Archaeologica.org

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/kilicores.htm

“AFRICAN ICE CORE ANALYSIS REVEALS CATASTROPHIC DROUGHTS, SHRINKING ICE FIELDS AND CIVILIZATION SHIFTS
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A detailed analysis of six cores retrieved from the rapidly shrinking ice fields atop Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro shows that those tropical glaciers began forming about 11,700 years ago.
The cores also yielded remarkable evidence of three catastrophic droughts that plagued the tropics 8,300, 5,200 and 4,000 years ago.
…
The cores showed an abrupt depletion in oxygen-18 isotopes that researchers believe signals a second drought event occurring around 5,200 years ago. This coincides with the period when anthropologists believe people in the region began to come together to form cities and social structures. Prior to this, the population of mainly hunters and gatherers had been more scattered.
The third marker is a visible dust layer in the ice cores dating back to about 4,000 years ago. Thompson believes this marks a severe 300-year drought which struck the region. Historical records show that a massive drought rocked the Egyptian empire at the time and threatened the rule of the Pharaohs. Until this time, Thompson said, people had been able to survive in areas that are now just barren Sahara Desert.
…”

The dates don’t quite jibe. It would be nice to know what margins of error for the various dates are.

This coincides with the period when anthropologists believe people in the region began to come together to form cities and social structures.

I wonder about this logic, Mayo. In times of scarcity people are more like to kill the other guy rather than cooperate.

Digit wrote:Knowing about spear and distaff won't help there I'm afraid Ish.
You may know all of this but I obviously don't know how much so forgive me if I state the obvious.
A 'maiden' name is the Sir name, (Sire name), of an unmarried woman. In this country her father's Sir name.
The other name for an unmarried woman was a spinster, eg, she spun thread. Thread is spun with the aid of a Distaff, the waited end that 'spun' the thread and so means any relative in the female line.
The male equivalent of the Distaff line is the 'Spear' line.
If you want to seek relatives, ancient or modern, the easy route is to contact the church in which ever parish your parents were born and ask if the still have the records of Christenings etc or whether they are now held by the county council. If they are, contact the archivist. You can sometimes do that via Google. Some archivists charge others do not.
In Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire I know that the records are held by county archivists from my own research.
My sir name is Randall. It comes either from Norman French or is a corruption of the Saxon Ranwulf, meaning Wolf hunter. Did a good job didn't we?

Digit -

You are a little bit off, technically, about what a distaff is. A while back, I was a spinner and weaver and built wheels and looms (among other things) for a decade as part of my living.

First, the OED:

(O.E. distaef)), a peculiarly English word.
1. A cleft staff about 3 feet long,, on which, in the ancient mode of spinning, wool or flax was wound.

Which doesn't really tell us much.

A distaff, whether you are using a drop-spindle or a wheel, is a two or three or multiply tined section section of a small tree branch, with all secondary twigs or protrusions trimmed off smooth. Put your hand out in front of you palm up and curl your fingers up - there's your geometry. In the case of a drop spindle, the distaff was just stuck into the ground. When used on a wheel, the distaff was mounted, generally on an L- shaped support, so it was both higher than, and a convenient distance away from, the business end of the spinning mechanism. Secondly, the spinning material was not wound around the distaff, but placed as a loose ball within the confines of the "fingers", to be teased out and manipulated into a roving of roughly parallel fibers by the hands of the spinner before being twisted into thread or yarn by the drop spindle or wheel. So this "Distaef" was actually an ancillary storage device for the fiber, and not part of the actual spinning process. Consider this when you evaluate the metaphor for lineage.

Interestingly enough, clear into the late nineteenth century, you will find beautifully machine turned wheels - this is all lathe work in wood, mind you - which still retain the cut branch as the distaff. Ancient shit at work, here. Also consider these names of certain parts of a wheel: "Mother of All" and the "Maidens".

And the fact that a huge percentage of wheels were the eight spoked sunwheel.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know............


john

I stand corected! Which of course is one of the great advantages of the forum, thanks John.

So, we have a dust layer on an African ice flow at the time period of the hit in either the Indian Ocean meteor or the Iraq marsh hit. Or both if at the same time.
And the story mentioned craters in Argentina dating to the same time frame.
It has the marks of a shower that hit 1/3 of the globe.
That may have messed up a lot of things going on in a lot of places.
Do we have to reopen our megalithic structures at the 2000 to 2500 BC time frame?
It sure seems something happened then.