalized the mathematics of celestial bodies and even realized the possible influence of comet strikes in causing Noah's flood. The problem is that Burckle crater has not been dated, but Dr. Abbott estimates that it is 4,500 to 5,000 years old. Noah's Great Flood is fairly firmly dated to 3195 BC based on tree ring data. - - Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
To give one final example, the next Irish oak "narrowest ring" event back in time before 2345 BC was at 3195 BC, where more than third of all available trees showed their narrowest rings in the range 3197-3190 - obviously a very bad set of conditions for Irish oaks by any standard. Figure 5 shows the Irish chronology together with evidence for a building pause in a Swiss lake-side settlement. Tercier et al. (1996) reported a change in village orientation at Montilier "Platzbunden" in the years just before a building pause from 3202-3187 BC. What is interesting here is that archaeological opinion suggests that a change of orientation is most likely associated with a change in prevailing wind direction. That in turn suggests a possible change in atmospheric circulation which in turn could be associated with something happening with ocean circulation. Interestingly hints of changes in sea level had already been deduced from the strange coincidence of oak chronologies starting just around 3200 BC in the low-lying areas of both eastern and western England (Baillie 1995). That suggestion is reflected in the observation of high sulphate in the Greenland GISP2 ice core between 3200-3100 BC, which Zielinski et al. (1994) interpreted as probably due to deposition of biogenic sulphate from open water in the permanent sea ice off the Greenland coast. Once again we see that the accumulation of evidence from different proxies spells out potentially important environmental stories of direct relevance to archaeologists, not least in this case because of a transition in the archaeological record in the British Isles around 3200 BC. - Mike Baillie; Dendrochronologia 2003
I wouldn't rule out 3195 being an impact of some kind. Private comunication with Dr. Mike Baillie 25 Feb. 2003 - (8) ICE CORES MAY YIELD CLUES TO 5,000-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY or ICE CORES MAY YIELD CLUES TO 5,000-YEAR-OLD MYSTERY
- Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
Something happened 5,200 years ago that was abrupt and very large-scale. Thompson and his research team are in a race against time to retrieve cores from these ice caps in order to preserve the thousands of years of climatic history trapped inside. And at the top of their agenda is solving the puzzle of what occurred 5,200 years ago. We know the climate was different then. Before that, the proportion of warm water flowing off the coast of Peru was much greater, he said, a key factor in fueling the El Nino/La Nina climate events affecting this part of the globe. We know that the Ice Man, a preserved Neolithic hunter exposed by a retreating glacier in the European Alps, was trapped by the ice around 5,200 years ago, he said, and that had to occur very abruptly. Earlier work by the Ohio State team on ice cores taken from Tanzanias Mount Kilimanjaro ice fields showed that a catastrophic drought had devastated the tropics around 5,200 years ago, a period of time when anthropologists believe THAT many people abandoned a nomadic lifestyle to form cities and social structures. - DECODED: 'THE CLAY TABLET THAT TELLS HOW AN ASTEROID DESTROYED SODOM 5,000 YEARS AGO - 15:46 31 March 2008
At its heart is a clay tablet called the Planisphere, discovered by the Victorian archaeologist Henry Layard in the remains of the library of the Royal Palace at Nineveh. Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, they have pinpointed the sighting described on the tablet - a 700BC copy of notes of the night sky as seen by a Sumerian astrologer in one of the world's earliest-known civilisations - to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.
Half the tablet records planet positions and clouds, while the other half describes the movement of an object looking like a 'stone bowl' travelling quickly across the sky. The description matches a type of asteroid known as an Aten type, which orbits the Sun close to the Earth. Its trajectory would have put it on a collision course with the Otz Valley.
'It came in at a very low angle - around six degrees - and then clipped a mountain called Gaskogel around 11km from K�fels,' said Mr Hempsell. 'This caused it to explode - and as it travelled down the valley it became a fireball.
John Taylor, a retired expert in Near Eastern archaeology at the British Museum, said there was no evidence that the ancient Sumerians were able to make such accurate astronomical records, while our knowledge of Sumerian language was incomplete.
This is not the right date for the Sodom event. - A RECORD OF PLANETARY CATASTROPHE
A recent study published in the current issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found evidence of an abrupt climate shift on Earth about 5,000 years ago -- the most dramatic evidence being the discovery of unfossilized wetland plants around the margin of the Quelccaya ice cap. - (13) MORE EVIDENCE FOR ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE IN 3114 BCE or MAYAN DATES FOR THE COMET ENCOUNTER
- Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
- 16 June, 3122 BCE - The First Maize Revealer Partitioner is born
- 7 December, 3121 BCE - Birth of Lady White (?)
- 13 August, 3114 BCE - Image made visible at Closed Sky, the First Three Stone Place; Event for The First Maize Revealed Partitioner
- 5 February, 3112 BCE - The First Maize Revealed Partitioner enters the sky,
- ESSAY: THE BOOK OF THE CELESTIAL COW- Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
"The Book of the Celestial Cow", apparently a record of the cometary encounter and impact ca. 3114 BCE. 5114 YA) - HISTORY
hat this entailed at one point a great flooding of all coastal regions on the, what you call, Atlantic areas and all those areas within that region called Mediterranean is true. For a great surge was felt under the sea creating waves unlike any ever seen. This surge also pushed forth much debris called ash. For two volcanoes then erupted creating much darkness. That this was followed by several days of rain is true, but that was not the cause of the flooding. For rather did the tidal surge supply the flood. Note that a tidal surge, not a tsunami, is claimed. This implies a rapid crustal shift. - DOES THE EARTH CHANGE ITS SHAPE ?- Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
Richard L. Meehan of Stanford university is doing intensive researches on the phenomena that happened around 3200 BC. Some of them from his report are shown below.- Sulfate concentration in Greenland ice core shows a huge spike at 3200 BC.
- Atmospheric methane in Greenland ice core shows the lowest value at 3200 BC followed by abrupt increase.
- Dead Sea levels peak, which is 300 feet higher than today, in 3200 BC.
- Oxygen isotope in Greenland ice core shows big freeze-up in 3000 BC.
- Belfast oak tree ring chronology peaks about 3150 BC, suggesting major climate event.
- Heavy flooding in Navajo country, the American Southwest, based on paleoflooding studies. The peak at 5K yrs BP.
- More evidences ranging from climate changes to historical events and myths.
- CLIMATE, CULTURE, AND CATASTROPHE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD Links to geological and paleoclimatalogical data bearing on the remarkable events of 3000 BC, when urban/technological society began are offered. Most of the data comes from referenced scientific literature. A graph of scientific events around the Biblical Flood Period (3200 - 2800 BC) is also offered. A Stanford University project.
