Meteor May Have Wiped Out Middle East Civilization 513
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."
Not a meteor... (Score:3, Funny)
Nah, not a meteorite, more probably those we caused by the first tests of "bunker buster" bombs thrown at Saddam by the U.S...
For Sale? (Score:2, Funny)
Ulterior Motives? (Score:4, Funny)
Reporter: Mr. President, why haven't we heard from Bin Laden or Sadam Hussein in three weeks?
Dubya: They were hit by a... meteor.
well it depends.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2, Funny)
We might still be rodent like creatures...
That explains politicians, the MPAA and the RIAA...
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's also worth remembering that in all probability, dinosaurs have direct descendents alive and well today. So they aren't exactly totally gone as just smaller and more feathered.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2, Informative)
But there is growing speculation of a kind of 'in-between' state that was neither fully warm-blooed or cold-blooded. THe problem is that this evidence doesnt really survive in the fossil record, so may never really gain credence. The belief that dinosaurs were cold-blooded is based on coparisons between modern day reptile bone structure and fossil evidence. Good arguments have been made that they were warm-blooded, but still there isnt enough evidence to disprove anything.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2)
For that matter, most common knowlege about reptiles is rubbish - crocodiles look after their young, for example, something reptiles are generally claimed not to do.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:5, Informative)
Chicxulub crater appears to have caused massive direct damage to North America and would have the strength to kick up the cloud found in other places throughout the world. The geological evidence points to a cataclysimic change in the Earth over a period of about 50 years
It appears [go.com] that dinosaurs may be warm blooded. And more like modern birds and mammals than the lizards and amphibians. And in size they ranged from as big as a blue whale to as small as a chicken. They survived a huge number of gradual changes to the environment in their time on the earth. They seem to have a lot in common with modern mammals and birds, especially in terms of diversity and habitats.
On your over all hypothosis that mammals are superior to dinosaurs is really just statistical conjecture. If being fit means alive now then, yes mammals are more fit. But if fit takes on other qualities, then it is really a question of which was more fit (even the best solutions don't always get chosen in today's world). In the end I believe that, mammals really got lucky. They were the right size at the time of the impact, if they'd been larger they would of suffered the same fate as the bigger and more diverse dinosaurs. Dinosaurs just got caught buying into a system that all of a sudden just dissappeared on them. If the same thing happened today, probably most mammals (including humans) would suffer the same fate.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2)
Clearly the dinosaurs were "fit" before the meteor or comet impact that caused their doom punctuated the equilibrium to which they'd become adapted. (OK, that's a bit of a pun, and of course things weren't in stasis beforehand - dinosaurs evolved during those millions of years they were prevelant).
If our natural history included a steady stream of
frequent Big Rocks slamming into the planet then one could probably talk about small, furry warm-blooded creatures mostly living a nocturnal lifestyle underground were better fit in a general sense.
But in reality they were just better able to survive a catastrophy of exceeding rarity. Nothing to do with "fitness" as evolutionists think of it, at all.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2)
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2)
Added to the fact that nature is all about being lucky and being at the right time at the right place. Mutations occur at random and whether these mutations are passed down has everything to do with what the current conditions are and whether or not those mutations are helpful. Humans (especially humans of European desent) have cystic fibrosis because it was helpful for the conditions it first developed in [virginia.edu], it doesn't make us more "fit" but it did help out under certian critera. Have you not studied random number theory. If there isn't random variation then the data that has been collected isn't correct. Nothing occurs right on the nose or exactly every time. There is always a probablity of an event occuring and a probablity of an event not occuring. Randomness and probablity implies luck. Any you're alive today based on a huge number of probablities playing out in your favor. So am I and so is everything else on the planet. Mammals did get lucky compared to the dinosaurs.
Trilobites (Score:2)
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"
What REALLY happened (Score:2, Funny)
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 [answersingenesis.org]
Taken from http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/doc
PS. I'm not serious. Yes, that site has a LOT of fun stuff.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe I should cover it with fur.
Re:well it depends.... (Score:2)
Likewise as I cruise past a mile of stopped traffic on my bright shiny Schwinn Mesa GS [tastytronic.net].
