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."
Nah, not a meteorite, more probably those we caused by the first tests of "bunker buster" bombs thrown at Saddam by the U.S...
cheers
Frantic phone calls from the White House this morning, as "W" ordered his staff to find one of dem there meteor thingies and buy one, durnit!
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
The only reason they're "discovering" this now is because it provides a conveniant excuse should Bush decide to carpet bomb Afghanistan or Iraq into the Indian Ocean...
Reporter: Mr. President, why haven't we heard from Bin Laden or Sadam Hussein in three weeks?
Dubya: They were hit by a... meteor.
This is the first find, AFAIK, of a meteor impact affecting human civilization directly.
Well that depends, human civilization or humans for that matter might have never evolved had that meteor 65 million years ago not wiped out the dinosaurs. We might still be rodent like creatures trying to not become lunch if the dinosaurs were still running around.
We have histories in the form of writing or stories when other civilizations were wiped out through catastrophe. At the very least we have ledgeds or religious tales of being smitten by the hand of God. 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?
Are there any slashdot archeologists who can clarify this?
>>This is the first find, AFAIK, of a meteor impact affecting human civilization directly.
I seem to recall a meteor impact in Siberia in the early 1900's flattening a relatively large area... recently they discovered that it vaporized to an unusal degree on impact leaving a very small geological footprint, the area looked similar to Mnt. St. Helens after it erupted. In any case, I would be inclined to say that this affected human civilization directly, granted on a much smaller scale given the remote nature of the region hit.
is did it hit Sodom or Gomorrah?
Isn't it also odd that there is only one legend which tells of this event (Gilgamesh)? I would have thought there would be scriptures and whatnot all over the place.
Any information on what effect this impact had on other wordly civilisations, or indeed the environment? I for one would find it interesting.
Security through promiscuity is no better than security through obscurity.
And I guess we're going to blame meteors for the death of all dinosaurs too?
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
The relevant books are things like Ages in Chaos, Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheval.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Ancient Red Cross centers were also accidently destroyed by the meteor.
Could a meteorite hit has sucked water from the Red Sea thus emptying it for Moses to cross?
As you can see, I am just making wild assumptions here trying to relate myths (Old Testament) with reality (Meteorite that hit 4000-6000 years ago). Didn't some religious people a long time ago date the beginning of the earth to be like 4090BC or near that anyway?
Wild, brainstorming thoughts that archeologists need to have to piece things together. It was only recently that they connected the volcanic destruction of an island in the mediterranean with the ending of a civilisation on Crete 100 miles away at the same time (i.e., huge tidal waves, killing of trade & crap weather killed the Cretian civilisation off - I forget the name of the civilisation though - Minoan?). Good TV program though.
Anyone else got a fave religious story that could be attributed to this event?
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?
Could a meteorite hit has sucked water from the Red Sea thus emptying it for Moses to cross?
Moses never crossed the Red Sea.
For those Christians/non-Hebrew-speakers who believe in the stories of the Exodus, read that as 'the Red Sea wasn't the one Moses crossed'.
The sea that is referred to in the book of Exodus is not 'red' - the word actually refers to a plant that grew in shallow waters/marshes/etc, and was extremely common. 'Red Sea' is a translation error.
Besides, the Red Sea isn't between Egypt and what was then Israel anyway.
--Dan
This reminds me of article from a few months ago on bad weather wiping out the Old Kingdom of Egypt.
If confirmed, it would point to the Middle East being struck by a meteor with the violence equivalent to hundreds of nuclear bombs.
Historians say this would be the first proof of such an event to have happened prior to September, 2001, and may hinder the US's attempt to enter the Guiness Book of World Records for 'largest bombardment of the Middle East'
--Dan
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.
Hmmm. Makes you wonder if the impact may have caused 40 days and 40 nights of rain...
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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 island you are referring to is Thera, also called Santorini. The idea that the eruption of Thera destroyed Minoan civilization has been around for about 30 years, so it's not exactly a recent idea. What we know is that there was a catastrophic eruption of Thera, an explosion that was approximately 1000x larger than Mt. St. Helens. There are geologic strata throughout the Eastern Mediterranean containing ash from that eruption. The ashfall even made it to Egypt, and there are believed to have been decent size tsunami that made it as far as Egypt (although not catastrophic waves, it seems).
A witty saying is worth nothing - Voltaire
As for crossing the Red Sea, according to Jewish history the exodus from Egypt happened in the year 2448, or 1312 BC, so the meteor would not have had much to do with the plagues or the splitting of the sea.