- WHAT CAUSED NOAH'S FLOOD? How Long Ago Did the Flood Occur? Most theologians accept a period between 6,000 to around 5,000 years ago.
- AN IMPACT EVENT IN 3114BC? The Beginning of a Turbulent Millennium. - Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
- A UNIVERSAL FLOOD: 3000 BC
- CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT AND ROBERT LOMAS- Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike
In their opinion, ancients witnessed a worldwide cometary impact in c. 7545 BC (later stated maybe to be 9800 - -9700 BC) and a later similar catastrophe, centered on the Mediterranean, c. 3100 BC (after the work of Clube and Napier, Duncan Steele, etc.). - CULTURE RAINED OFF - 26 June 2001
El Ni�o events may have altered the course of prehistoric civilization. Around 3,000 years ago rainfall seems to have put paid to the Peruvian progress it kicked off 3,000 years earlier, US researchers now report.1 - ADDING UP THE RISKS OF COSMIC IMPACT - Swarm A: Cl - 2 Strike
Masse went on to say that at least some of the tales of a Great Flood, found in hundreds of cultures around the world, may relate to an oceanic impact that set off a tsunami.
�The preliminary picture emerging from this analysis is that on or shortly after May 10 in 2807 B.C., the earth was struck by a cosmic impact in the deep waters between Africa and Antarctica. ... These data indicate that the flood itself was the very real product of a combination of large tsunami and atmospheric rainout.?I>Final report not located. - CATASTROPHES: THE DILUVIAL EVIDENCE - Swarm A: Cl - 2 Strike Conclusion:
"Whilst there is no geological evidence at any time for a worldwide flood on the scale described in Genesis, there are abundant indications of widespread floods and other catastrophes during the period humans have been living on the Earth, in particular during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition around 11,500 years ago, and near the beginning of the Late Holocene, around 2300 B.C.. There are a large number of unanswered questions about events at both of these times. Hopefully we shall not have to wait until the golden jubilee of the SIS in 2024 before we get satisfactory answers to them."
Note: When the British archaeologist, Sir Leonard Woolley, excavated the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, in what is now southern Iraq, between 1928 and 1934, he found a 3 metre thick layer of alluvial silt on top of the levels of the Ubaid Period (conventionally dated to around 4000 B.C.) and beneath the first traces of the succeeding Uruk Period. To some, including Woolley himself, this seemed like evidence for the flood of Noah. However, no other sites were found to show similar alluvial deposits during the Ubaid Period. On the other hand, at the nearby city of Shuruppak (the modern Fara), there was evidence of a flood during the Early Dynastic Period, around 2750 B.C., and an alluvial deposit dating from around the same time was found at another Sumerian site, the city of Kish. - ANCIENT CRASH, EPIC WAVE - Swarm A: Cl - 2 Strike
On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction ?toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where a newly discovered crater, 18 miles in diameter, lies 12,500 feet below the surface.
The explanation is obvious to some scientists. A large asteroid or comet, the kind that could kill a quarter of the world's population, smashed into the Indian Ocean 4,800 years ago, producing a tsunami at least 600 feet high, about 13 times as big as the one that inundated Indonesia nearly two years ago. The wave carried the huge deposits of sediment to land.
Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the last 10,000 years. But the self-described "band of misfits" that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say that astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence of such impacts along the world's shorelines and in the deep ocean.
- WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT TSUNAMIS?
- THE 2,350 BC STRIKE- Swarm C - 4,350 YA
- SODOM AND GOMORRAH 'DESTROYED BY A COMET', SAY ASTRONOMERS - 30 March 1997
Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed by debris from a comet, startling new archaeological and astronomical research suggests. Another bombardment from space may have brought on the Dark Ages.
The research, to be presented to a conference at Cambridge University this summer, provides dramatic evidence for an extraterrestrial cause for the wholesale collapse of several civilisations around 2200BC. - CLAY TABLET IDENTIFIED AS ASTEROID THAT DESTROYED SODOM AND GOMORRAH
A clay tablet that has baffled scientists for 150 years has been identified as a witness��s account of the asteroid suspected of being behind the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Researchers who cracked the cuneiform symbols on the Planisphere tablet believe that it recorded an asteroid thought to have been more than half a mile across.
Using computers to recreate the night sky thousands of years ago, scientists have pinpointed his sighting to shortly before dawn on June 29 in the year 3123BC.
The researchers say that the asteroid��s impact would explain why at Kofels there is evidence of an ancient landslide 5km wide and 500m thick.
COMMENT
It's true the surface of the ground is littered with fragments of brimstone in the area speculated to be Sodom & Gomorrah, it's also true no one knows the date Sumerians or Pre-Sumerians began recording in cuneiform on clay tablets, but an Assyrian could read the Akkadian transcriptions of Sumerian at that date. - COMET DESTROYED SODOM AND GOMORRAH - INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY, 30 March 1997
- COMETS THROUGH TIME 2350 BC audio
- METEOR CLUE TO END OF MIDDLE EAST CIVILISATIONS
Satellite images of southern Iraq have revealed a two-mile-wide impact crater caused by a meteor. The catastrophic effect of these could explain the mystery of why so many early cultures went into sudden decline around 2300 BC. They include the demise of the Akkad culture of central Iraq, with its mysterious semi-mythological emperor Sargon; the end of the fifth dynasty of Egypt's Old Kingdom, following the building of the Great Pyramids and the sudden disappearance of hundreds of early settlements in the Holy Land. - COMET-CAUSED COLLAPSE OF THIRD MILLENNIUM BC CIVILIZATIONS?
Swarm C: Cl - 2 Strike Coincident with the previous appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 2213 BC, something singularly dreadful seems to have happened on our small fragile blue planet. Not only does it appear that both the ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations totally collapsed for a century or more, there is evidence of a sudden catastrophic-but-temporary climate change at this time. Is there a "bad weather" connection? Should we be concerned with the connection if there is one? Swarm C: Cl - 2 Strike
Sodom and Gomorrah may have been destroyed by debris from a comet, startling new archaeological and astronomical research suggests. Another bombardment from space may have brought on the Dark Ages.
The research, to be presented to a special conference at Cambridge University this summer, provides dramatic evidence for an extraterrestrial cause for the wholesale collapse of several civilisations around 2200 BC. [Experts believe that the Biblical account of the destruction of the 'Cities of the Plain' may be an early description of what happened.] - PALEOENVIRONMENTAL DATA FOR ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE:
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My hypothesis is that there were two events, the first one around 2350 BC (2345 BC?), and the second one around 2200 BC (2193-2194 BC?), of similar cause, but possibly independent of each other. - NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILIZATIONS - 1997
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The evidence of a great cataclysm between 2200 BC and 2190 BC is so compelling that on this basis we can't dismiss it. On the other hand, Courty is right in her theory of a major occurrence which I would date between 2350 BC and 2340 BC.
