The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine

[Charlie Hatchett]

You mean this?

This is Firestone's book:

Firestone, R., A. West, and S. Warwick-Smith, 2006, THE CYCLE OF COSMIC CATASTROPHES: FLOOD, FIRE, AND FAMINE IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, Bear Company, Rochester, Vermont, 392 pp, ISBN 10:1-59143-061-5.

I've started this thread to consolidate our discussion of Firestone et al. research concerning, among other things, the sudden extinction of North American megafauna and the people responsible for Clovis technology. I'm going to cut and paste some of the other discussions we've had in various other threads, to consolidate the discussions.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Beags:

Also, I first heard about Firestones' theory from Virginias' post, and then read more about it. It seemed pretty far out at the time. Then at Topper I find that Al Goodyear will present the theory, along with other scientists in Acapulco next Thursday.

When that happens the story will be in Time, Nat'l Geo, and everywhere. When Al told me this on Tues. night, I went nuts not being able to get to a computer. We didn't even have cell phone service.

We didn't even have cell phone service.

Positively pleistocene!!!

[Charlie Hatchett]

October 26, 2006

SUPERNOVA

What if I told you that a nuclear physicist and his colleagues have solved the mystery of the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna, the sudden disappearance of Cro-Magnon and Clovis peoples, the Scabland Floods of the Pacific Northwest, the drumlin fields of the upper Midwest, and the Carolina Bays, as well as other geologic enigmas? With lots of hard scientific evidence to back up their claims?

Read:

Firestone, R., A. West, and S. Warwick-Smith, 2006, THE CYCLE OF COSMIC CATASTROPHES: FLOOD, FIRE, AND FAMINE IN THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION, Bear Company, Rochester, Vermont, 392 pp, ISBN 10:1-59143-061-5.

And be prepared for a sleepless night.

Virginia

Allan Shumaker:

Firestone certainly seems to have gathered evidence that something happened, however his quest for an impact crater could be a 'wild goose chase'. We have 2 historical incedences of cosmic events that caused widespread fires and destruction yet left no impact crater (The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and Tunguska in 1908). His proposal for an impact crater under the southern end of Lake Michigan will not be supported by geologists that have studied that area. Previous studies of the Carolina Bays have recovered material much older than Firestone's event so it will be necessary to figure out how this older material got into the Bays.

There is a Joint Assembly of several American geophysical organizations convening in Acapulco, Mexico 22-25 June, 2007 and Firestone and others will present their evidence for a cosmic event.
http://www.agu.org/meetings/ja07/?conte ... sessid=159
http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener ... p?ref=1388
http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener ... p?ref=1334
http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener ... p?ref=1393
http://submissions5.agu.org/aguconvener ... sp?ref=513

The formal presentation of their evidence should gererate some interesting debate and hopefully spark further research.

Allan,

Remember the Firestone et al. book lists four separate events, resulting from four blast waves of different composition: 13k, 16k, 34k, and 41k.

Virginia

The press this week will have a field day!
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/st ... 58,00.html

Next weekend in Acapulco should be very interesting.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Beags:

There is some really heavy stuff coming out in a few days - Thursday I think. I'll start trying to post up on it but in the meantime, anyone wanting to get out in front of the info can google:

Carolina Bays
Firestone Comet
Mammoth , Younger Dryas, Comet

What we may have thought was a fringe theory may be the real deal.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Charlie, the axe came in pre-clovis. However, we were nowhere near the pleistocene terrace pit, where they have the 50,000BP evidence.

I got a private tour of that place though. I'll see what pics I get and tell everyone all about it.

Also, I first heard about Firestones' theory from Virginias' post, and then read more about it. It seemed pretty far out at the time. Then at Topper I find that Al Goodyear will present the theory, along with other scientists in Acapulco next Thursday.

When that happens the story will be in Time, Nat'l Geo, and everywhere. When Al told me this on Tues. night, I went nuts not being able to get to a computer. We didn't even have cell phone service.

You mean this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story ... 85,00.html

Diamonds tell tale of comet that killed off the cavemen


Fireballs set half the planet ablaze, wiping out the mammoth and America's Stone Age hunters

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday May 20, 2007
The Observer


Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere.
Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.

'This comet set off a shock wave that changed Earth profoundly,' said Arizona geophysicist Allen West. 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. The result would have been hell on Earth. Most of the northern hemisphere would have been left on fire.'