Hope that helps answer your question!
I might be able to shed some light - To say that the Minoan (yes you are correct) civilization was destroyed by a volcanic eruption is an oversimplification, that was certainly part of it, but mostly they were destroyed by the Mycenean (the first Indo-European wave into what is now Greece) civilization. I am not familiar with direct references to something resembling a meteorite hit in Greco-Roman or Middle Eastern mythology, apart from a brief mention that the entire earth (Gaia) was "charred and burned" after either the Titanomachy or the Gigantomachy; but I would say that's really stretching things. Btw, this is very early Greek myth, so the time of it's actual conception would be sometime 2000BC-1500BC, maybe earlier.
sic transit gloria mundi
Personally, I think that the "meteor" explanation is more a "buzzword-of-the-moment" phenomenon than anything else. Everyone has been talking about meteor imapacts in the past few years and trying to relate them to just about everything.
Secondly, a two-mile crater causing the downfall of multiple civilisations? No way! Sure, it does affect a much wider range than just two miles, but a civilization is usually something relatively large... it would most definitely not have a significant effect on egyptian or israeli civs, thousands of miles away.
The article says that the impact "must have happened within the past 6,000 years", and then immediately concludes that it is responsible for some specific events 4,300 years ago. Yes, 4300 is "within" the past 6000, but the proposal of cause-and-effect is a rather long stretch until we get the actual date of the crater.
Nor is there anything "mysterious" about the "sudden decline" of the specified nations/dynasties. After all, we know of lots of nations/dynasties that have suddenly declined during the past 6000 years. Do we require meteors to explain them, too?
The basic report of a powerful meteor strike is really interesting -- or at least will be if it is confirmed -- but let's not descend into pseudoscience by "explaining" history with it before there is any evidence to suggest cause-and-effect for specific events.
The claims about Sargonid Akkad seem to be entirely off base anyway. The glory days of Akkad coincided exactly with Sargon's personal reign -- no rare occurence in ancient history. Moreover Akkad saw a revival just a few decades later, during the reign of his grandson Narim-Sin. Not long after that Akkad did collapse altogether, but that can be explained by the ravages of Guti highlanders, without having to invoke meteors, divine wrath, aliens, or Microsoft's predatory marketing.
People are too quick to invoke grand catastrophes to "explain" things that don't need explaining in the first place. Let's stay skeptical until there is some actual evidence for something.
Also, notice that the article was dated back in April. Any more recent publications on it, anyone?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A lot is made of the fact that almost every culture has some version of the Noah myth. (There's an interesting exception, that I'll talk about in a moment.) But why is this suprising? Cultures from this period tended to grow up around small (a few thousand people) cities built in flood basins. The river was source of life -- it provided topsoil, transportation and food. It was often considered divine (the Latin word for "priest" originally meant "bridge-keeper").
But life on the river has its downside, as everybody who lives near one knows. One major flood, and there goes your urban center. Not cataclymisic if you're one river town in a bigger culture. But suppose that town contains your entire government, economic establishment, and cultural elite? Obviously, the River God has decided to mod your civilization down in a big way.
The exception is very interesting -- sub-Saharan Africans don't have a Noah myth. Which is hardly suprising. Altough the pre-colonial Africans did build a few cities none of them were on flood plains.
Other things can wipe out a small civilization too. It can outstrip its resources, be decimated by plague, or simply get sloppy about maintaining its source of wealth. We need to consider the mundane before we start worrying about the exotic.
So anything coming from space that leaves a crater, is a meteorite.
sic transit gloria mundi
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.
There is this link. many good links on the page.
Of course, this has been discussed in the fringe areas for a while.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In today's news, more things fall from sky, again destroying Middle East civilisation.
</obvious-joke>
Although it may be stretching to call the Taliban civilised...
The hebrew is "Yam Suf", the Sea of Reeds. Not too hard to see how a simple typo made that the "Sea of Red",
Removing one letter from a Hebrew word is not likely to be the same as removing one letter from an English word. Possible yes, but not likely. Can anybody who knows Hebrew and English describe what happens when you remove a letter from "Yam Suf"? Does the English translation have any meaning? I doubt such a thing happened anyway, since the scribes did an excellent job. That work was taken *very* seriously. Even if a whole, carefully transcribed page had one blot, it was destroyed rather than risk corrupting the Holy Book. It is more likely that "Reed Sea" just happened to be another name for "Red Sea" or one of its gulfs.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
2104BC would be 200 years AFTER the hypothetical meteor strike. BC gets lower as time goes on (years BEFORE Jesus was born).