I suggest that there really were two disparate events, a local one in Near East 2200-2190 BC and 150 years later, 2200-2190 BC, (likely means 2350 - 2340 BC) a global one. - EVIDENCE FOR MAJOR IMPACT EVENTS IN THE LATE THIRD MILLENNIUM BC
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Mesopotamia and other above-mentioned places were not the only victims of the 2200 BC event. As far away as in China, the Hongsan culture fell in pieces at this same time. This, if not anything else, is an indication of the mighty character of the event, and bolsters us to consider it as global. - SODOM AND GOMORRAH
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It seems that there was a great catastrophe around 2200 BC that has destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. The Earth was hit in 2194 or 2193 BC by a comet which had spread into many parts, as did Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 which hit Jupiter in 1994 AD. The Dead Sea lies at latitude 31 degrees N, and the badly devastated Mohenjo-Daro on the shores of Indus had a latitude of 28 degrees N. China's Yangtze area has a latitude of around 30 degrees. N. (Impact latitude is stable, longitude varies, such as it did for Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.) This latitude is also the latitude between Canary Islands and Madeira.
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The incidence of 2345-2344 BC may have been an Anatolian event, destroying most badly the area from Troy (IIg) to Tell Leilan. The incidence of 2194-2193 BC surely had a global frame. Mahabharata may describe what happened at Mohenjo- dara, Indus. Edda may describe what happened in the Atlantic Ocean. - FROM JEWISH CHRONICLE - 6 March 1998
According to Israeli born social anthropologist Benny Peiser, of Liverpool John Moores University, such biblical catastrophes as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah or the flood may well record the havoc wrought by heavenly bodies. The Talmud records the tradition that God caused the flood by taking two stars and casting them to earth, says Dr Peiser. "Before, we did not know of any phenomenon that could trigger such a massive flood disaster," he adds. "Now, recent research on ocean impacts shows that a large body hitting one of the world's oceans could trigger the kind of massive tsunamis capable of wiping out coastal cities." - CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE - 25/05/1998
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Evidence is growing that a huge comet smashed into the Earth about 4,000 years ago. Scientists are pointing to studies of tree-rings in Ireland which have revealed that about 2,354-2,345 BC there was an abrupt change to a colder climate. - METEOR SHOWERS BLOTTED OUT MAN'S FIRST CIVILISATIONS - 15 December 1997
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A CATACLYSMIC shower of giant meteors destroyed the great Bronze Age civilisations in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece by provoking a series of natural disasters.
New archeological and astronomical evidence indicates that a huge number of extraterrestrial bodies caused famine, flooding and bushfires thousands of miles wide that led to the collapse of the world's first sophisticated civilisations.
The findings could solve the puzzle of why successful empires from across the globe all apparently collapsed at roughly the same time in about 2350BC, despite the fact that they were independent of each other and all flourishing until their sudden demise. - ADDING UP THE RISKS OF COSMIC IMPACT
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Bruce Masse, an environmental archaeologist with Los Alamos National Laboratory, has tried to untangle other astronomical observations from ancient tales told from the Middle East to Hawaii. He referred to an impact event in the Rio Cuarto region of northern Argentina, in which an asteroid 100 to 300 yards (or meters) in diameter apparently broke up as it zoomed through the atmosphere, leaving a trail of craters.
This event, which has been dated to around 2000 B.C., may square with tales told of a catastrophic �Great Fire?by cultures in a large region around the impact site, Masse said. - (2) THIRD MILLENNIUM BC CLIMATE CHANGE & OLD WORLD COLLAPSE
From: JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE 25,2 (1998), pp. 185-86
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The present volume could be viewed as an exposition on exactly these concepts. However, it is also important to know that new evidence, deduced since the volume was produced, has actually made these points even more emphatically. It is known that an abrupt downturn in Irish oaks at 2354-2345 BC (Baillie 1995) falls close to the Icelandic Hekla 4 tephra horizon dated to 2310+/-20 CalBC by the wiggle-matching of high precision radiocarbon dates (Hall et al. 1994). Courty (1997) has now revised the dating of the original c.2200 BC abrupt environmental event seen at Tell Leilan, in Syria, to c.2350 BC! Thus this volume of papers has now to be seen against the existence of what may well be a very dramatic and widespread environmental downturn - a classic point event - the nature of which is hinted at by the report of both tephra and glass spherules at and around the destruction layer at Tell Leilan. - CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE -May 1998
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Evidence is growing that a huge comet smashed into the Earth about 4,000 years ago. Scientists are pointing to studies of tree-rings in Ireland which have revealed that about 2,354-2,345 BC there was an abrupt change to a colder climate. - THIRD MILLENNIUM BC CLIMATE CHANGE AND OLD WORLD COLLAPSE - June 1998
Dalfes, G Kukla, H Weiss. Springer/NATO ISBN 3-540-61892-9 hb - Book Review - CLUES TO BRONZE AGE COMET STRIKE - 5 November 2001
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Evidence is growing that a huge comet smashed into the Earth about 4,000 years ago. Scientists are pointing to studies of tree-rings in Ireland which have revealed that about 2,354-2,345 BC there was an abrupt change to a colder climate. They have also highlighted discoveries by archaeologists in northern Syria of a catastrophic environmental event at about the same time. This is also about the time that Bronze Age civilizations collapsed. - CULTURE RAINED OFF 26 June 2001
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Climate-related rise and fall of civilizations has been seen elsewhere. In 1993, Harvey Weiss, of Yale University, and his colleagues claimed that abrupt climate change about 4,200 years ago caused a prolonged drought in the Middle East, affecting civilizations from the Aegean Sea to the Indus River and leading to the collapse of the Akkadian Empire in the Euphrates valley. - CUNEIFORM DOCUMENT LIBRARY HITS WEB The Associated Press, Fri 17 May 2002
``We are hoping to bring the richness of Mesopotamian culture to anyone who works on anything. We have agriculture texts, magic texts and medical, legal and religious texts. This is a treasure trove that has not been exploited,'' Tinney said. - POSSIBLE CRATER DISCOVERY IN IRAQ - 16 November 2001
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Master regards the structure as a possible meteorite impact crater, in a paper presented in September at the Meteoritical Society meeting at the Vatican City. Master, in an abstract in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, also speculated on a possible link between this structure, if it turns out to be in impact crater, and the account of the Flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh, which dates from the end of the 3rd millennium BC. Now other scientists, including archaeologists and astronomers, have seized on this discovery to explain the puzzling demise of a number of Bronze Age sites in the Ancient Near East around 2,300 BC. - (1) NEW EVIDENCE FOR 4000 BP NATURAL DISASTER & CIVILISATION COLLAPSE - 24 May 2000
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Archeological evidence has shown that this highly developed civilization collapsed abruptly near 4170 +/- 150 calendar yr B.P., perhaps related to a shift to more arid conditions. Geochemical correlation of volcanic ash shards between the archeological site and marine sediment record establishes a direct temporal link between Mesopotamian aridification and social collapse, implicating a sudden shift to more arid conditions as a key factor contributing to the collapse of the Akkadian empire. - COMET CATASTROPHE
Corroboration comes from Mesopotamia. Something brought down the Akkadian civilization. Around 2200 BC - give or take at least a decade in the approximate dating and close enough to the comet's last appearance to raise questions - civilization collapsed.
