Tusk regular Garcia makes hurculean effort on WUWT
Paper below in response to ham-handed 2014 attack from Meltzer – Holliday
[wonderplugin_pdf src=”https://cosmictusk.com/wp-content/uploads/kennett-and-kennett.pdf” save=”1″]
Significance
A cosmic impact event at ∼12,800 Cal B.P. formed the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer, containing peak abundances in multiple, high-temperature, impact-related proxies, including spherules, melt glass, and nanodiamonds. Bayesian statistical analyses of 354 dates from 23 sedimentary sequences over four continents established a modeled YDB age range of 12,835 Cal B.P. to 12,735 Cal B.P., supporting synchroneity of the YDB layer at high probability (95%). This range overlaps that of a platinum peak recorded in the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the onset of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six key records, suggesting a causal connection between the impact event and the Younger Dryas. Due to its rarity and distinctive characteristics, the YDB layer is proposed as a widespread correlation datum.
Abstract
The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis posits that a cosmic impact across much of the Northern Hemisphere deposited the Younger Dryas boundary (YDB) layer, containing peak abundances in a variable assemblage of proxies, including magnetic and glassy impact-related spherules, high-temperature minerals and melt glass, nanodiamonds, carbon spherules, aciniform carbon, platinum, and osmium. Bayesian chronological modeling was applied to 354 dates from 23 stratigraphic sections in 12 countries on four continents to establish a modeled YDB age range for this event of 12,835–12,735 Cal B.P. at 95% probability. This range overlaps that of a peak in extraterrestrial platinum in the Greenland Ice Sheet and of the earliest age of the Younger Dryas climate episode in six proxy records, suggesting a causal connection between the YDB impact event and the Younger Dryas. Two statistical tests indicate that both modeled and unmodeled ages in the 30 records are consistent with synchronous deposition of the YDB layer within the limits of dating uncertainty (∼100 y). The widespread distribution of the YDB layer suggests that it may serve as a datum layer.
Color me skeptical! lol.
Pretty significant paper to go without comment on the Tusk! Hello?!
You I thought I had commented George, guess not, I know I started, but a couple of icey chilly Newcastles got in the way.
Their refined date range fits nicely with previous archeological work, here in cal, where stable pluvial lakes in the Mojave have high stands at 12,800kya, and never again reach those levels.
George –
[I was on WUWT, fighting the good fight. . . LOL]
To be Synchronous or not to be Synchronous, that is the question…
I agree, this is pretty much a rebuttal paper, but still I think it was a proper next step in this process, skeptics or no. The skeptics, in their zeal, decided (apparently) that they had no avenues on the forensics/lab/materials, it seems, so they glomped onto Ms van Hoesel’s temporal quibbling s their best last chance, for better or for worse. With the Metzler-Holliday weak effort, they gave it another limp have at it, but my goodness, they CONVENIENTLY – again – only cherry pick the types of evidence that they THINK they can pick the weak calf out of the herd and gang up on it. They do this while one of their own – Surovell in 2009 had HIMSELF pegged the megafauna extinctions within a narrow window of time. See Faith & Surovell 2009 Synchronous extinction of North America’s Pleistocene mammals http://www.pnas.org/content/106/49/20641.full
Evidently, THEIR synchronous good, our synchronous not good. Me Tarzan, you Jane.
Surovell, in 2009 – AFTER having read the earlier YDB papers and getting a lead on a good direction:
I myself think his 2009 paper is a bit weak, kind of rambling and not very synchronous in its direction or presentation.
Please be aware of that cheesy “12,000-10,000 radiocarbon years B.P.”
Why is it cheesy?
Just do a quick mental average, and you get 11,000 radiocarbon years B.C. As in all radiocarbon dates, it is uncalibrated. And the cool thing about radiocarbon dates is that they don’t change when the calibration curves are updated. So it doesn’t matter about IntCal04 or IntCal09 or IntCal13. So van Hoesel can’t play here little pea game, pretending that one calibration curve against the other. 11,000 radiocarbon years B.P.
is 11,000 radiocarbon years B.P., no matter what.
But Surovell was tooo cowardly to put down “11,000 radiocarbon years B.P.” (He never spells out why he picked those exact dates, either – that exact range. YET he considers a TWO THOUSAND YEAR RANGE to be synchronous! Van Hoesel and her 100 years thing would and SHOULD have a conniption fit!
