Catastrophism and Disasters
Published:
09/22/2003
A couple of years ago when I first
researched the topic of catastrophism there
“seemed” to be more interest. Upon reflection I believe this is a cultural
reflex.
Fascination with catastrophism peaked in the late 1990’s. Interest and
fascination were piqued by the proof that the Chixculub Impact had most probably caused a serious
blow to planetary life at the end of the Cretaceous. Films such as
Armageddon and Deep Impact were popular. Every week there
seemed to be a Nova special.
But after the events of 9/11/2003,
interest waned. A fascination with past or imaginary disasters was no
longer an exotic past time. The present generation now has experience.
While the scale of 9/11 compared to let’s say a meteor strike, is minimal
– the mental impact has far outweighed the physical.
Mention catastrophism to archaeologist and they will wince.
The concept for them immediately brings to mind the Velikovsky’s unhinged planetary wanderers. In other
words, it is not a preferred topic of discussion. It’s so much easier to
talk about the King List of Egypt or about a pottery shard.
Dragging in those astronomical interlopers is taboo. It’s not
tidy.
But I choose to start with this dramatic
topic to illustrate a point. If we are to talk of the Anthropogene, we need to place it within its
terrestrial bounds. The history of humanity does not exist outside of
nature.
Therefore catastrophic events do happen.
Indeed within the last twenty years and using only the United States as an
example here are some terrestrial disasters (not caused by human design)
that have occurred:
·
Floods: the Great Midwest Flood of 1993.
·
Storms: Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Hugo in ‘89
and Gloria in ‘85.
·
Earthquakes: In 1989 a 7.1 magnitude
earthquake struck San
Francisco
·
Volcanoes: In 1980 Mt. St. Helens
erupted.
An extra terrestrial incident specifically
involving the earth happened in 2002, US early
warning satellites detected a 12-kiloton explosion in the atmosphere over
the Mediterranean. In 1996, satellite
sensors detected a burst over Greenland
equal to a 100-kiloton bomb.
This bombardment may be continual,
consider the following claim made in 1997 about cosmic snowballs.
Supposedly up to 30 comets per minute break up in the atmosphere releasing
water and organic compounds in the atmosphere. This claim by Louis Frank
of the University of Iowa is still under
review.
All in all, this is quite exciting. Nature
has had us under continual assault - or so it seems.
There are two important considerations
considering catastrophism that need to be
addressed:
Impact on
Consciousness:
I live in the Northeast corridor of the
US and was not even remotely
affected by the Midwest Flood. If it weren’t for TV, I would never even
have known.
Hurricane Andrew leveled parts of
Florida,
again - its effect in the Northeast was negligible. Hugo and Gloria should
have caused at least some minor inconvenience to me as they did strike
this region. But I honestly don’t recall the effects of Hugo, and during
Gloria was rather pleased to be isolated by the storm, but that’s
personal...
The San Francisco earthquake. Again, it had
no impact on my life.
Mt. St.
Helens. Aside from convincing a neighbor of
mine that the gypsy moth crap was actually ash from Mt. St. Helens one summer day, that
volcano had no discernable impact on my day-to-day life.
As for those cosmic snowball incidents,
there are a few occasions where I remember waking up in the aftermath of
sonic booms. As airplanes in this area are not allowed to do that, one
does have to wonder what caused those. One could argue it was planes
accelerating over the Atlantic, but I
have no idea how far such noises can travel in the
atmosphere.
What I’m trying to get at is that these
did happen. They were catastrophic or potentially catastrophic. And on a
personal note, there was no impact on me due to locale and redundancy in
so many cultural systems we take for granted. The food supply was never
threatened; mass migrations did not take place, etc.
Going back thousands of years we would
have no mass media, no accounts immediately dispersed. Only the
storytellers and traveling bards would have that knowledge.
If a wandering troubadour had come
strolling through my village and told such a tale, it would have been
accepted as a fable. It would have been beyond our limited knowledge. A
flood that stretched to the horizon, flooded fields and caused flight from
the City of the Arch? That God in his wrath shook the Golden Gates of the
Western
Shores?
