Slashdot Mirror
Meteor May Have Wiped Out Middle East Civilization
GFD writes "The Telegraph has a story about how a recently discovered impact crater in Iraq could have wiped out several civilizations that 'collapsed mysteriously' about 4000 years ago. This is the first find, AFAIK, of a meteor impact affecting human civilization directly. Very thought provoking."
That "meteor" is going to be hitting any time now.... I think you know what I mean :)
Wonder what kind of dust such an impact would have kicked up? Red sky at night? Global winter? Is there corroboration of this event in any historical documents?
We have histories in the form of writing or stories when other civilizations were wiped out through catastrophe. But in this case, these civilizations vanished, to quote the article "without a trace" Wouldn't somebody have survived (maybe somebody who was traveling at the time) and passed the story of this down through history?
Some did disappear 'without a trace', meaning 'without a historical record', not 'without leaving archeological remains'. In other cases, (Egypt is one cited in the article), we do have records and tales as well as archeological evidence.
I'm not disputing what the article says, but if this was such a large impact that it caused all of these civilisations to go into decline, how did we manage to uncover enough stuff to realise that they were prosperous civilisations in the first place?
Archeological digs, records of the civilizations that followed them, regional myths and legends.. Many sources, not always as clear and as direct as we might like, but more akin to detective work.
One interesting thing about the article, it points out one of the many advantages of being well read and educated, and reading constantly. (The two are not congruent.) The formation was discovered by accident in a photograph illustrating a magazine article.
Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Ummm... yeah. The hebrew is "Yam Suf", the Sea of Reeds. Not too hard to see how a simple typo made that the "Sea of Red", from which "Red Sea" is obvious. And yes, what we call the Red Sea is clearly identifiable as the biblical Sea of Reeds. If you actually _read_ your bible, you'll see that the Israelites didn't go directly from Egypt to Israel, they went via what's now known as Jordan, first crossing the Red Sea, then the Jordan (which retains its name to this day).
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph in the UK aren't the most reliable rags. I'd really take this with a mountain of salt. Honestly.
Smegma.
I think I have a candidate for you to consider. The so-called pre-Roman Celts of what is now France and northwestern Spain feared that the sky might fall on their heads. Although the so-called Celtic (as opposed to Basque) ethnic groups in present-day France and the mountains in the north of Spain (Liguri, Asturi, Kantauri, Gallici) most probably came from other mountain homelands in Europe, like (in the case of the probably Celtic Liguri) the Alps, poet and historian Robert Graves has pointed to similarities between Celtic myths of the western Celts (Spanish, Irish, Welsh, and Brittonic) and myths which were "displaced" in early recorded history (euphemism for ethnically cleansed) in lands that were later to become Greece and Persia. Now, it seems reasonable to object that people that far west could not have seen this event, but it is known that Celts, who preferred to live in easily -defended high grounds, periodically migrated in large groups; Julius Caesar reported that, during his "last" campaign against the Gauls, thousands of Celts passed near his encampment, apparently on their way to the Iberian peninsula. What I am trying to say is that the Celts may well have lived that far east a long time ago; indeed, not so long ago, the Isauri [sp?] were a well-documented (and almost certainly Celtic) pain in the ass in the middle east -- during early recorded history, IIRC. Or maybe there were many meteor impacts, some of which remain to be discovered near the traditional Celtic homelands. In any case, I don't know whether the collective Celtic memory of the sky "falling" is linked to the cataclysm alluded to in the article, but it's an interesting conjecture -- one that I make on no authority (I am not a historian) strictly for the sake of discussion.
I'm not sure I'd read a lot into the fact that there may be only one legend (Gilgamesh) referring to this incident. Remember that the vast majority of history and culture of the time was conveyed orally; there simply wasn't a lot of writing, and much of what was written was undoubtedly focused on mundane things like keeping tracking of financial transactions or religious observances. I happen to be in the midst of reading Gilgamesh right now, so I'll quote from the introduction (this is from the Pengiun Classics edition translated by Andrew George): "Literature was already being written down in Mesopotamia by 2600 BC, though because the script did not yet express language fully, these early tablets remain extremely difficult to read....Texts in Akkadian appear in quantity from about 2300 BC....The early texts in Akkadian dating from this period include a very small body of literature." Incidentally, 2300 BC is just about the time this impact is supposed to have occurred.
I agree with you that the evidence for this seems pretty thin so far, based on what the article describes. But I don't think it's implausible on its face, either...
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Hey grammar nazi, hope your moving goes well.
;-)
I really like your comments, ever so harsh on
8th grade english failures
Just an anonymous fan, saying thanks for the fun.
Well, I try not to let my faith get involved in slashdot, but.... awfully good timing for a once-in-history type event, huh? Maybe, just maybe, nature was set in motion by someone who really wanted to see Moses get across and the Egyptians get destroyed?
"Fifty million Americans can't be wrong," said Rep. Billy Tauzin. Gore - 50,999,897 Bush - 50,456,002
Yeah, OK, whatever. However, at the time Velikovsky wrote his book -- even though every word of it is wrong -- the IDEA of actually looking at history and the world for signs of catastrophy had no currency whatever in science.