One Thing Missing (Score:4, Interesting)
Are there any slashdot archeologists who can clarify this?
Re:One Thing Missing (Score:4, Informative)
A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.
That is from the article.Re:One Thing Missing (Score:3, Informative)
Now, IANAA, but there might be no truly objective record of this at all - nobody would write "today, a meteor struck my town". All we have are epics of Gilgamesh, and other legends, that other posts here are trying to interpret in these terms. The point is, we do have legends, and plenty of them, but we don't know what they mean.
Re:One Thing Missing (Score:5, Informative)
Travel back then wasn't the luxury it once was, and so isolated tribes/villiages/civilizations would be rather prone to oblivion.
Also, things get passed down, but there are very few stories that do not get warped with each telling. Perhaps, too, that this story is in religious texts, but how are we to know which? The symbolism may be too obscure or too abstract for us to pick up on immediately.
That being said, the article specifically mentions an ancient story:
A date of around 2300 BC for the impact may also cast new light on the legend of Gilgamesh, dating from the same period. The legend talks of "the Seven Judges of Hell", who raised their torches, lighting the land with flame, and a storm that turned day into night, "smashed the land like a cup", and flooded the area.
That may be to what you refer to. Perhaps they didn't mention the civilizations that were destroyed because the land being lit with flame and a storm turning day into night, smashing the land like a cup and flooding the area were kind of heavy on their minds at the time.
--Dan
Re:One Thing Missing (Score:2, Interesting)
If the center of such a civilization is wiped out, the only thing you'd have left is an oral history of the event.
It would have also been likely that the affected areas were invded and taken over, in which case, a large part of the surviving written history could quite possibly have been destroyed as the first step to assimilate the conquored civilization.
instance in Celtic lore (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:One Thing Missing (Score:2)
The thing is that an event of this order of magnitude is not dealt with objectively, but rather as a religious experience.
In the first few years after WW1, the passage of 11am on 11 Nov was observed with a silence that stopped the trains. An event that upsets the whole of one's society is likely to be recalled through a range of changed cultural behaviour, such as ceronomies, unlucky numbers (eg 13), and days (eg Fri), building house on tops of stilts or hills, and other events that indirectly suggest a echo of a disturbed past. This is what Velikovsky studied.
Re:One Thing Missing (Score:2, Funny)
siberian impact (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:siberian impact (Score:2)
Re:siberian impact (Score:2)
Re:siberian impact (Score:2)
-russ
The only question that remains (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The only question that remains (Score:5, Funny)
Gomorrah. That's why sodomy still exists - I don't even want to think what Gomorramy was.
--
Evan
Re:The only question that remains (Score:2)
Not a contention, but a question... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
some possible explanations (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Pompeii (Score:2)
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)
Re:Not a contention, but a question... (Score:3, Insightful)
In central and south America, there are great stone cities that were simply abandoned and left uninhabited when they way of life that supported them became impractical. In some cases, cities just became too big, and the lack of sustainable agriculture methods meant it simply took longer than was practical to get enough food into them. Probably what got people up in the morning performing their roles in their society was food. In years with good harvests the people probably enjoyed the benefits of urban culture; in bad years they no doubt starved. It doesn't take much famine to end a civilization, not when there is abundant food if you switch to an alternative social organization.
If this proto civilization followed the patterns of later "early" civilizations, there was probably an elite class of priests or aristrocrats who appropriated the agricultural surplus and in return performed religious ceremonies that guaranteed continuance of society and good harvests. In bad harvest years, they sacrifice a few virgins to the gods; if the next year wasn't better then they'd say that isn't enough, it was your fault, more sacrifices, and so on. If this didn't go on too long, eventually you'd get out your patch of bad luck, and they'd claim credit. Particularly bad years no doubt tend to be followed by years that aren't so bad, so most of the time they'd seem to be doing their jobs.
Now supposed you are joe peasant breaking your back to support the priesthood, in return for which they use their inside influence with the gods to ensure you aren't going to starve. Then one day a fireball comes out of the heavens, blasts just one one of their temples and its environs into smiterheens, turns night into day, rains fire and ash from horizon to horizon. Exactly what are you going to think of the priests' inside influence then?