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Because all OUR records are COMPUTERIZED! If WE got hit by a asteroid, literally billions and BILLIONS (think Carl Sagan here) of plastic CDs and magnetic backup tapes full of grit and, and fragile hard drives would... um, survive the millennia to be discovered by, umm, to be discovered by...
Oh.
Nevermind.
LOL, you're right! Good catch. I'll take another look at the numbers. If you want to figure it out yourself, this year (2001) was 5761 in the Jewish calendar.
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."
A US poll would probably show 3% in favor...in northern Idaho a much higher percentage.
Actually, it's not a typo at all.
The literal Hebrew is "Sea of Reeds", which has caused certain Bible scholars to to argue that the Israelites had merely crossed a swampy region and not the actual Red Sea.
However the amount of water must have been sufficient to cover the Egyptian military... impossible in a mere swamp.
Also Acts 7:36 and Hebrews 11:29 when refering to the same incident use the Greek expression erythra' tha'lassa, meaning "Red Sea".
In fact Herodotus used the same Greek expression to refer to the Indian Ocean which contains the Red Sea.
For more info on usage of "Red Sea" in the OT, check out Jeremiah 49:21 and 1 Kings 9:26... and check out where Edomite territory was known to be at that time. It's quite clear that "Sea of Reeds" was the Hebrew term in use for that region at the time.
-CODiNE
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Didn't Saddam and Gamora (I know they're spelled wrong, sue me) supposedly get destroyed by falling rock and fireballs?
Man, I just hate when folks don't even take the time to do a little research into a post. Had you done that you would have found the legends from the far-east referring to Gamora being destroyed by Godzilla... or was it Monster X?
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
glwtta, your taking this bit about the meteroite wiping out the dinosaurs thing a little too seriously don't you think? Relax, have a beer, click on some ad banners, and do try to enjoy the show. Geeesh.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
One I don't see mentioned is the Tower of Babel, where people were caused to disperse and to separate into language groups. One chronology lists that date as being 2200-2000 BCE. Of course, the problem with this one is no mention of 'fire from Heaven' or any such thing.
I'd doubt that it was the crossing of the Red Sea or whatever, that is placed about 1500 BCE, well after these craters are supposed to have been formed.
Bleh!
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
There have been a lot of cuneiform texts found by archaeologists that spoke about some wind of death bringing an abrupt end to the Sumerian civilization at around the late 2000's BC, and this is something that the archaeologists have been hard pressed to explain, giving far-fetched explanations about barbarian tribes raiding and pillaging Sumer. A cometary impact is a far more plausible explanation, it would seem, given the way the texts are written. Perhaps the comet fragmented on entry to the atmosphere and another fragment landed on the plain of the Dead Sea, destroying the settlements of Sodom and Gomorrah there and turning the area around the Dead Sea into the wasteland it now is. I wonder if there has been any geological study of the Dead Sea plain that could perhaps confirm or deny this conjecture.
So now, somebody kick Saddam out of Iraq so the archaeologists and geologists can study it more closely! :)
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
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
Even more impressive that the Pharoe and his army drowned in a sea of reeds.
funny munging
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
They'd blame the Jews; and for one, they'd be right ;-)
-jon
Remember Amalek.
The real (Biblical) history of the dinosaurs
The extinction of the dinosaurs is one of the greatest mysteries of secular science. It would not be if people believed the true eye-witness account of Earth's history recorded in the Bible. This reveals that:
Land animals (this includes dinosaurs) and man were created on Day 6 about 6,000 years ago--so dinosaurs lived at the same time as people.
Adam sinned and brought death, disease and bloodshed into the world. Before then, no dinsaur could have died.
A global Flood occurred about 1,656 years later, wiping out all land animals that breathe though nostrils (that weren't on the Ark). Thus billions of animals were buried quickly and formed fossils. This is when most dinosaur fossils formed.
Noah took two of every kind of land animal (seven of the clean' ones) on board an ocean-liner-sized Ark this included dinosaurs. For more information, see How did all the animals fit on Noah's Ark?
After the Flood, the descendants of those dinosaurs existed for a while with humans, and there seem to be eye-witness accounts of them, e.g. in Job 40:15 ff. and in the many dragon legends found around the world.
