Did a Comet Airburst 13,000 Years Ago Stunt Human Culture?

 

 

                

 

Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to esearchers from Royal Holloway university, who, together with Sandia National Laboratories and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe, have found evidence which rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth's climate and terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.

Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent. It is named after the town in New Mexico, where distinct stone tools were found in the 1920s and 1930s. Researchers argue that no appropriately sized impact craters from that time period have been discovered, and no shocked material or any other features of impact have been found in sediments. They also found that samples presented in support of the impact hypothesis were contaminated with modern material and that no physics model can support the theory.

"The theory has reached zombie status," said Professor Andrew Scott from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway. "Whenever we are able to show flaws and think it is dead, it reappears with new, equally unsatisfactory, arguments. "Hopefully new versions of the theory will be more carefully examined before they are published."

For more information: Boslough, M., et al.(editors) Climates Landscapes and Civilizations. Geophysical Monograph Series, VOL. 198, PP. 13-26, 2012 (first available in January 2013). Journal reference: Geophysical Monograph Series

The Daily Galaxy via Royal Holloway, University of London

Image credit: craterhunter.wordpress.com

 

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Comments

[Bigfan]

The Clovis people did not disappear. They are know as American Indians.

[ksessoking]

Bigfan: What evidence is there to support your statement please? I am no expert at all, but I am curious because my understanding is contrary to your statement.

[Ron]

I have found evidence of an over one mile wide impact crater in Missouri and it appears to have been created about 10,000 to 15,000 years ago. I cannot get anyone in the science community to show any interest.

[LG]

Oh yeah! Give us the GPS coordinates for the crater. Nowadays, an amateur can use Google Earth to see it for themselves! :-)

[philhoey]

Why does it have to be an extra-terrestrial event? How about a normal climatic cycle, such as the dry period the central part of the country is experiencing right now. Has anyone driven over the Mississippi River recently? It would seem more probable that a climatic change, like appears to have ended the Anasazi culture, which thrived from 1500BC until 1300AD would be a more probable candidate for ending what we call the Clovis culture. The people had to move and adapt to survive.

[Simonson]

Anything imaginable might happen ad erase humanity... It would be a pity, because certain individuals´minds have been developing to the extent of achieving the capability of influencing the development of circumstances and, possibly, time, within their surrounding environments. Further development might just achieve the possibility of developing "bubbles of existence", including Earth, that would place such singularities realities, outside of any external physical forces... One, quite limited bubble, currently exists, and will, within the following year begin to exert its growing influence on current physical areas... Nevertheless, this bubble is still physically included in a growing environment, and not yet clearly limited from damage.