The theory is to be outlined at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico. A group of US scientists that include West will report that they have found a layer of microscopic diamonds at 26 different sites in Europe, Canada and America. These are the remains of a giant carbon-rich comet that crashed in pieces on our planet 12,900 years ago, they say. The huge pressures and heat triggered by the fragments crashing to Earth turned the comet's carbon into diamond dust. 'The shock waves and the heat would have been tremendous,' said West. 'It would have set fire to animals' fur and to the clothing worn by men and women. The searing heat would have also set fire to the grasslands of the northern hemisphere. Great grazing animals like the mammoth that had survived the original blast would later have died in their thousands from starvation. Only animals, including humans, that had a wide range of food would have survived the aftermath.'

The scientists point out that archaeological evidence shows that early Stone Age cultures clearly suffered serious setbacks at this time. In particular, American Stone Age hunters, descendants of the hunter-gatherers who had migrated to the continent from Asia, vanished around this time.

These people were some of the fiercest hunters on Earth, men and women who made magnificent stone spearheads which they used to hunt animals including the mammoth. Their disappearance at this time has been a cause of intense debate, with climate change being put forward as a key explanation. Now there is a new idea: the first Americans were killed by a comet.

It was not just America that bore the brunt of the comet crash. At this time, the Earth was emerging from the last Ice Age. The climate was slowly warming, though extensive ice fields still covered higher latitudes. The disintegrating comet would have plunged into these ice sheets, causing widespread melting. These waters would have poured into the Atlantic, disrupting its currents, including the Gulf stream. The long-term effect was a 1,000-year cold spell that hit Europe and Asia.

The comet theory, backed by observational evidence collected by the team, has excited considerable attention from other researchers, following publication of an outline report of the work in Nature

'The magnitude of this discovery is so important,' team member James Kennett, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the journal. 'It explains three of the highest-debated controversies of recent decades.'

These are the sudden disappearance of the first Stone Age people of America, the disappearance of mammoths throughout much of Europe and America and the sudden cooling of the planet, an event known as the Younger-Dryas period. Various theories have been put forward to explain these occurrences, but now scientists believe they have found a common cause in a comet crash. However, the idea is still controversial and the theory is bedevilled by problems in obtaining accurate dates for the different events.

'We still have a long way to go,' admitted West. 'But we have a great deal of evidence, from many sites, so this is quite a powerful case that we are making.'

[Charlie Hatchett]

Charlie, the axe came in pre-clovis. However, we were nowhere near the pleistocene terrace pit, where they have the 50,000BP evidence.

I got a private tour of that place though. I'll see what pics I get and tell everyone all about it.

Also, I first heard about Firestones' theory from Virginias' post, and then read more about it. It seemed pretty far out at the time. Then at Topper I find that Al Goodyear will present the theory, along with other scientists in Acapulco next Thursday.

When that happens the story will be in Time, Nat'l Geo, and everywhere. When Al told me this on Tues. night, I went nuts not being able to get to a computer. We didn't even have cell phone service.

You mean this?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story ... 85,00.html

Diamonds tell tale of comet that killed off the cavemen


Fireballs set half the planet ablaze, wiping out the mammoth and America's Stone Age hunters

Robin McKie, science editor
Sunday May 20, 2007
The Observer


Scientists will outline dramatic evidence this week that suggests a comet exploded over the Earth nearly 13,000 years ago, creating a hail of fireballs that set fire to most of the northern hemisphere.
Primitive Stone Age cultures were destroyed and populations of mammoths and other large land animals, such as the mastodon, were wiped out. The blast also caused a major bout of climatic cooling that lasted 1,000 years and seriously disrupted the development of the early human civilisations that were emerging in Europe and Asia.

'This comet set off a shock wave that changed Earth profoundly,' said Arizona geophysicist Allen West. 'It was about 2km-3km in diameter and broke up just before impact, setting off a series of explosions, each the equivalent of an atomic bomb blast. The result would have been hell on Earth. Most of the northern hemisphere would have been left on fire.'

The theory is to be outlined at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico. A group of US scientists that include West will report that they have found a layer of microscopic diamonds at 26 different sites in Europe, Canada and America. These are the remains of a giant carbon-rich comet that crashed in pieces on our planet 12,900 years ago, they say. The huge pressures and heat triggered by the fragments crashing to Earth turned the comet's carbon into diamond dust. 'The shock waves and the heat would have been tremendous,' said West. 'It would have set fire to animals' fur and to the clothing worn by men and women. The searing heat would have also set fire to the grasslands of the northern hemisphere. Great grazing animals like the mammoth that had survived the original blast would later have died in their thousands from starvation. Only animals, including humans, that had a wide range of food would have survived the aftermath.'

The scientists point out that archaeological evidence shows that early Stone Age cultures clearly suffered serious setbacks at this time. In particular, American Stone Age hunters, descendants of the hunter-gatherers who had migrated to the continent from Asia, vanished around this time.

These people were some of the fiercest hunters on Earth, men and women who made magnificent stone spearheads which they used to hunt animals including the mammoth. Their disappearance at this time has been a cause of intense debate, with climate change being put forward as a key explanation. Now there is a new idea: the first Americans were killed by a comet.

It was not just America that bore the brunt of the comet crash. At this time, the Earth was emerging from the last Ice Age. The climate was slowly warming, though extensive ice fields still covered higher latitudes. The disintegrating comet would have plunged into these ice sheets, causing widespread melting. These waters would have poured into the Atlantic, disrupting its currents, including the Gulf stream. The long-term effect was a 1,000-year cold spell that hit Europe and Asia.

The comet theory, backed by observational evidence collected by the team, has excited considerable attention from other researchers, following publication of an outline report of the work in Nature

'The magnitude of this discovery is so important,' team member James Kennett, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, told the journal. 'It explains three of the highest-debated controversies of recent decades.'

These are the sudden disappearance of the first Stone Age people of America, the disappearance of mammoths throughout much of Europe and America and the sudden cooling of the planet, an event known as the Younger-Dryas period. Various theories have been put forward to explain these occurrences, but now scientists believe they have found a common cause in a comet crash. However, the idea is still controversial and the theory is bedevilled by problems in obtaining accurate dates for the different events.

'We still have a long way to go,' admitted West. 'But we have a great deal of evidence, from many sites, so this is quite a powerful case that we are making.'

Yep - that's the one Min. Al Goodyear et al will call for further study. It's getting support.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Curiosity got the best of me, guys. The book is called Watermark and the secondary title is "The Disaster That Changed The World and Humanity 12,000 years ago." The author is one Joseph Christy-Vitale and it is copyrighted in 2004. Mr. Christy-Vitale is said to have a degree in Comparative Literature from San Diego State University.

Anyway, I quote from the back cover.

" The Echoes of Our Past


Twelve thousand years ago, the human race barely escaped annihilation when a piece of exploded star passed through our solar system, unleashing an apocalypse. Great fires raged, mountains rose and fell, a maelstrom of cosmic debris bombarded Earth, continents broke apart and oceans swept across the land. Millions of people, animals and plants perished almost overnight. Entire societies, cultures and belief systems were lost forever. The resulting aftershock shaped humantiy for thousands of years and continues to haunt us to this day. This is not fiction. This is history."

Like I said, when I first read it I dismissed it as nonsense. Now, in light of this recent report...............

Makes you wonder if he had a chat with Firestone, et al. during the earlier phases of their research.

It's possible. Parts of this theory have been around for a long time. The idea that the "Carolina Bays" were caused by a comet strike or meteor storm was first proposed in the 1930's.

I also saw an idea years ago that the original native americans had been extinguished along with the other megafaunal extinction.

Firestones' physical evidence seems to have pulled some ideas together.

Makes you wonder if he had a chat with Firestone, et al. during the earlier phases of their research.

I dug around inside the book and found that he credits this book with much of what he wrote.

http://www.knowledge.co.uk/xxx/cat/earth/

When the Earth Nearly Died
Compelling Evidence of A Catastrophic World Change 9,500 BC
(c) 1995 by By D S Allan and J B Delair. 386pp.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Republished in 1997 as
"Cataclysm : Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B. C."

Apparently this idea has been tossed around in academic circles for a while.

Makes you wonder if Clovis technology was really only around for 200-500 years, or if the 14C/12C ratios, assumed to be constant, were actually in great flux during that timeframe?

[Minimalist]

Good idea, Charlie.

It's all about to hit the fan.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Good idea, Charlie.

It's all about to hit the fan.

Cool times, ey!!

[Beagle]

http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm07/sm07-s ... PP43A.html

The Younger Dryas event boundary (YDB) is a thin sedimentary layer of 12.9 ka age containing an assemblage of materials formed due to a major ET impact centered over northern North America. The event coincided with the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling episode. The YDB layer contains peaks in magnetic grains, microspherules, and iridium, in addition to charcoal and soot that resulted from extensive wildfires. Two impact-related carbon-rich markers, glass-like carbon and carbon spherules, have not been reported previously in North America. Vesicular, glass-like carbon, in pieces up to several cm, occurs in the YDB at 22 sites with concentrations ranging up to 16 g/kg. Their glassy texture suggests melting during formation, with some fragments grading into charcoal, and CF-IRMS analysis reveals a composition of >70 percent carbon. One sample exhibited a strong fullerene signature containing ET helium with a ratio of 84× that of air, comparable to the Tagish Lake meteorite (90×). Similar glass-like carbon has been reported from the Azuara crater in Spain (Ernstson, et al. 2001). Carbon spherules (0.15-2.5 mm) are black, highly vesicular, low-density, subspherical-to-spherical objects found in 18 widely distributed sites at varying concentrations up to 1500/kg. SEM analysis shows that the spherules have cracked and patterned surfaces, honeycombed cells, no inclusions, and sometimes display hollow cores. SEM/EDS and microprobe analyses show the carbon spherules to be >75 percent carbon. Similar carbon spherules are reported from the a crater in Germany (Rösler, et al., 2005). The carbon spherules most likely are either ablation products from the impactor or combustion products of the impact. Sediment samples were analyzed for Ir, and YDB samples from 9 sites exhibited elevated Ir values up to 3.75 ppb, while there was no detectable Ir above or below the YDB. Extracted magnetic grains have values up to 117 ppb, which is 25 percent that of typical chondrites and up to 5000× crustal abundance. The YDB layer, representing a major ET impact event at 12.9 ka, appears to coincide with the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction and the onset of Younger Dryas cooling. We propose that neither this cooling nor the extinction would have occurred in the absence of this impact event.

Thanks for kicking it off Charlie. Here's my first contribution. Also, I will get around to posting some stuff at Virginias' site.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Also, I will get around to posting some stuff at Virginias' site.

She'll love it!!

[Minimalist]

So how come the geneticists claim the 'bottleneck' occured 60,000 years earlier because of the Toba eruption?

[Charlie Hatchett]

So how come the geneticists claim the 'bottleneck' occured 60,000 years earlier because of the Toba eruption?

Good question. If an impact like the one we're discussing set the Northern Hemisphere on fire, would that increase 12C levels. If so, then any 14C/12C ratios would indicate a date greater than the "true" date. The smaller the ratio, the older the indicated date. Someone check my logic. This stuff is confusing.

I wonder how Uranium-series dating compares to 14C dating in the 60K range?

[Charlie Hatchett]

http://www.agu.org/meetings/sm07/sm07-s ... PP43A.html

The Younger Dryas event boundary (YDB) is a thin sedimentary layer of 12.9 ka age containing an assemblage of materials formed due to a major ET impact centered over northern North America. The event coincided with the megafaunal extinctions and the Younger Dryas cooling episode. The YDB layer contains peaks in magnetic grains, microspherules, and iridium, in addition to charcoal and soot that resulted from extensive wildfires. Two impact-related carbon-rich markers, glass-like carbon and carbon spherules, have not been reported previously in North America. Vesicular, glass-like carbon, in pieces up to several cm, occurs in the YDB at 22 sites with concentrations ranging up to 16 g/kg. Their glassy texture suggests melting during formation, with some fragments grading into charcoal, and CF-IRMS analysis reveals a composition of >70 percent carbon. One sample exhibited a strong fullerene signature containing ET helium with a ratio of 84× that of air, comparable to the Tagish Lake meteorite (90×). Similar glass-like carbon has been reported from the Azuara crater in Spain (Ernstson, et al. 2001). Carbon spherules (0.15-2.5 mm) are black, highly vesicular, low-density, subspherical-to-spherical objects found in 18 widely distributed sites at varying concentrations up to 1500/kg. SEM analysis shows that the spherules have cracked and patterned surfaces, honeycombed cells, no inclusions, and sometimes display hollow cores. SEM/EDS and microprobe analyses show the carbon spherules to be >75 percent carbon. Similar carbon spherules are reported from the a crater in Germany (Rösler, et al., 2005). The carbon spherules most likely are either ablation products from the impactor or combustion products of the impact. Sediment samples were analyzed for Ir, and YDB samples from 9 sites exhibited elevated Ir values up to 3.75 ppb, while there was no detectable Ir above or below the YDB. Extracted magnetic grains have values up to 117 ppb, which is 25 percent that of typical chondrites and up to 5000× crustal abundance. The YDB layer, representing a major ET impact event at 12.9 ka, appears to coincide with the late Pleistocene megafaunal extinction and the onset of Younger Dryas cooling. We propose that neither this cooling nor the extinction would have occurred in the absence of this impact event.

Nice reference, Beags.

[Charlie Hatchett]

Another article:

Ice Age blast 'ravaged America'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6676461.stm