Eventually they all died out, except for possible rare sightings in uninhabited areas which have not been properly verified. The causes were probably no more dramatic than those that cause extinctions of other species, e.g. man's hunting, change of climate, loss of food source, fragmentation of habitat.s /dino_meteor.asp
Taken from http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/doc
PS. I'm not serious. Yes, that site has a LOT of fun stuff.
Slagborr
... I've been playing Civilization3 for the past week and haven't seen anything like this yet and no mention of "random meteor strikes" in the Civilopedia.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Interesting. Depending on the dates, that could coincide a lot better with the Old Testament.
Do recall, there are two different accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea (more accurate, "Sea of Reeds, which is NOT the modern-day Red Sea but a small lake in what is today the Suez Canal) in Exodus, one in prose and one as a song/poem. Professional linguists have determined that the poem is in fact the older, more "original" version, based on the sentence structure. In the poem, the sea does not part for the Hebrews and then fall back in. Rather, the Hebrews meander around the Suez for a while, eventually ending up at the NORTHERN end of what is today the Suez Canal, near the Mediterranian coast. The Hebrews move across an area of dry land, and then the hand of God rises from the sea and drags the Egyptians into it. It is very clearly a tidal wave, not a parting sea.
A volcano-induced tsunami would certainly have caused such a tidal wave. Sprinkle lightly with religious imagery, add a dash of selective editing over the following few centuries, and you have a receipe for the story of Exodus.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Sounds awfully like what MS did to OS/2 to me.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
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
This reminds me of an old argument:
Are carrots good for your eyes?
Of course they are - have you ever seen a rabbit wearing glasses?
PS: I don't discuss the validity of the whole post. Just the validity of the "trilobites argument"
A meteorite impact is like an explosion. A big enough one is like a nuclear explosion (think Hiroshima but 100 times worse).
A vulcano eruption like the one in Pompeii is more like an ashes rain and a blazing-hot wind (and i mean blazing-hot literally).
There have been huge explosions cause by volcanos (Krakatoa island), but nothing comparable in scale to a rock the size of a football field hitting the earth at 16 km/s (about Mach 50)
Could it be possible that os/2 (the poster) is stupid? Nah...
Carl is making a JOKE; metaphoricly confabulating two different senses of "laughed at."
Um, no. He is pointing out that while sometimes people with really good ideas are rejected for a while, rejection does not imply that your idea was good. People with utterly daft ideas generally get rejected too, and a it happens a lot more often. Most preople who seem to be cranks actually are: Demnetia is more common than unsung genius. A most seemingly daft way-out ideas actually are daft and way-out.
Is that simple enough or do you want it in even shorter words?
Maybe the extraordinary proof will be excavated near the iraqi crater? I guess we shouldn't even bother to look.
Craters are interesting. A crater is not proof that Venus went AWOL from the laws of physics. You have a very tenuos grasp on elementry logic.
Velikovsky and OS/2 are not outdated.
<sarcasm>Right - that's why the recent 0S/2 kernel and GUI developments, and not Linux is so interesting right now.</sarcasm>
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Actualy High Frontier proposed a weapon, the Thor system composed of 250KG iron impactors that would strike the surface of the Earth at 17,500 MPH with devistating results similar to a tactical Nuc. These space-borne weapons are of course illeagal, and never worked on. You realy wouldn't wish that kind of devistation on the Afgans, most of wish just wish to be left alone would you?
The rest of their proposals became the Stratigic Defense Initiative, which arguably was part of the reason that the Soviet Union collapsed.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Yes, but the difference is, removing one letter from the hebrew text (which, incidently, has been verified as having been copied exactly by jewish communities worldwide independant of each other) would render it gibberish. Once it's been translated, it's pretty easy. To this day, the sea is known in hebrew as "Yam Suf", and anyone who learns the Bible in the original Hebrew knows that it's always found as Yam Suf. The current translation that most people know, the King James Version, is actually an english translation of a latin translation (the Vulgate) of a greek translation (the so-called Septuigent, though it's not-- the greek we have today was written by the Church Fathers, whereas the Septuigent was written by 70 (Setpa) jewish scholors under Ptolmy) of the Hebrew. Three levels down... so in general, a lot of subtle points are missed.
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
We may have found the source of the Great Flood stories.
According to a couple of articles in National Geographic very recently, scientists have surmised a major rise in water level in the Black Sea due to a sudden surge of water coming through the Bosphorus several thousand years ago. There is now evidence that a large number of people living on the Black Sea coast of what is now modern Turkey died or were forced to move to higher ground in very quick fashion due to this ancient flooding.