- SODOM AND GOMORRAH 'DESTROYED BY A COMET', SAY ASTRONOMERS - 30 March 1997
- THE 1,600 BC STRIKE- Swarm B' - 3,600 YA
- MINOAN CULTURE SURVIVED ANCIENT VOLCANO, EVIDENCE SHOWS
A LONGSTANDING theory of archeology, linking a devastating volcanic eruption to the sudden collapse of the Minoan civilization at its peak of splendor, has apparently been demolished by new excavations on a tiny island off the north coast of Crete.
They uncovered architectural and ceramic remains indicating instead that the civilization continued to flourish for some 150 years after the eruption in about 1600 B.C.
Radio carbon dating of seeds and wood found in the volcanic ash at Santorini led scientists from the University of Pennsylvania to push back the time of the eruption to no later than 1600 B.C. Ash preserved in ice cores from Greenland seems to confirm the new date, Danish and French scientists said last year.
Dr. Marinatos himself was forced to revise his thesis by explaining that there were probably several different earthquakes and eruptions, culminating in the decisive disaster between 1470 and 1450 B.C. - (7) A FEW COMMENTS ON McBEATH'S VIEWS ON THE HISTORICITY OF THE JOSHUA IMPACT EVENT - 12 February 2002
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Sure enough, after the ca 1586 BCE Joshuaevent these now defenseless people are conquered by Achaeans ca 1580 BCE. . . . The only question that remains is whether this event ca 1586 BCE involved "stones" or "hailstones". This date is amazingly close to "channeled" data. See: CS - early/94: This comet cluster passed through the solar system 3582 years ago. - (6) BRONZE AGE CITIES MAY HAVE BEEN DESTROYED BY COMET
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A SERIES of natural disasters which befell Bronze Age civilisations in many parts of the world may have been the result of comets or meteorites smashing into the Earth. The most exciting new evidence comes from Dr Marie-Agnes Courty, a French expert in the microscopic study of soils and sediments.
The original evidence was gathered by the French archaeologist Claude Schaeffer and published almost half a century ago. He found that Bronze Age sites over a huge area of the near and Middle East showed evidence of four destructive episodes, the three most prominent at 2,300 BC, 1,650 BC, and 1,200 BC. - NATURAL CATASTROPHES DURING BRONZE AGE CIVILISATIONS: Archaeological, Geological and Astronomical Perspectives.
- COMETS MAY HAVE CAUSED EARTH'S GREAT EMPIRES TO FALL - 17 August 1999
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In a forthcoming book, Catastrophe, the Day the Sun Went Out, British historian David Keys describes a 2-year-long winter that began in A.D. 535. Trees from California to Ireland to Siberia stopped growing. Crops failed. Plague and famine decimated Italy, China and the Middle East. Researchers say similar environmental calamities occurred around 3200 B.C., 2300 B.C., 1628 B.C. and 1159 B.C. Each led to the collapse of urban societies in widely scattered portions of the globe. - ICE AGE END NEAR 1500 B.C. AND GENESIS
Submarine megalithic structures off the coasts of Malta, Egypt, Lebanon, India, China, and Japan in waters up to 70 meters deep were evidently submerged when the Ice Age ended and sea-level rose about 100 meters because of runoff from the melting of the Ice Age ice-packs. Many of these megaliths were astronomical measuring devices, which indicates that their Ice Age constructors had map- making capabilities and sailed the seas, as demonstrated by a commonality of the architectural motifs of the megaliths worldwide, and as demonstrated by Turkish navigational maps which were sourced from ancient Phoenician maps and show coastlines of the Ice Age world with accuracies of latitude and longitude to not be matched until modern times.
- MINOAN CULTURE SURVIVED ANCIENT VOLCANO, EVIDENCE SHOWS
- THE 1,200 BC STRIKE- Swarm B - 3,200 YA
- Swarm B: Cl - 1 Strike 3159 YA
- (4) MOSES' COMET - 7 July 1999
An Impact, Plus a Volcano, May Have Battered Biblical Egypt
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. The Exodus story is traditionally dated to either the thirteenth or fifteenth century B.C.
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. - 12TH CENTURY BC. WHY THE GLOBAL CATASTROPHY?
- 12TH CENTURY BC. WHY THE GLOBAL CATASTROPHY?, HISTORICAL QUERIE , PUZZLE
The diffusion of ironworking technology was at least partially responsible for the collapse of the Minoan, Mycenaean and Hittite civilisations around 1200 BCE, as these advanced peoples lost their technological lead to their barbarian neighbours. - COMET SWARM THAT PASSED EARTH 3200 YEARS AGO TO RETURN
- COMET PHAETHON'S RIDE dates it to 1159 B.C.E., or 3159 YA
A period of celestial "comet" activity is noted, suggesting multiple comet cluster passing throught the inner solar system.- Though definitive dating of protohistoric impact events can only come from careful stratigraphic work, there are some rather strong indicators that a nasty encounter such as suggested here occurred about 1159 B.C.E This is not an arbitrary date for it marks the beginning of a sharp decline in the annual growth of Irish bog oak which lasted almost two decades and for that reason stands out in the over seven thousand year long dendrochronological record based on this species of tree
- This "warring period" (given as 1148-1122 B.C.E. by N. Koss 1979) is the subject of a later historical novel (Feng-Shen Yen-I) which contends that the war between Shang and Chow groups was not caused by human factors but by the predestined investiture of the gods (see S.H. Chang 1990 pp. 169-70). In the Shoo King (book of history) there are several mentions of heaven sending down calamities during this time period.