Since then it has become quite popular -- even though the V word is never mentioned -- proving that while the nastygrams had their effect on the man -- who, after all, had the TEMERITY to question the hallowed halls of science -- his IDEA has come of age and proven to be a useful approach. So PERHAPS it's time to lighten up on the "crackpot" stuff somewhat.
I've all the respect in the world for Sagan, but his ruthless attacks on V reveal only a firm commitment to orthodoxy, and the FACT that science isn't, or wasn't, nearly as strongly positioned as it would have the world believe.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
The article did not jump to conclusion that this impact occured around 2300 BCE, it merely mentioned it as an intriguing possibility. Nothing but intriguing speculation until scientists can study samples from the impact site.
The only people claiming that the impact *was* in 2300 BCE are Slashdot readers.
As for the other argument that this is a cop-out, Occam's Razor cuts both ways. Localized disruptions only require localized events, but widespread social collapse is easier to explain by one major catastrophe (literall, "ill star!") than dozens or hundreds of smaller independent events.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I believe the civilization was the "Hittites." A really cute girl in high school gave her year report on the issue. IIRC, until about the turn of the century, critics claimed that the entire bible is a bunch of hogwash because they couldn't find any record of the hittites outside of the bible. Then they did. I believe her point was that in science, a more moderate view is often the most useful, don't let your personal biases get in the way of your work. Don't assume the bible is entirely correct on a few small details, but don't assume it's all wrong for the same reason.
funny munging
For instance, I know a great deal about advertisements for Canadian chocolate bars. And I have a list of rocket launches by NASA. I come up with a theory relating the two (whenever a new chocolate bar containing peanuts and marshmallows is introduced, the space shuttle will explode). Wow! Perfect link. I could come up with more 'theories' which make no predictions about future events, and merely relate past events. Theories like that are easy. What Velikovski (or I) needed to do was make predictions for the future.
And I can submit my chocolate-bar/space-shuttle theory for review, too, and it will vanish without a trace. The point of peer review is that other smart people have to agree with you. It prevents crackpots from getting published in journals.Lastly, where is this organised campaign? Sounds like another paranoid conspiracy theory to me...
---sheath
Human events, maybe. Astrophysics, no. See the post you are replying to.
The reason why Velikovsky is not accepted is the same that Copernicus's theory was not.
Carlk Sagan once said something like: "They laughed at Galilieo. They laughed at Copernicus. But then they also laughed at Bozo the clown".
Not that it was against logic
But it is against logic: Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof. And suggesting that "Venus was bored orbiting over there, and decided to wander over this way a bit" or "Jupiter burped" Aint it.
You seem to have touble letting go of outmoded things (OS2, Velikovsky). KDE is quite nice you know.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
You don't have to obliterate every building and kill every person to cause a civilization to collapse. You just have to remove one or two things that get people out of bed in the morning doing the things the culture needs to survive. What gets you up and going to to work every day? Probably money. If money disappeared tommorow, then civilization as we know it would be gone in a matter of months. Since the people wouldn't have disappeared, some kind of society would arise to replace it, but it wouldn't be surprising if the bulk of the knowledge and cultural practices we now employ disappeared in a generation.
In central and south America, there are great stone cities that were simply abandoned and left uninhabited when they way of life that supported them became impractical. In some cases, cities just became too big, and the lack of sustainable agriculture methods meant it simply took longer than was practical to get enough food into them. Probably what got people up in the morning performing their roles in their society was food. In years with good harvests the people probably enjoyed the benefits of urban culture; in bad years they no doubt starved. It doesn't take much famine to end a civilization, not when there is abundant food if you switch to an alternative social organization.
If this proto civilization followed the patterns of later "early" civilizations, there was probably an elite class of priests or aristrocrats who appropriated the agricultural surplus and in return performed religious ceremonies that guaranteed continuance of society and good harvests. In bad harvest years, they sacrifice a few virgins to the gods; if the next year wasn't better then they'd say that isn't enough, it was your fault, more sacrifices, and so on. If this didn't go on too long, eventually you'd get out your patch of bad luck, and they'd claim credit. Particularly bad years no doubt tend to be followed by years that aren't so bad, so most of the time they'd seem to be doing their jobs.
Now supposed you are joe peasant breaking your back to support the priesthood, in return for which they use their inside influence with the gods to ensure you aren't going to starve. Then one day a fireball comes out of the heavens, blasts just one one of their temples and its environs into smiterheens, turns night into day, rains fire and ash from horizon to horizon. Exactly what are you going to think of the priests' inside influence then?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So you're saying that all the other times the Egyptians were intelligent enough to know not to drive a chariot into a swamp... however on THIS occasion they decide to charge into one and and drown in a few feet of water.
Forget the fact that as I have already shown it was indeed the "Red Sea" being spoken of. Oh and besides that the Israelites with their children and older ones must've had carts and caravans, etc... much heavier than a chariot... yet, they must've somehow been able to get through the same swamp a more nimble army couldn't.
Let's not forget this was an entire nation of people crossing this area... over a "dry ground", they must've lied... just like anything else you aren't able to easily explain away as a random occurance of nature.
-CODiNE
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz