New PNAS paper on the Holocene Start Impact Event

[E.P. Grondine]

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/142399 ... 8cpxhhn8wm

A number of Clovis sites with nice color images, including artifacts, along with a detailed discussion of soil sampling and processing techniques.

All by primary excavators.

Enjoy.

[uniface]

Thank You, E P !

[Ernie L]

E.P. has assigned me homework. Way above my skill level ..but hey..that's what makes it worth while...that and the pictures of course...
The picture is not an impact event of course but still darned impressive
....Alaska's erupting Pavlof volcano, in the Aleutian Islands, seen in a photo snapped from the International Space Station on May 18, 2013.



http://weather.yahoo.com/amazing-ash-cl ... 56028.html

[Minimalist]

Thanks for a good find, E.P. Now all I need is the time to read it.

[shawomet]

That was a great read. Thanks for sharing the link. BTW, and FWIW, Graham Hancock has adopted these findings to his own musings....

http://dailygrail.com/Hidden-History/20 ... ods-Part-2

[E.P. Grondine]

HI shawomet:

Bauval as well:
http://www.dailygrail.com/Hidden-Histor ... Iron-Space

If you have not already, you may want to invest in a used copy (or two) of "Man and Impact n the Americas".

[Cognito]

Although I tend not to follow Graham Hancock, his viewpoint on Gobekli Tepe has merit. We are hard pressed to believe the site was suddenly created from out of nowhere by a group of hunter gatherers.

Someone knew how to carve and place 10 to 20 ton stone blocks with one being up to 50 tons. That fact alone doesn't prove that there was an ancient, sophisticated civilisation, but it would be nice to know where the builders originated and where their precursor sites were located.

Being that this is a New World thread, I'll stick to cometary fragments at 12,800bp wiping out much of North America, but the debris field did stretch all the way to Turkey, correct? Good place to set up a monument to the heavens.

[uniface]

Someone knew how to carve and place 10 to 20 ton stone blocks

Or cast them.

Much more probable IMO, and supported by a growing body of pretty widely ignored evidence as the technology involved gets seriously investigated.

[E.P. Grondine]

Although I tend not to follow Graham Hancock, his viewpoint on Gobekli Tepe has merit. We are hard pressed to believe the site was suddenly created from out of nowhere by a group of hunter gatherers.

Someone knew how to carve and place 10 to 20 ton stone blocks with one being up to 50 tons. That fact alone doesn't prove that there was an ancient, sophisticated civilisation, but it would be nice to know where the builders originated and where their precursor sites were located.

Being that this is a New World thread, I'll stick to cometary fragments at 12,800bp wiping out much of North America, but the debris field did stretch all the way to Turkey, correct? Good place to set up a monument to the heavens.

Hi Cognito -

I do not know what Hancock's views are on Gobekli Tepe.

It is likely that a group of hominids evolved in the Black Sea region.

It is also likely that the rise is sea levels following the melt caused by the Holocene Start Impact Event breached the Bosphorus and flooded this area. So it was not dust from the HSIE that was the primary factor noticed there, but rather the comet would have been seen, the fragments would have seen, the sound of the impacts would have been heard, and the "nuclear" winter that followed must have killed off any local megafauna through starvation.

Then a flood came much later.

(There is a map of the impactite distribution from the HSIE available now.)

There is no doubt that these were advanced maritime people, with serated edge stone tools, polished stone tools, advanced fishing techniques, harpoons, an extenisve bone tool industry, and relatively advanced material technologies and food technoligies.

For the purposes here it suffices to point out that the technologies required for large dugout boat manufacture are the same as those required for working with large stones (megaliths).

For example, long sections of large redwoods are very heavy.

As far as Gobleki Tepe goes, looking at the surviving megaliths, they appear to have been modeled on earlier large wooden pieces.

As deforestation and climate change occured, the larger trees became more scarce, and the wooden pieces were replaced by stone substiutes.

The stone pieces were likely easier to create and move than the wooden pieces they replaced.

I suspect that the images found on the large stones at Goleki Tepe may represent constellations,
BUT I have not studied them in any depth.

[E.P. Grondine]

Someone knew how to carve and place 10 to 20 ton stone blocks

Or cast them.

Much more probable IMO, and supported by a growing body of pretty widely ignored evidence as the technology involved gets seriously investigated.

I tend to go with carved right now.
But there is little question that the quarry at Gobekli Tepe will be every bit as interesting as the structures themselves.

[shawomet]

Although I tend not to follow Graham Hancock, his viewpoint on Gobekli Tepe has merit. We are hard pressed to believe the site was suddenly created from out of nowhere by a group of hunter gatherers.

Someone knew how to carve and place 10 to 20 ton stone blocks with one being up to 50 tons. That fact alone doesn't prove that there was an ancient, sophisticated civilisation, but it would be nice to know where the builders originated and where their precursor sites were located.

Being that this is a New World thread, I'll stick to cometary fragments at 12,800bp wiping out much of North America, but the debris field did stretch all the way to Turkey, correct? Good place to set up a monument to the heavens.

I've read quite a bit and seen a few clips, but have not seen this documentary on Gobekli Tepe before. British National Geographic, just under 45 minutes. My apologies if not appropriate in the New World, but since the subject came up, I thought some might find this interesting. Have not watched it myself as yet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1229752

Watched it, way too much speculative interpretation IMO. They did examine a monolith left at the quarry site, think they were quarried, not cast.

[E.P. Grondine]

Here's the Black Sea flooding I was speaking of:



The problrm has been with the timing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_ ... hypothesis
http://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/Giosan_et ... _46963.pdf
http://paleogeo.org/flood_en.html

You have to remember that 14C datings were really screwed up ca. 10,875 BCE,
most likely as a result of the Holocene Start Impact Event.

[circumspice]

Although I tend not to follow Graham Hancock, his viewpoint on Gobekli Tepe has merit. We are hard pressed to believe the site was suddenly created from out of nowhere by a group of hunter gatherers.

Someone knew how to carve and place 10 to 20 ton stone blocks with one being up to 50 tons. That fact alone doesn't prove that there was an ancient, sophisticated civilisation, but it would be nice to know where the builders originated and where their precursor sites were located.

Being that this is a New World thread, I'll stick to cometary fragments at 12,800bp wiping out much of North America, but the debris field did stretch all the way to Turkey, correct? Good place to set up a monument to the heavens.

I've read quite a bit and seen a few clips, but have not seen this documentary on Gobekli Tepe before. British National Geographic, just under 45 minutes. My apologies if not appropriate in the New World, but since the subject came up, I thought some might find this interesting. Have not watched it myself as yet.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1229752

Watched it, way too much speculative interpretation IMO. They did examine a monolith left at the quarry site, think they were quarried, not cast.

Damnit man! SHHH!!!

Reality is NOT allowed to intrude!

[uniface]

But reality WILL intrude

Although it must get tedious for some of us to keep reading this, the issue here is the INFORMATION. NOT the Source of it.

Geopolymer concrete was, to the Egyptians, a secret of great military importance . . . Using it, they were able to quickly and efficiently raise defensive fortresses with walls of any height and thickness. It was a building material of the majority of the grandiose structures of Egypt . . .

Joseph Davidovits has studied . . . this construction material . . . It turned out that the mud from the Nile River contains alumina, which is an important constituent component . . . Another component is sodium carbonate, which exists in large quantities in the Egyptian deserts and salt lakes. The rest of the components necessary for geopolymerization are in abundance.

Joseph Davidovits' proposals find convincing support. On the blocks that are located on the upper tiers of the pyramids are found the impressions of mats on their surfaces. This means that the builders made forms using mats and filled them with concrete. Simple and effective. No building technology is needed which is capable of locating large-tonnage blocks. One can make a block, for example of 500 tonnes, since it is only necessary to pour the concrete quickly, without interruption.

While studying examples of blocks, Joseph Davidovits discovered hairs in one of them. Three laboratories where he turned with a request to determine what it is answered ambiguously: "A small filament from three organic fibers, most likely hairs." The presence of hairs in natural limestone has been ruled out. Limestone was formed nearly 50 million years ago on the bottom of the ocean . . .

The reaction of the Egyptologists to Joseph Davidovits' discoveries was a curious one. In 1982, the well-known Egyptologist, Phillippe Lauer presented the chemist two examples of stones from the pyramids of Cheops and Teti and demanded evidence that they are artificial. As a result of chemical analysis in two different laboratories it was discovered unambiguously that the examples are made from artificial stone and are not fragments of natural rock. They contain chemicals which are not encountered in rock . . .

Geopolymer concrete allows unraveling also the numerous mysteries of the Egyptian stone articles which also are considered ancient. For example, stone amphora. They were made supposedly of diorite, one of the hardest of stones. Modern sculptors do not even try to use it. The Egyptian craftsmen, not having according to traditional views, anything besides copper chisels, nevertheless used it constantly. And achieved incredible results with it !

. . . There is direct evidence that many Egyptian statues were made from geopolymer concrete. The "unfinished head of the Queen Nefertiti," which has become a standard for feminine beauty for all time, is well known to everyone. It is considered that the sculpture was made from natural stone . . . But what do we see ? A seam goes along the line of symmetry of Nefertiti's head, along the middle of the forehead, through the tip of the nose and along the middle of the chin. Such a seam could have arisen only if the sculpture had been cast in a form made beforehand, It is done the same way today when mass-producing anything molded. That is, the form is created from two or more sectional parts, a liquid mass is poured inside, and when the mass hardens, the parts which comprise the mold are separated. Seams remain along the joints which are then ground down. The basic technology involved has not changed in many centuries.

. . . One more fact that is mysterious for the traditionalists. It is a question of the so-called Egyptian stone engraving. The engraving possesses truly unbelievable properties. While studying it, Joseph Davidivits discovered that the instrument with the aid of which the inscriptions were made supposedly went into the stone so assuredly that it left no chips and no burrs. The bottom of the inscriptions is completely even and smooth, without traces of the cutting edge of the instruments. And the grains of the granite were not destroyed ! But this result cannot be duplicated today even if one cuts the inscriptions with an extra-hard cutting tool.

In fact, there are no mysteries here. The inscriptions were not carved, but embossed in the still soft geopolymer concrete. Therefore, hard specks that were encountered simply were pressed into the soft mass without any damage.

Robert Grishin and Vladimir Melamed, The Medieval Empire of the Israelites (New Tradition Sociological Society, 2003. pp. 126-132).

[uniface]

http://www.geopolymer.org/category/archaeology