Re: dude CNN wasnt around then (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Blaming Everything On Something (Score:2, Funny)
Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2, Flamebait)
The relevant books are things like Ages in Chaos, Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheval.
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:5, Informative)
From Scientific American, page 30, Oct. 2001, in the "Skeptic" column by Michael Shermer:
Amen.Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2)
Velikovsky says that craters were made during planetry encounters. So that a crater is concurrent with the fall of civilisations does not dosprove Mr Velikovsky. Certianly, you have not advanced any reason why Velikovsky is a crackpot, and why "crackpots" can not engage in serious science [eg Sir Isaac Newton]. Character attacks are not good science.
Firstly, Velikovsky did submit to peer reviews. This is documented in a number of books. None less than Albert Einstein read the early books favourably.
Secondly, the thing is science, it provides testable ideas, and has made successful predictions. He says that Venus is hot enough to boil petrolium, and that petroluium fires would be burning on Venus were there oxygen there. The then current view was that Venus is 59 degF. His view does not need changing, by virtue that they made so many successful corrections.
I mean, it was not all that long ago, when Shumaker-Levi tumbled into Jupiter, that astronomers conceded that these things DO happen.
That is, in fifty years, Velikovsky remains unchanged and a valid theory, where the accepted theory has undergone a metamorphis due to what we find out there. Is that not enough to reconsider.
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2)
It should be enough to reconsider Velikovsky's "theory": a lack of change in a theory as new data comes in is a sign that you're not actually interested in the data.
Believing Velikovsky's drivel is like saying you still believe in Santa Claus. Indeed, it's worse since at least you were told by lots of people that Santa exists, whereas with Velikovsky there is neither evidence OR peer-pressure as an excuse.
TWW
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2)
Velikovsky did not pick the planets because they might make the legend more interesting: he picked them because that's what the sources told him. It's not for nothing that that the movements of Venus are tracked to this day by the Mayan natives, or that the olympics are held every four years [2 1/2 the syndonic periods of Venus].
No, you have no evidence of the continuity of the planets in the past, and so therefore you can not emphatically dismiss Velikovsky on that count.
I mean, the big reaction to the comet falling into Jupiter is "Ghee, these things can happen". And that was long after the space age started.
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, OK, whatever. However, at the time Velikovsky wrote his book -- even though every word of it is wrong -- the IDEA of actually looking at history and the world for signs of catastrophy had no currency whatever in science.
Since then it has become quite popular -- even though the V word is never mentioned -- proving that while the nastygrams had their effect on the man -- who, after all, had the TEMERITY to question the hallowed halls of science -- his IDEA has come of age and proven to be a useful approach. So PERHAPS it's time to lighten up on the "crackpot" stuff somewhat.
I've all the respect in the world for Sagan, but his ruthless attacks on V reveal only a firm commitment to orthodoxy, and the FACT that science isn't, or wasn't, nearly as strongly positioned as it would have the world believe.
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:5, Interesting)
The collapse of the Roman Empire and other events around the year 300 were discussed in the recent book Catastrophe, the proposition of which is that the Dark Ages were caused by an upset of the world weather around 535, by a large volcano that Krakatoa is in the crater of. The events of 535, as well as those of 1485BC and 687BC, suggest that it was not the work of a local civilisation, but widespread disasters.
You must understand this about Velikovski's theory. He did not posit that the celestial events occured, and then looked for confirmation, but rather, from the study of ancient legends, using his skill as a psychocharist, suggested that the described events happened, and were suppressed (as victims of trauma usually do). That is, Velikovski's wandering planets are an explination, not a cause. Your "Sun Standing Still" is described as a tippletoe movement of the earth.
The great chorus of people who stood up and said it was rubbish sounds similar to those who stood up and said the earth moves in the sky. There were serious objections to a moving earth, that took centries to overcome [like, how can it move and keep its atmosphere].
To date, I have not seen any reasonable attempt to refute Mr Velikovsky, which, if he were such a widely read author, and Science were so sure of their footing, this aught be addressed. Put simply, there is nothing in Velikovsky that is against the reason of physics, and certianly, one must agree that our understanding has changed in the intervening time.