- COMETS AND THE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE results from the last pass of the threatening comet swarm (Swarm B) about 3200 YA (years ago).
During a close approach to a massive object like our planet a comet would be gravitationally disrupted (Phaethon's disentegrating chariot) independent fragments would then further break to pieces as they entered Earth's atmosphere. This debris, of various shapes and sizes, would scatter widely along the path of the fall, each piece harboring energy in proportion to its mass. The "footprint" of this event could have included some of: southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Northern Africa. Damage, however, would not be uniform throughout this area. If the disintegrating objects were traveling south of east, as the Phaethon story implies, the more massive fragments would travel farther and release their greater energy, explosively, lower in the atmosphere toward the southeast end of the elliptical area directly affected by the fall. In other words, the Near East would be more heavily damaged than southern Europe. A survey scaling intensity of site destruction might reflect this aspect, i.e., vitrification of soil and building materials might occur below lower altitude multi-megaton blasts.
Secondary effects of a large impact event would include: a spottily enhanced C- 14 environment, making this means of dating unreliable to confirm or refute simultaneous destruction of disparate sites; a large production of oxides of nitrogen yielding dangerous ozone depletion, perhaps giving a survival advantage to darker skinned people in the aftermath, particularly in equatorial regions; acidic precipitation from the above-mentioned atmospheric chemistry; and, in the higher latitudes, impact winter, caused by suspended dust and soot. - (5) WHEN CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED: DEATH OF THE BRONZE AGE - 11 October 2001
From the time of Ramesses III (c. 1182-1151 B.C.E.) through that of Ramesses VII (c. 1133-1127 B.C.E.), the price of emmer wheat in Egypt gradually rose to eight (or, for a time, 24) times its earlier price. Not until the reign of Ramesses X (c. 1108-1098 B.C.E.) did the price drop, but even then it remained twice what it had been at the beginning of the 12th century. During this period, the government also sometimes failed to pay grain and other food rations owed to artisans who cut and decorated the royal tombs. The craftsmen staged strikes at least six times between about 1154 B.C.E. and 1106 B.C.E. because their grain allotments were months in arrears. - TROY VII AND THE HISTORICITY OF THE TROJAN WAR
In any consideration of the historicity of the Trojan War, the fundamental questions to be addressed are:
(1) Where did it take place? Necessarily at Hisarlik or possibly elsewhere?
(2) When did it take place? Is there a time within the range of dates established by later Greek tradition for the war (1334-1184 B.C.) when the Mycenaeans could have undertaken the sort of joint military venture described by Homer, of which the Catalogue of Ships in Book 2 of the Iliad may be a genuine Bronze Age roster?
(3) If a destruction level caused by human agency at a likely site at a date within the time-span assigned by Greek tradition to the Trojan War can be identified, was the destruction in question the product of Mycenaean attackers?
The date of Troy VIIa's destruction probably lies within the half-century ca. 1230-1180 B.C., although Blegen ultimately placed it a generation or so earlier and Podzuweit has recently suggested that it should be set a good deal later.
This suggests that the termination of Trojan war may have been co-incident or near co-incident with a comet impact. - ANCIENT CITY IN TROAS, NORTHWESTERN ANATOLIA.
Whether the site is the actual city of these works is still debated, but the archaeological evidence indicates that a city (Troy VIIa) was destroyed at that location c. 1260?0 BC and likely was the Homeric Troy. The ruins were designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1998. - HELEN AND HER IMPACT ON GREEK ART AND CULTURE
The peoples of Greece are even known as the Hellenic peoples, suggesting that Helen of Troy was of great consequence to the Oversoul - MEET HELEN OF TROY: BALD-HEADED, BARE-BREASTED AND BLOOD THIRSTY
For centuries, Helen of Troy has been portrayed as a woman whose beauty was so great that it caused a war. Revered for her flowing hair and breathtaking features, she eloped with Paris, sparking the siege of Troy after her husband raised an army to take her back.
It seems more than coincidental that 'Paris' has also become synonymous with the 'City of Love'.
But, more than 3,000 years after events described in The Iliad, Helen is to undergo a dramatic historical reappraisal. According to a controversial new book, she was more likely to have been a shaven- headed, bare-breasted warrior princess whose appetite for sex was matched only by her insatiable bloodlust.
The author, the historian Bettany Hughes, claims that the real Helen was a powerful Bronze Age princess, living in the Greek city- state of Sparta around 1250BC. Basing her argument on extensive archaeological research, as well as surviving friezes from the period, Hughes conjures a picture of Helen as a dominant woman who would have worn a handful of snake-like strands of hair over an otherwise shaven, and perhaps brightly dyed, head. Her breasts would almost certainly have been exposed to reinforce her power and sexuality, and she would have been a fit, trained fighter.
Her claims, published in Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore, come as excavations at Sparta have sparked speculation that Helen's long-lost palace may be about to emerge from the hillside. Bronze Age remains there, long thought to have been part of a modest house, have been identified by the British team in charge of the digs as merely the storage areas of a much larger palace complex. A nearby temple " called the Menelaion " has been matched to early Greek sources which refer to it as 'Helen's Shrine'.
It is more than interesting that the names of 'Paris' and 'Helen of Troy' are so well known, implying that they may have been 'Essence Twins'; see Table H-7. - Swarm B: Cl - 2 Strike (2785 to 2838) YA
- BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL CLIMATE - Lamb 1977
Global Climatic Boundary at 2760 BP or about 810 BC - COMPILATION OF NON-ANNUALLY RESOLVED HOLOCENE PROXY CLIMATE RECORDS: STACKED HOLOCENE PEATLAND PALAEO-WATER TABLE RECONSTRUCTIONS FROM NORTHERN BRITAIN he stacked record for northern Britain indicates pronounced changes to wet conditions at 3600, 2760 and 1600 cal yr BP with more minor changes at 3060, 2050, 1260, 860, 550 and 260 cal yr BP. The main wet phases are highly correlated with mid-European lake highstands, wider North Atlantic climate change inferred from ocean and ice core records, and solar variability. Tuning and stacking of non-annual terrestrial palaeoclimate records is a new approach to the compilation and reconciliation of individual records within coherent climatic regions and provides a tool for upscaling of palaeoclimate records for climate model-data comparisons. 2760 appears to be in radiocarbon dated years implying (2735 to 2788) cal.yr BP
- LATE QUATERNARY DEGLACIAL HISTORY OF THE ME�rIDA ANDES, VENEZUELA This latter MS drop was AMS radiocarbon dated at 2760 (2735 to 2788) cal.yr BP. Between 105 and ca. 50cm the MS,dry density and clastic sediment maintain their low values.