Now, Kennett et al 2015 arrives at “synchronous” as meaning within a 100 year window 12,835-12,735 Cal IntCal13. To Surovell, who gives a crap aabout such narrow ranges? Heck, he goes for the really WIDE ranges – about 20 times LARGER than the one his girl buddy van Hoesel was to cry about less than 5 years later.
But that is not all. HERE is the really, REALLY funny thing about it:
11,000 radiocarbon years B.P. in Kennett’s same IntCal13 calibration is 12,820 years ago. Add whatever range you want, but Kennett’s basic date (12,785) is all of 35 years different from Surovell’s 12,820.
Now Surovell is not a materials guy. He is an archaeologist – and with a focus on mammoths. So him looking at the megafauna rather than nanodiamonds or carbon spherules is appropriate.
The nasty factor here is not Surovell (a first?), but Meltzer and Holliday, whose OWN buddy has an existing paper SHOWING SYNCHRONICITY in one of the elements of the YDB hypothesis (mammoths), and yet in their 2014 skeptical paper FAIL TO MENTION IT.
NOW, another really GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD part of this is THIS:
Not only is Surovell an archaeologist with a focus on mammoths – BUT SO IS MELTZER!
So there is NO REASON IN THE WORLD THAT MELTZER WOULD NOT KNOW ABOUT SUROVELL’S SYNCHRONOUS PAPER.
When scientists cherry pick evidence THAT THEY SHOULD CLEARLY INCLUDE, they do it because the OTHER evidence is not congenial to their “cause”. HOW could they not know about their own compadre’s “synchronous paper”? And how could they not include it?
Shame on Meltzer and Holliday – THEIR SYNCHRONOUS GOOD, YDB TEAM’S SAME SYNCHRONOUS BAD. WHAAAAAAAA???????
That is an opening shot, across the bow…
I’ve got to be somewhere shortly, but have to stuff this one in right now, regardless…
About hypothesized causes for the onset of the Younger Dryas, the orthodoxy’s main one is the Overkill Theory of archaeologist Paul S. Martin, formulated way back in the 1970s.
If the Overkill Theory ever gets shot down, the field is lmoost wide open for the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis. The other two possibles – climate and disease, hardly have a fooot to stand non. Climate cannot explain why so many earlier – and MUCH COLDER – ice ages did not succeed in extincting megafauna. Disease cannot explain how ONE disease could have affected “35 genera of North American mammals” (Surovell’s own words).
So, if Overkill gets shot down, the impact hypothesis takes the lead, by default.
Believe it or not, our darling skeptic, David Meltzer, in his wondrous magnificence, does just such a thing on behalf of the YDIH.
Donald K. Grayson, David J. Meltzer 2002 – A requiem for North American overkill http://faculty.washington.edu/grayson/jas30req.pdf
Wait am damned minute here! ! ! ! !
“A requiem”? “A REQUIEM”?
Where have we heard THAT one before????
Oh, yeah! “The Younger Dryas impact hypothesis: A requiem“. . .
Interesting, that, don’t you think?…
Now, I am hoping to post a real, actual article here on Meltzer’s total obliteration of Paul S. Martin’s Overkill Theory, so I will just show a bit. . . Let’s see – what trailer can I insert here, to whet your appetite?
In addition, our good friend Todd Surovell HIMSELF gets into the act, with this paper:
Surovell 2008 How many elephant kills are 14?: Clovis mammoth and mastodon kills in context (FULL TEXT)
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Todd_Surovell/publication/222432412_How_many_elephant_kills_are_14_Clovis_mammoth_and_mastodon_kills_in_context/links/00463525aca154d201000000.pdf
In this paper Surovell looks to the density in TIME of the N American kills and concludes that, compared to the Eurasian kill sites, the Clovis sites are more frequent. I will give him that, yet I will also argue that – as Meltzer says above,
“…This is not for want of looking. Given the high archaeological visibility of the remains of extinct Pleistocene mammals, and their great interest to archaeologists and Quaternary paleontologists alike, if such sites were out there, they would surely be found. Indeed, there is a strong bias in the Clovis archaeological record toward just such sites…”
Indeed, INDEED, Meltzer points out that there has been great FOCUS AND ENERGY expended to find such sites in N America, while no that level of search for them has not existed in Eurasia. I would argue (and may, actually lose) that the density is an artifact of the effort, not necessarily a true representation of the real numbers (which may never be truly known). Again, as Meltzer points out, “As has long been known [42], this is not a sampling fluke” – i.e., they have REALLY looked in N America for site for ALL megafauna. And while not finding ANY of horse or camel, they HAVE found ones of mammoths (12) and mastodons (2).