On the other hand, there are perfectly reasonable explinations to most of the events that Velikovski describes. Check out the Abacus book Velikovski Reconsidered.
Also, Velikovski DID submit his books to peer review. But there was an organised campaign by some scientists to prevent the publication of his book by his first publisher, MacMillan.
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2, Insightful)
For instance, I know a great deal about advertisements for Canadian chocolate bars. And I have a list of rocket launches by NASA. I come up with a theory relating the two (whenever a new chocolate bar containing peanuts and marshmallows is introduced, the space shuttle will explode). Wow! Perfect link. I could come up with more 'theories' which make no predictions about future events, and merely relate past events. Theories like that are easy. What Velikovski (or I) needed to do was make predictions for the future.
And I can submit my chocolate-bar/space-shuttle theory for review, too, and it will vanish without a trace. The point of peer review is that other smart people have to agree with you. It prevents crackpots from getting published in journals.Lastly, where is this organised campaign? Sounds like another paranoid conspiracy theory to me...
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2)
Like Freud before him, Velikovsky applied his knowledge to the past legends. But unlike Freud, he saw there, evidence of traumatic reaction to a massive event. He was able to deduce the nature sufficiently to see what it may have been.
He then checked the history, to see if it reflected his discovery. But in doing so, he needed to drag bits of it around, so that Egyptian phoarohs exist in Jewish history, and so on, and account for this. This is the main topic of the books Ages in Chaos.
Because the then current Geology and Astronomy did not support chastrophism, he needed to address those issues. These were dealt with in the books Worlds in Collision and Earth in Upheavel. The latter does not attribute any particular geological event to either Mars or Venus, but emphisise that the steady state currently observed suggests a young age of the described events.
Velikovsky did not explore the numbers needed to make planets move in the way that they do, but other people have, some of these are described in the book Velikovsky Reconsidered. Also, the ability to predict an existing but unknown state is a valid scientific result: Chemistry and Computer Science have no future-looking crystal ball powers, but predict outcomes given certian inputs. Were Venus involved as Velikovsky, it should be hot. Indicators at the time said it was not, while recent probes made the orthodoxy, but not Velikovsky, rethink their claims.
Velikovsky presents valid science.
Prehaps you ought hunt down Mary Midgley's Science as Religion, or Velikovsky's Mandkind in Amnesia, which does look into the future.
The reason why Velikovsky is not accepted is the same that Copernicus's theory was not. Not that it was against logic, but against the organisation. It took a comet tumbling onto Jupiter for some astromoners to accept that this happens. They could not understand the notion as a proposition advanced in a book. So why would they not attack something seen as absurd as the sky is falling.
Two lost causes: OS2 and crank science (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Here I go, feeding trolls again (Score:2)
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>
Organised Campaign (Score:2)
Sounds awfully like what MS did to OS/2 to me.
Re:Velikovsky CRACKPOT (Score:3, Informative)
FYI, Carl Sagan also presents a refutation of Velikovsky's theories in Broca's Brain [amazon.com].
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.
Re:Velikovsky said this all those years ago. (Score:2)
The thing to understand, is that if the problem is not giving the right solution, then you may be asking the wrong question...
And back then... (Score:3, Funny)
Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincide? (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
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.
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
Hmmm. Makes you wonder if the impact may have caused 40 days and 40 nights of rain...
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
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.
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:3, Informative)
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!
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
2104BC would be 200 years AFTER the hypothetical meteor strike. BC gets lower as time goes on (years BEFORE Jesus was born).
-jon
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Any stories in the Bible/Koran/etc that coincid (Score:2)
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.
2 mile cratar == bad weather? (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Re:2 mile cratar == bad weather? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, but the documents were written in Word 2000(BC) format and the Clay Millenium Copyright Act forbids decoding them.
Re:2 mile cratar == bad weather? (Score:2)
When you have widespread comparative darkness, plants that previously grew in regions due to the relative sunlight tend to die off... Less plant life=more topsoil erosion... More topsoil erosion=more desert growth... More desert growth=less shade and roots to conserve surface moisture, more heat absorbing sand and light reflection from sand... Less shade and topsoil similarly results in less plant growth, etc...