I think the fact we do know that a major tsunami did hit the north coast of Crete and wiping out a number of ancient cities there does have a lot to do with the reason why Minoan civilization went into decline. With most of the Minoan centers of civilization destroyed by the Santorini eruption and the its aftereffects they were easy pickings for the Myceneans, that's to be sure.
The sea that is referred to in the book of Exodus is not 'red' - the word actually refers to a plant that grew in shallow waters/marshes/etc, and was extremely common. 'Red Sea' is a translation error.
With the most likely mundane explanation being that the Egyption forces charged into a marsh, ending up stuck in mud and "quicksand".
However the amount of water must have been sufficient to cover the Egyptian military... impossible in a mere swamp.
What you need for this is a fairly flat tidal area prone to quicksand.
If someone is stuck then flooding even to 2-3 metres will cover them.
I think the problem with a volcanic eruption causing major Earth changes is the fact that while a major eruption might affect climate, it doesn't do it for a long period of time unless the eruption is on an unprecedented scale.
After all, when Mt. Tambora erupted with its 15 cubic miles of volcanic ash spewed out in 1815, it did cause substantial Earth cooling but its effects were over in less than two years.
The eruption at Crater Lake must be way, way more powerful than the Mt. Tambora eruption to cause the changes in the Middle East you mentioned.
If you really want to understand why most serious scientist do not bother refuting these claims, just imagine how much time you could spend trying to convince a Mac fanatic that an open OS was better than a closed one. Different universes -- different rules -- different conclusions. Why would a credible scientist waste time trying?
Other recently uncovered tablets from the time around 2300 BC refer to attempts to construct a pair of reusable launch vehicles and several nuclear weapons out of mud bricks and papyrus, with the intent of diverting the meteorite before impact. Unfortunately, even though a team of expert well-diggers were assembled for the task, the plan "never got off the ground"...
:-) You know what's not funny? We're still about as prepared as they were to actually protect ourselves against such an impact.
Ha ha
Freedom: "I won't!"
The Bosporus straits is only 640m wide at its narrow point. It connects the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmara, which in turn connects to the Agean (via the Dardanelles) and thence to the Mediterranean and the world system of oceans.
In prehistoric times the Bosporus was a land bridge connecting Asia and Europe and separting the oceans of the world from the Black Sea, which was a freshwater lake hundreds of meters lower than sea level and much smaller than it is today. As sea level rose due to the end of the Ice Age, this land bridge was swept away in a flood which inundated an area of almost twenty thousand square miles.
There is disagreement as to how quick and this event was; time estimates ranged from weeks to thousands of years (of course it's much cooler to imagine it happening in a few weeks). Even if this event took months or a few years to complete, it would have been a huge catastrophe. Imagine your community was on the shores of the Black sea, and for several lifetimes you experienced a rise in the lake level of only ten feet a year (a rate at which it would have taken centuries to complete). It would seem like you were the target of a hostile and implacable deity bent on destroying you.
Supposedly refugees from this disaster spread the common flood myths of the near east, including the biblical Noah legend. Of course nobody can prove this, but it is an interesting idea.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sodom and Gommorrah are not a very good fit. IIRC, while there's some debate about where those cities were, everyone agrees that they were east of the Jordan River. So any meteor strike in southern Iraq powerful enough to take out Sodom and Gomorrah would also toast all the civilizations in the region -- but judging from the text, after those cities were destroyed, their neighbors pretty much went on about their normal business.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
FYI, Carl Sagan also presents a refutation of Velikovsky's theories in Broca's Brain.
It's been a while since I last read it, but here are a few of Sagan's argument that I remember off-hand:
There's other objections too-- I think Sagan has about ten-- but those are the ones I remember.
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
Yes, people do think they know where Sodom/Gomorrah were. There was a TLC special on it. Rather silly, but located closer to the Dead Sea. Nowhere near the Iraqi crater.
Do they really think that this crater was formed 4000 years ago? You'd think that a crater that large and that young would be MUCH easier to spot. Having been a recent visitor to Arizona's Meteor Crater. . .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I can see how the type of content to which you are responding might cause you to disbelieve, but what is portrayed by the poster is not consistent with what the Bible says.
I believe that the existence of God gives a foundation of reason on which we can stand when investigating the universe through the scientific method.
If you have any level of interest in pursuing this discussion, please contact me at tom_cooper at bigfoot dot com.
God loves you and longs for relationship with you.
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
And even more likely than that is that the Egyptians weren't actually killed off by the rising tides, but just got so bogged down in the water that they decided that it wasn't worth it and just turned back...