- THE 200 BC STRIKE- Swarm A' - 2,200 YA
- ROMAN COMET 5,000 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN A-BOMB
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This discovery, together with evidence from ancient tree rings and Roman reports of 'stones falling from the sky', has led researchers to conclude that the impact happened in about 200BC. - (1) FIRE, FLOOD AND COMET - New Scientist, 9 January 1999, p. 42
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The tree-ring record points to global environmental traumas between 2354 and 2345 BC, 1628 and 1623 BC, 1159 and 1141 BC, 208 and 204 BC and AD 536 and 545. Baillie argues that the tree rings are recording first the biblical flood, then the disasters that befell Egypt at the Exodus, famines at the end of King David�s reign, a famine in China that ended the Ch�in (sic) dynasty, and finally, the death of King Arthur and Merlin and the onset of the Dark Ages across the whole of what is now Britain. - "VOLCANIC ACTIVITY AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE"
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Camp Century. Location Date BC. Cluster
- Unknown ? 210?0 72 45 A': Cl - 2
- Unknown ? 260?0 54 35 A': Cl - 2
- DID THE CELTS SEE A COMET IMPACT IN 200 B.C.?
A new-found field of impact craters may mark the site of a recent comet strike.
We have identified an exceptional field of meteorites and impact craters stretching from the town of Alt�tting to the area around Lake Chiemsee in southeastern Bavaria, Germany. While there are many meteorite "strewnfields" known around the world, few contain significant craters. The Chiemgau field, which falls within an ellipse 36 miles long and 17 miles (58 by 27 kilometers) wide, holds at least 81 impact craters ranging from 10 to 1,215 feet (3 to 370 meters) in size. Many more craters may lie hidden in heavily forested areas within the ellipse, and farming activities in the region may have destroyed others. - SCIENTISTS SAY COMET SMASHED INTO SOUTHERN GERMANY IN 200 BC
The biggest crater is now a circular lake called Tuettensee, measuring 370 metres (1,200 feet) across. Scores of smaller craters and other meteorite impacts can be spotted in an elliptical field, inflicted by other debris.
The figure may be fine-tuned to around 200 BC, thanks to tree-ring evidence from preserved Irish oaks, which show a slowing in growth around 207 BC. In addition, Roman authors at about the same time wrote about showers of stones falling from the skies and terrifying the populace.
The object is more likely to have been a comet than an asteroid, given the length of the ellipse and scattered debris, the report says. - Swarm A': Cl - 1 Strike
As to 430 BC, I don't know what caused it but there does seem to be a widespread downturn from 430 to 420 or 410 BC, the coincidence of the start of this downturn with the Plague of Athens is interesting. Private comunication with Dr. Mike Baillie 25 Feb. 2003 A': Cl - 1 - [DER HOLOZ�NE T�TTENSEE-METEORITENKRATER IN S�DOSTDEUTSCHLAND]
Swarm A': Cl - 1 Strike - THE HOLOCENE T�TTENSEE METEORITE IMPACT CRATER IN SOUTHEAST GERMANY
Swarm A': Cl - 1 Strike
In Greek mythology there exists one story that has repeatedly been interpreted to describe the fall of a celestial body: the story of Phaethon, who undertakes a disastrous drive with the sun-chariot of his father Helios. First, the article presents the arguments given by ancient authors for interpreting this story as the reflection of a natural phenomenon. Then details given in the old descriptions of Phaethon's fall are compared with nowadays knowledge of impact phenomena. Furthermore the texts are examined for clues to the time and the location of the hypothesised impact. These considerations substantiate the suggestion that the myth of Phaethon reflects a concrete strike of a meteorite, the so-called Chiemgau Impact. That impact struck the south-east of Bavaria/Germany at some time during the Celtic period and left an extended crater-strewnfield of about 100 craters. A conspicuous intersection between the tradition of the Phaethon-story and the up to now known time-frame for the Chiemgau Impact gives new clues for dating the Chiemgau Impact to the time between 600 and 428 BC. - METEORITES, ASTEROIDS, AND COMETS: DAMAGES, DISASTERS, INJURIES, DEATHS, AND VERY CLOSE CALLS
Swarm A': Cl - 1 Strike
Other ancient reports in the West are found in the writings of Pausanius, Plutarch, Livy, Pindar, Valerius Maximus, Caesar, and many others. The report of a great fall of black dust at Constantinople in 472 BC, perhaps the result of a high-altitude airburst, is documented by Procopius, Ammianus Marcellinus, Theophanes, and others.
"580 AD in Louraine, one morning before the dawning of the day, a great light was seen crossing the heavens, falling toward the east. A sound like that of a tree crashing down was heard over all the countryside, but it could surely not have been any tree, since it was heard more than fifty miles away... the city of Bordeaux was badly shaken by an earthquake ... a supernatural fire burned down villages about Bordeaux. It took hold so rapidly that houses and even threshing- floors with all their grain were burned to ashes. Since there was absolutely no other visible cause of the fire, it must have happened by divine will. The city of Orleans also burned with so great a fire that even the rich lost almost everything."
Astronomers who have sought documentary evidence of ancient astronomical phenomena (eclipses, comets, fireballs, etc.) have found that East Asian records are far superior to European records for many centuries. Kevin Yau has searched Chinese records and found many reports of deaths and injuries (Yau et al., 1994). The Chinese records of lethal impact events include the death of 10 victims from a meteorite fall in 616 AD,
- ROMAN COMET 5,000 TIMES MORE POWERFUL THAN A-BOMB
- THE 500 AD STRIKES- Swarm A - 1,500 YA
- 236 AD Exact tree ring date �C Dr. Mike Baillie.
Swarm A: Cl - 1 Strike - THERE IS STRONG HISTORICAL AND DENDROCHRONOLOGICAL (TREE RING) EVIDENCE OF A COMET IMPACTS 440 and 534 AD.
Swarm A: Cl - 2 Strike
The 440 AD (1560 YA) strike? appears to have been in Britain. According to a TV production aired on KQED 9:00PM 16 May 2000 report, Celtic tales of Arthur record the fiery destruction of Camelot and the hands of the Sun god (tails of comets) reaching upwards. The 534 AD (1466 YA) strike seems to have caused 70 - 80% of China's population to die. The KQED production reports atmospheric sulfur increased around this date, also suggesting a volcanic eruption. See also Baillie's "A Slice of Time" or "Exodus to Arthur". Note: the three-body situation involved result in quasi-periodic, not periodic, comet strikes. - HISTORIANS LOCATE KING ARTHUR'S ROUND TABLE - 11 Jul 2010
Mr Gidlow said: �In the 6th Century, a monk named Gildas, who wrote the earliest account of Arthur�s life, referred to both the City of Legions and to a martyr�s shrine within it. - EXODUS TO ARTHUR: CATASTROPHIC ENCOUNTERS WITH COMETS - A Book.