Accidental or Willful
Censorship
How to deal with this? Over and over,
humans will deliberately “erase” historical events if they do not fit with
the preconceptions accepted or desired. Examples such as:
·
The Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti burnt the books
(and the scholars.)
·
Alexander’s drunken rampage through Persepolis.
·
The burning of the Library of Alexandria during
Julius Caesar’s dalliance with the Ptolemies.
This was followed several centuries later by the burning of the
manuscripts at the orders of Caliph Omar. Either way, someone did
it.
·
The list goes on and on…
Speculations
When considering catastrophism, remember that humanity has always been
more terrible and terminal when it comes to being the source of calamity.
An outside external force is usually met as a communal challenge and
becomes a source of strength.
But could there have been truly disastrous
events that have been recalled and passed through the ages? What is real
and what is a fable if we do not have confirmation from other
sources?
For example we know something happened to
get Ipuwer upset. Ipuwer was a sage who described the conditions in
Egypt at the end of the
Old Kingdom. This translation is from
what is known as the Papyrus Leiden 334.
“Plague is throughout the land. Blood
is everywhere.” “Forsooth, the land turns round
like a potter’s wheel.”
“Forsooth, gates, columns and walls
are consumed.”
“Men shrink from tasting - human
beings and thirst after water.”
“The towns are destroyed. Upper Egypt has become dry (wastes?).”
“He who places his brother in the
ground is everywhere.”
“Forsooth, the desert is throughout
the land. The nomes are laid waste. A foreign
tribe from abroad has come to Egypt.”
“That is our water! That is our
happiness! What shall we do in respect thereof? All is ruin.”
“It is groaning that is throughout
the land, mingled with lamentations.”
“Forsooth, great and small say: I
wish I might die.”
“Forsooth, the children of princes
are dashed against the walls.”
“Forsooth, those who were in the
place of embalmment are laid on the high ground.”
“Trees are destroyed. ... Years of
noise [hrw]. There is no end to noise.”
“All animals, their hearts weep.
Cattle moan ...” 9:3
By modern standards not a very specific or
scientific description of what occurred in 2300 BC. A lot is left to the
imagination…
So we are left to
speculate.
Is this merely a mythological story, or
perhaps a retelling of a cosmological event? What proof is there available
to Clube and Napier? Their theory is worth a
look.
We will note that the Tunguska event of 1908 did not leave an impact
crater, so I’m assuming it was a cosmic snowball (a rather large
one.)
So perhaps what we might have had in
Phaeton’s Ride is a cosmic snowball over the Mediterranean. A thought that comes to mind is
perhaps this event was the genesis of the Sodom and Gomorrah tales. Charles Pellegrino would
disagree, and we will outline his thoughts later.
Along that line we have this interesting
quote concerning Hattusas, the Hittite capital.
In 1190 BC Hattusas was completely sacked and
burnt down. There is nothing unusual about a city being sacked, Homer lauded Achilles for his ability in this
department. But what is puzzling is this:
“…the brick houses.. were subjected to such
intense heat that their bricks fused. it is
difficult to imagine, given the weapons and fuels of the day, how such
high temperatures could have been achieved.”
The outer fringe would say this is
proof of ancient atomic weaponry.
We can go along in this vein for quite a
while leaving the casual and gullible reader to think that for several
millennium, comets, meteors and cosmic snowballs casually heaved
themselves into the Aegean or Mideast with
staggering monotony and are the root cause of every misfortune and
calamity.
I have coined a phrase: we are dealing
with temporal compression, our ability to compress events in the past in
search of consistency and to put meaning to disparate events. To find a
common linkage between the sacking of Hattusas
in 1190 BC and the events of 2300 BC described by Ipuwer is poor reasoning.
For starters a timeline would be
helpful. One that is independent of human occurrences. For that we need a
time machine.
For starters perhaps we should to ask
Paul Mayewski and the team of GISP2. This topic
will be pursued in Discoveries in Climatology.
