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More Evidence For a Clovis-Killer Comet

Posted by kdawson on from the speak-nanodiamonds dept.

fortapocalypse sends word that a new paper was published today in the journal Science on the hypothesis that a comet impact wiped out the Clovis people 12,900 years ago. (We discussed this hypothesis last year when it was put forth.) The new evidence is a layer of nanodiamonds at locations all across North America, at a depth corresponding to 12,900 years ago, none earlier or later. The researchers hypothesize that the comet that initiated the Younger Dryas, reversing the warming from the previous ice age, fragmented and exploded in a continent-wide conflagration that produced a layer of diamond from carbon on the surface. While disputing the current hypothesis, NASA's David Morrison allows, "They may have discovered something absolutely marvelous and unexplained."

5 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. oldest event preserved in history? by peter303 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Whats the oldest verifiable event or person preserve in human oral or written history? I think we get barely half-way to this meteor.

    1. Re:oldest event preserved in history? by E++99 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I wouldn't say there's no evidence for it. The strong connections between the Gilgamesh epic and other, generally dissimilar mythologies, the best example perhaps being the connections between the flood myth in Gilgamesh and other flood myths around the world at the same time, is evidence of an earlier common connection.

  2. Re:Tunguska event had no crater by FooAtWFU · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're actually investigating Lake Cheko as a possible impact site for a fragment of the Tunguska body. 8 km away, conical, pointed straight away from the blast center, seems (magnetically) to have a metal rock about a meter wide at the bottom (which the University of Bologna intends to dig up some time this year).

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  3. The solutrean hypothesis by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just to point this interesting, if far fetched, hypothesis about the origin of Clovis people, based on the striking resemblance of their stone tools and that of those found from the Solutrean.
    A friend who's studying archaeology told me about this. He's learned to make stone tools, and that made the connection quite appealing. The particularities that both techniques are not found in any other stone using culture.
    Again, it's far fetched, probably not true but makes for a captivating story to get started in studying the paleolithic.

  4. does Gilgamesh remember big flood? by peter303 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Soem people postulate the filling of the Black Sea 7150 years ago. Or the filling of the Mediteranean about 15000 years ago. Thirdly, the end of the last ice was so quick that shorelines retracted miles in a person's lifetime then. There are some "100 year loads" in Mesopotamia that are pretty nasty and Giglamesh could remember some of those. Flood legends are common around the world along with floods.