- (4) THE DAY THE SKY FELL IN: ASTEROID IMPACT AND THE FALL OF ROME
Swarm A: Cl - 2 Strike
The data indicate that the crater was formed in about 412 AD, with an uncertainty of 40 years in either direction. Additional sampling may allow this spread to be reduced, but it is clear that the event occurred close to the fall of Rome: some time between 370 AD and 450 AD, when the city was again under attack, this time by the Vandals. - THE DAY THE SKY FELL IN February 6, 2003
Swarm A: Cl - 2 Strike
A metallic asteroid may have coincided with the fall of Rome, says Duncan Steel. A small metallic asteroid descended from the sky, making a hypervelocity impact in an Apennine valley just 60 miles east of the city. This bus-sized lump of cosmic detritus vaporised as it hit the ground. In doing so, it released energy equivalent to around 200 kilotonnes of TNT: around 15 times the power of the atomic bomb that levelled Hiroshima in 1945. The data indicate that the crater was formed in about 412 AD, with an uncertainty of 40 years in either direction. - DID AN ASTEROID STRIKE IN AUSTRALIA PLUNGE ANGLO-SAXON ENGLAND INTO A MINI ICE-AGE? - 04th February 2010
A giant meteorite that broke in two as it crashed off Australia, could have been responsible for a mini-ice age that engulfed Britain in 535AD.
The claim was made by marine geophysicist Dallas Abbott at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union last month.
She found evidence of two substantial impact craters in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern Australian coast.
Until now scientists were divided as to whether the dust cloud was caused by a huge volcanic eruption like Krakatoa or a meteorite slamming into Earth.
The eruption theory has many supporters due to sulphate deposits found in ice cores from that period.
However, Dr Abbott's research suggests the alternative theory. She found satellite measurements of sea levels pointed to two significant craters off Australia, which were 11miles and 7.4miles wide.
According to National Geographic, she was led to the site by large v-shaped dunes along the coast, which she believes are evidence of a great tsunami triggered by a giant impact. Dr Abbott calculated that the original object must have been 2,000ft across. She also found that core samples from the area revealed material likely to have been melted and then blasted into the sky. This could fit quite neatly with a 2004 paper in the journal of Astronomy and Geophysics, which suggested an object around 2,000ft across could have caused a cooling event on the scale of AD535.
He added that Dr Abbott and others had found 'evidence' of more impact events than astronomer's believe are possible.
Vulcan's existence means there are many more impacts than astronomers would normally expect. - Giant METEORITES SLAMMED EARTH AROUND A.D. 500? - 03 Feb 2010
It's even possible the impact had eyewitnesses: Aboriginal rock art from the region seems to have recorded the event, although the researchers examining this art declined to discuss details until after their paper has been published.
Still, Duane Hamacher, a Ph.D. student at Macquarie University in Sydney not involved with the rock-art work, recently demonstrated that Aboriginal stories can be used to locate meteorite craters.
"Numerous examples of fiery stars falling from the sky and striking the earth, causing death and destruction, are found throughout Aboriginal Dreamings [spiritual folk stories] across Australia," Hamacher wrote on his blog.
"The descriptions seem to indicate that the events were witnessed, not simply 'made-up.'"
In findings yet to be published, Hamacher used one set of Aboriginal stories, along with images in Google Earth, to locate a 919-foot-wide (280-meter-wide) impact crater in Palm Valley, in Australia's Northern Territory. - (3) THE DAY THE SUN WENT OUT
Swarm Volcanic Strike
In 535 AD, nature literally came to standstill. Winter gripped the earth for two years. Startling new evidence shows that trees all over the world - from Ireland to Siberia, California to Finland - stopped growing during the mid-sixth century.
Eyewitness accounts describe what we might now call a 'nuclear winter.' According to the Syrian Bishop, John of Ephesus "The sun became dark ...Each day it shone for about four hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow." An ancient chronicle from Southern China states that: "Yellow dust rained like snow. It could be scooped up in handfuls." Famine and plague followed, killing millions and altering the course of history. - A DARK AGE MYSTERY UNRAVELLED Scientists at Cardiff University, UK, believe they have discovered the cause of crop failures and summer frosts some 1,500 years ago. The answer? A comet colliding with Earth.
The team has been studying evidence from tree rings, which suggests that the Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. - SCIENTISTS: COMET CAUSED DARK AGE FROSTS
Using evidence from tree rings, the scientists at the School of Physics and Astronomy determined that Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 A.D. because a comet hit the planet and exploded in the upper atmosphere. - COLLISION WITH COMET MAY HAVE HASTENED FIRST PLAGUE EPIDEMIC
Studies of tree rings - from preserved oaks retrieved from Irish bogs to ancient American pine trees - have shown that plant growth around the world almost stopped between about 536 AD to 545 AD. Chinese records from this time refer to a "dust veil" obscuring the skies. Mediterranean historians record a "dry fog" that blocked out much of the sun's heat for more than a year. One idea is that a super-volcano erupted, but neither the volcano nor its acidic deposits have been identified. The other proposal involved a collision with a big asteroid or comet, but there was no direct evidence such as a crater.
However, some believe a much smaller comet which exploded in the atmosphere could easily have generated the dust and debris in the 6th century catastrophe. The surprising result of these calculations is just how small a comet fragment we have estimated was needed to cause the observed effects. The comet plunges into the upper atmosphere leaving an effectively hollow tube behind it, where it has been, and into which the surrounding air has not yet had time to diffuse. This tube then acts rather like a gun barrel, focusing much of the energy of the airburst explosion along the tube and carrying with it much of the comet debris, the scientists (Dr Ward-Thompson, Mel Symonds and Emma Rigby) write in the journal Astronomy and Physics. As a result, the plume would have spread around the world in a massive fountain of debris. - ASTRONOMERS UNRAVEL A MYSTERY FROM THE DARK AGES
Earth underwent a series of very cold summers around 536-540 AD, indicating an effect rather like a nuclear winter. The scientists believe this was caused by a comet hitting the earth and exploding in the upper atmosphere. This work shows that even a comet of only half a kilometre in size could have global consequences. The comet impact caused crop failures and wide-spread starvation among the sixth century population. Nostradamus Quatrain I/69 envisions a 474 meter diameter comet impact. - (7) 6TH CENTURY CATASTROPHE: WELSH DRAGONS PROBABLY COMETS Swarm Volcanic Strike
- A.D. 536 AND ITS AFTERMATH-THE YEARS WITHOUT SUMMER - June 1998
Swarm Volcanic Strike
A book by Joel D. Gunn, Department of Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
Global Climate Change in the First Millennium A.D.