And in a year or two of reduced sunlight, or more since all the varieties of mythological references to similar situations, if there was a series of meteorites smacking into the earth simultaneously, that would conceivably have the same effect of one "planet killer" meteor/asteroid, just more scattered...
Re:2 mile cratar == bad weather? (Score:2, Informative)
and the same is true with mars. however it is believed that the mars planet killer was much greater in size that the one that hit earth - as the "hemispherical" rift on mars would indicate that the entire crust moved after the impact and the many many mile high bulge on the opposite side of the planet.
also consider that the scattered craters can also be caused by ejection from a very large impact - and may not even be alien in origin. one other theory is that a largely water based planet such as earth has a greater chance of survival from large impacts as the areas hit can be quickly filled over - and therefore not spewing as much dust and smoke (given that the impact area can be filled by water after the impact)
Egypt 2200BC (Score:4, Interesting)
This reminds me of article from a few months ago on bad weather wiping out the Old Kingdom of Egypt. [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Egypt 2200BC (Score:2)
The article he refers to shows that in 2200BC -- he same date as for the meteor impact -- the Nile basically dried up. Catastrophe in the extreme for the Egyptians.
That's an important connection. I hope the two authors have heard each other's theories!
We're not making history after all (Score:3, Troll)
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
Effects of the meteor (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I find this hard to believe. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:I find this hard to believe. (Score:2)
Re:I find this hard to believe. (Score:3, Informative)
If some of the data is consistant and some is not what was expected, then people will think more about the avaliable data and how they can perform additional tests. Maybe there's a coincidence or maybe scientists can learn a little more about meteor impacts. In any case, there will probably remain a few scientits who cling to their original hypothesis as long as the data remotely allow. That's actually good, because they'll be motivated to keep performing additional tests when most scientists will think the case is solved. Most of the time they'll just dig their own graves, but ocassionally a scientist previously thought a crackpot manages to produce data that changes people's mind.
My point is that, yes, at this point, it's certainly not cemented. However, it's not just idle speculation. People can (and most likely will) collect data, do experiements, make models, and see whether a meteor is the most likely hypothesis to explain the avaliable data. Neither of us know what the outcome will be, but I have confidence that with time (maybe several decades), scientists will be able to make a convincing case either for or against the meteor hypothesis.
Oh, please. (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Please quit skimming then bitching... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Mundane Apocaypses (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [connect2africa.org] none of them were on flood plains.
Other things can wipe out a small civilization too. It can outstrip its resources [desertusa.com], be decimated by plague [archaeology.org], or simply get sloppy about maintaining its source of wealth [byu.edu]. We need to consider the mundane before we start worrying about the exotic.
Re:Mundane Apocaypses (Score:2, Funny)
Your friendly NAG reminder. (Score:3, Informative)
So anything coming from space that leaves a crater, is a meteorite.
Re:Your friendly NAG reminder. (Score:2)
(Why else, did you think the science of weather is called meteorology?)
So it's a meteor if it enters the atmosphere, and if it doesn't burn up (most of them do) it's a meteorite.
Yes, I've used the NAG libraries, a part of the NAGware package... (It's not a joke. These are FORTRAN libraries by the Numerical Algorithms Group).
Re:Your friendly NAG reminder. (Score:2, Informative)
Telegraph? Not usually reliable. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Telegraph? Not usually reliable. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Telegraph? Not usually reliable. (Score:2, Funny)
Not exactly new (Score:3, Interesting)
There is this link. [eunet.fi] many good links on the page.
Of course, this has been discussed in the fringe areas for a while.
Flogging the Deceased Equine-type (Score:2)
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...
Could have been the wind of death that ended Sumer (Score:4, Interesting)
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! :)
This can't be true... (Score:4, Funny)
... 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.
Re:Holy War (Score:2)
Re:Other possibile reprocussions! (Score:2)
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?
Re:Chrono Trigger (Score:2)
Re:If only... (Score:2)
They'd blame the Jews; and for one, they'd be right ;-)
-jon
Re:Too bad... (Score:2)
The rest of their proposals became the Stratigic Defense Initiative, which arguably was part of the reason that the Soviet Union collapsed.