You don't need that higher tide if you have quicksand. Indeed trapped people would face a more horrible death if the water wasn't deep enough to drown them.
It's a bit late in Britain for me to look up the references (sorry!) but from what I recall there was some research done as to how the Red Sea might have parted, and they found a really, really unusual but still predictable and perfectly possible wind system which could actually blow a dry channel in the Red Sea.
;-)
If anyone knows the details and wants to beat me to posting them tomorrow evening at the earliest...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
You forget Mars was involved in a show. The matter is dealt with in some detail in "Velikovsky Reconsidered". It does not contridict the laws of physics. It does not voilate the conservation of angular momentum, since these apply only to elastic interactions. We're not dealing this here.
Also, the laws of physics have been used to uncover planets, eg Neptune.
The escape velocity from the Jovian system is very close to the escape velocity of the solar system as a whole.
It would only escape if the radial component was the escape velocity.
Presumably, if a planet-sized body somehow managed to be ejected from Jupiter
Why not. Stranger things have been advanced for the Earth and Moon.
The earth has a molten core, without danger of falling to bits.
, it is more likely to go flying off into deep space than settle down into orbit (an orbit, furthermore, with one of the lowest eccentricities of any body in the Solar System) around the Sun.
This problem can be perfectly addressed with a third body. Mars actually tames it, and it is Mars, not Venus, that has a last unstable orbit.
The whole "Venus born of Jupiter's brow" shtick is an over-literal
Just because you can't cope with it, does not mean it didn't happen. It's called denial.
Also, the circularisation of Venus' orbit after these transits doesn't jibe with what we know about gravity, tidal effects, etc
But what we knew in the 1950's has been shattered by what we found out by going there. I mean, the idea that things can fall from the sky was not taken seriously until seen.
The interesting thing with your URL is that the first review says "Use with caution".
So a refutions from people who have difficulty thinking that things can fall from the sky should not be taken seriously.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
You stipulate a football-field-sized asteroid, which would make it 8x the mass and therefore 8x the energy of the above, or 80 megatons. That's pretty big, all right.
But from this page about the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa:
Krakatoa, though gigantic, is hardly the biggest eruption the world has ever seen. Mt. Mazama (now Crater Lake) in Oregon is said to have erupted with the force of approximately 10 thousand megatons of TNT. But that's nothing in comparison with the biggest Yellowstone eruptions, which are estimated to have exceeded 2 million megatons. If such an eruption happened today I'd expect it would blow away most evidence of civilization in the western U.S., but the rest of the world might be quite nicely preserved under the ash.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
How come nobody flammed me for misspelling "apocalypse"?
If you look at much of what has been said in this thread, you will see that all that has been advanced on Velikovskt is that:
- Some astronomers said that he was wrong, this view was based on the two-page article that appeared in Harpers Magazine before the first book appeared.
- And because it was not accepted science in 1950, and against the prevailing authodoxy, ergo, he was a crackpot.
The point is that orthodoxy does not have the resources to dismiss all sorts of crank ideas that might arise, but that does not mean that they should not address high profile issues either.Proof is not lacking in Velikovsky. It's a reading of evidence there, rather than some new find. In fact, from the evidence presneted by him and others, his reconstruction of history makes sense. And therefore, there are big events around 1450BC and 680BC that need to be addressed. Velikovsky looked through a crack and saw a different world. He has warnings for us today.
Notwithstanding, the thing has had a lot of predicitive power: radio noise from Jupiter, Venus is hot enough to burn hydrocarbons, Venus has unusual rotation and very fast winds, Mars has a tilt and day close to that of earth, and other ones in History as well.
Were Velikovsky such a crackpot, then someone sould seriously look at his work objectively and publish some sort of refutation. I have not seen much on this light.
Regarding the comet falling into Jupiter, and Venus coming out of it:
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Velikovsky offers no astronomical calculations or explaninations for this, but advances it as an observer might. Others have dealt with this in the book Velikovsky Reconsidered.
Whether escape velocities come to play in it, and how they might escape jupiter on an inbound orbit, I am not sure. But orbital capture of bodies is not unknown.
As for the others comments, they are essentially true.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Oh man, and I thought I had way too much time on my hands! Wow!
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I'm imagining a loose cluster of meteors that hit here and there and created legends everywhere.
The biggest hole is the lack of craters in the area they are supposed to be, archeologists have been all over that area trying to prove or disprove the story from the Bible.
Bleh!