Part II presents the convincing, even overwhelming, historical evidence from literate societies that A.D. 536cal was a watershed moment in the history of the world. A search for a plausible boundary between Classical and Modern times has been a subject of debate for much of the twentieth century. Young argues that A.D. 536cal was the breakline between classical and modern times. - (3) MODERN GLOBAL EFFECTS OF AN AD 536 EVENT
Swarm Volcanic Strike
There were successive crop failures in China and the British Isles seem to have been devastated. There is good suggestive data that multiple Tunguska events were involved, at least, and there is no evidence for major volcanic eruptions at that time (which argues strongly for a cosmic vector with the Taurid stream a most likely source). - (1) THE MERLIN 'VISION' AND THE 6th CENTURY 'EVENT' - 28 October 1998
Swarm Volcanic Strike
Interestingly the battle of Arfderydd is recorded in the oldest text of the "Annales Cambriae" as having occurred in the year AD 573, and this in turn reminded me of an earlier post to the CCNet by Joel D. Gunn regarding the AD 536 'event' and the upheaval of the 6th century. Could this tale of the 'vision' by the Merlin figure be a recollection of a fragmenting comet/asteroid 'event', with the 'tremendous din' being of a tunguska-like airburst? It made me wonder about the mention in that post, which I then looked up in the CCNet archive: Referring to the 440 AD strike? - TREE RINGS CHALLENGE HISTORY - 08/09/2000
Swarm Volcanic Strike
Mike Baillie (Queen's University in Belfast, UK) said growth rings in bog oaks and archaeological timbers indicated that a great catastrophe struck the Earth in AD 540. Professor Baillie favors the idea that comet fragments smashed into the atmosphere throwing up dust and gas that blocked out the Sun. This, in turn, led to crop failures, famine and even plague among the weakened peoples of the world. - MYSTERY CLOUD OF AD 536
Swarm Volcanic Strike
The densest and most persistent dry fog on record was observed in Europe and the Middle East during AD 536 and 537. There is sufficient detailed information to estimate the optical depth and mass of this remarkable stratospheric dust cloud. Its importance resides in the fact that its mass and its climatic consequences appear to exceed those of any other volcanic cloud of the past three millennia. - (8) MORE ON THE AD 540 EVENT - June 1998
Swarm Volcanic Strike
Surely, if a volcanic vector were a major player in the AD 540 event, this activity would have registered in Greenland, as the AD 79 eruption did if the signal at AD 77 (off due to counting error) is the result of Vesuvius. To the best of my knowledge, every known major eruption above 10 degrees S. latitude in the past 2000 years has registered in the Greenland ice. It is hard to imagine a volcanic vector for the AD 540 event (not) to have registered there, too. - (5) MORE ON THE AD 536 EVENT - June 1998
Swarm Volcanic Strike
Univ. North Carolina reports on a recent conference dedicated to the A.D. 536 marker event as a global phenomenon. The cause for this climate plunge seems to be undetermined as between volcanic and cosmic. - A COMET IMPACT IN AD 536?
Swarm Volcanic Strike
- (11) DOUBTS ABOUT VOLCANIC CATASTROPHE AD 536 6 April 2000
Swarm Volcanic Strike
- (12) DRAGONS, BEOWULF, & FIRE FROM THE SKY - 14 March 2000
Swarm Volcanic Strike
The interesting point being that Chinese stories note dragons wrestling in ponds in 503 and 524 while in the West Beowulf wrestles Grendel's mother in a pond in a context which has independently suggested dates between 495 and 533. Why would two such similar concepts appear at almost exactly the same times so far apart? Here the Chinese context helps by telling us that their dragons are associated with fireballs. But better still they tell us that where the dragons passed "all the trees were broken" which could have a Tunguska type ring to it. Surprisingly, in Beowulf as Grendel's mother takes off across the moors "They followed the (her) tracks along forest paths..." which sounds remarkably similar to the Chinese version. In Heaney's recent translation he says "The forest paths were marked all over with the monster's tracks...". - Mike Baillie - "THE DARK AGES: WERE THEY DARKER THAN WE IMAGINED?"
Swarm B
The twelfth century BC is associated with the "Greek Dark Ages", the end of the Hittite civilization in the Near East, the end of Bronze Age Israel, and the end of the Bronze Age Shang dynasty in China. Ancient Chinese history has the notion of "mandate from heaven", where the rulers were essentially subject to the whims of the sky above. Strange sights in the sky would not be seen as good news for Chinese Emperors. Indeed, around this time, Chinese records speak of:
Swarm Volcanic Strike
"...many gods and spirits were annihilated in this battle, and several stellar dignitaries were replaced by newcomers to the celestial domains."
Chinese historical records of AD 540 say:
"Dragons fought in the pond of the K'uh o. They went westward.... In the places they passed, all the trees were broken."
Ben Rudder, an anthropologist who reviewed in New Scientist magazine a recently published book by Baillie on the subject, wrote:
"If Baillie is right, history has overlooked probably the single most important explanation for the intermittent progress of civilization. Worse, our modern confidence in benign skies is foolhardy, and our failure to appreciate the constant danger of comet "swarms" is the result of a myopic trust in a mere 200 years of "scientific" records."
Baillie himself notes that:
"There is, I feel, a strong case for the contention that we do not inhabit a benign planet. This planet is bombarded relatively often. If this story is correct, we have been bombarded at least three times - and probably five times - since the birth of civilization some 5,000 years ago. And each time, the world was changed." Note, 5000 divided by 3 intervals is 1633 years. This Vulcan web site suggests the quasi-periodic average is 1677 years. - GIANT METEORITES SLAMMED EARTH AROUND A.D. 500? - February 3, 2010 Double impact may have caused tsunami, global cooling
The new work is the latest among several clues linking a major impact event to an episode of global cooling that affected crop harvests from A.D. 536 to 545, Abbott contends.
According to the theory, material thrown high into the atmosphere by the Carpentaria strike probably triggered the cooling, which has been pinpointed in tree-ring data from Asia and Europe.
What's more, around the same time the Roman Empire was falling apart in Europe, Aborigines in Australia may have witnessed and recorded the double impact, she said.
- 236 AD Exact tree ring date �C Dr. Mike Baillie.