And the bottom line is:
The hypothesis is pretty toxic yet at this point, too toxic for me to further contribute much, and this paper doesn’t add anything new, rather is just a response to the paper by Meltzer et al. Clearly the black mats represent a climate change boundary and that date has already been well established.
What I notice is that no further work has been done on the nanodiamond extraction and no atomic probe microscopy has been performed on those nanodiamonds. The nanodiamond community has been steadily working through the lonsdaleite – n-diamond controversy and that really hasn’t been resolved yet except that hexagonal and cubic diamond like structures can be built up node by node into whatever bizarre arrangement you wish, but the defects, dislocations and discontinuities in these structures have not yet been classified.
On the paleo and nuclear proxy front one side has the Moorhead phase drawdown occurring 500 years well after the initiation of the Younger Dryas, with the outflow going directly into the Arctic through the Northwest Territories, and the other side has good evidence of St. Lawrence outflow exactly at the time of the Younger Dryas, which can help explain the long duration of the fresh water forcing event, but does not explain the origin of that water. That could be proglacial Lake Vermont, the Hudson river outflows or something further down the line like a big impact in the ice on that side of the continental divide, and Lake Superior would have been open enough to enable the gradual migration of that water to the east. The problem the impact people fail to address is that there certainly was enough fresh water forcing from a variety of northern continental sources to initiate the event.
If you absolutely need a big impact event, I’ve already pointed out to you where you will find that, but I am not convinced you need a big impact event yet, considering the complete lack of nanodiamond follow up work post Madden et al.
Steve Garcia,
Not quite an exploding plant, but it looks like there was another gas giant planet in the solar system that was destroyed in a collision.
See:
The search for the missing planet: Our early solar system may have had a fifth gas giant that disappeared after a crash with Neptune
By Jack Millner For Mailonline
Published: 06:10 EST, 12 August 2015 | Updated: 07:22 EST, 12 August 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3194846/The-search-missing-planet-early-solar-fifth-gas-giant-disappeared-crash-Neptune.html
Our early solar system may have had an extra planet that was ejected from its orbit by a collision with Neptune.
The planet would have once been the fifth gas giant, and evidence of its existence still remains in the asteroid belt that sits in the outer reaches of the solar system.
In particular, the orbit of a cluster of icy rocks in the Kuiper belt known as the ‘kernel’ suggests Jupiter was forced out of its original orbit by a significant impact with a large object.
This would mean the four gas giants in the solar system – Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus – have a long lost brother that disappeared when the solar system was in its infancy.
David Nesvorny, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, proposed the theory in the September issue of The Astronomical Journal.
The Daily Mail article also dropped this link:
http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2015/08/our-early-solar-system-may-have-been-home-fifth-giant-planet
Trent –
I will read those links tomorrow (later today).
The opening line of the Daily Mail link made me smile. I don’t remember where I read it, but some scientist whose thinking I respect said that any time we see someone say, “X may have…” or “Y may be…”, we need to read it as “X may OR MAY NOT HAVE…” or “Y may OR MAY NOT be…”
I smiled, but it is one of my sore points, all this speculating. I don’t have a problem if they put it forth specifically as a hypothesis. And they must put it forth in phrasing that allows it to be proven wrong. Like, “We hypothesize that the size of the exoplanet is X,XXX km +/-YYY km in diameter” When they simply talk in terms of “Maybe this and maybe that” it bloody well isn’t science – and someone IN THE ORTHODOXY ought to be taking these professional guessers to task, in no uncertain terms. They should rad them the riot act. Not for being wrong. For polluting the scientific world with spurious ideas. There is already enough REAL science being published; the world doesn’t need wild guesses, too.
Yeah, the editors of journals should be rejecting the crap science. But it seem like they never do. Are they just GULLIBLE?
In saying all of that, I am not rendering any opinion about that article or the other. I haven’t read them. But science journalists starting out an article with “may haves” is NOT a confidence builder in the standards used in what follows.
IMO this is another lets try to lie with statistics via assertion of statistical “assertion of authority” to support the “Overkill hypothosis” and ignore data about the Tusk.
See:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3196817/It-humans-killed-mammoths-Spread-mankind-coincides-extinction-ice-age-beasts-claims-study.html#ixzz3j5Fzujva
Humans DID kill off the woolly mammoth: Spread of mankind coincides with extinction of ice age beasts, claims study
Scientists claim to have definitively solved what caused the extinction of woolly mammoths, giant armadillos and other ice age beasts
They compared extinction events in different areas with the spread of man
They say early humans moved into areas and giant mammals then died out
Climate change added pressure but in Asia another factor was responsible
By Richard Gray for MailOnline
Published: 11:57 EST, 13 August 2015 | Updated: 11:59 EST, 13 August 2015
The Daily Mail links to this article as its source data–
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.01566/abstract
Trent –
I am amazed that this Clovis as mammoth murderer to extinction idea still has traction.
See http://faculty.washington.edu/grayson/jas30req.pdf “A requiem for North American overkill” Grayson and Meltzer 2003. (Yes, the very same Meltzer who is a co-author on some of the YDB skeptical papers.
Projecting island extinctions onto continents is a completely wrong projection:
blockquote>The initial human colonization of island after island was followed by vertebrate extinction. That this premise is true, however, does not mean that it is relevant to continental extinctions. After all, the factors that make islands prone to vertebrate extinction — small population sizes of resident vertebrates, the lack of a ready source of conspecific colonizers, and so on — do not apply to the continental setting.
It is not enough to blame humans for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. Over 30 other species went extinct at virtually the same time – with the lack of evidence of Clovis killing them being non-existent:
The experts in the field don’t sign on to the idea, to their credit:
But popular imagination is not science.
When you think about it, the Overkill hypothesis was always wedded to the Clovis First dogma. When that went down in 1997, Overkill was toast. It’s just taking some time for the world to wake up to it.
Many thanks to Steve Garcia for your willingness to continue the debate (mostly in both a reasoned and passionate way) in comments on the UCSB paper put forward on July 27 by Anthony Watts. I had read some of the thread at the time, but not the entire thing. Because of all the efforts, especially yours, I am able to perfect my bibliography for the YD event. So interesting and so necessary to understand for the future, IMHO. Quite a contribution, Steve. Thanks again and thanks to George Howard for listing it, enabling a second go-round. I thoroughly enjoy this enlightened blog (scientific site).
New paper on the YD from tu. They find that Northern Hemisphere cooling went a lot faster than equatorial cooling did. Don’t know if that is interesting or not. Sadly it appears to devolve into more glowarmer claptrap. Cheers –
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/02/ancient-cold-period-could-provide-clues-about-future-climate-change/
been silent for a few months — doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching, lurking, … watching ,,,, hehe
anyway, this has come up and I thought its worth a shake on this website being the major players here are 12.9 bc clovis busters….
http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/blog/an-open-call-to-theorists-on-the-fringe-save-some-mojo-for-the-dojo
Andy White (bio here – http://www.andywhiteanthropology.com/) has put out offers for presentations on “fringe” history/science, etc. Although I have some thoughts about the title, none of them printable, Scott Wolter has already signed on. As this prof. is very interested in the Clovis factor, of course, George and Company sprung to mind.
I think it would be great to follow up on this. Class outlines are still being formulated and it will be for the fall of 2016 (I think). Lots of time to generate some discussion.
David –
I caution anybody to fall for that sandbagging offer by that arkie-anthro by people here, His 300-level course will just be a forum for him to ridicule. He hsa already clearly shown his colours. He won’t take on Hancock or Chris Dunn. He will take on the easy ones – already pointing at aliens and giants. And especially, no one here need participate, because the YDB is not pseudoscience.
This is a NASTY approach by this guy who is eager to laugh at people. I see nothing honest in this “offer”.
David – In reading further, in the comments on that “invitation” post, it seems clear to me that this guy is a dick who wants to ridicule alternative researchers, who he denigrates by continually referring to them as “pseudoscientists”. He further continually characterizes them as “fringe”. Add to that he also keeps saying that the “fringe” are making big claims about “science freezing them out”. He is evidently referring to a small contingent of alternate researchers who are ill-informed and what I often call “sloppy thinkers”.
Those “researchers” are not researchers, but only idiots who latch onto the somewhat solid ideas of others and misunderstand them – and who gives a CRAP about such idiots? They don’t represent serious alternative researchers, and the serious researchers need to separate themselves from those “sloppy thinkers”, who give the entire field a bad name.
So, this guy wants to do like wolves do – select the weakest of the herd and devour them, and thereby taint all alternative researchers, based on his cherry-picking of the stupidest and weakest research.
He is, of course, free to do such a pathetic thing, as a self-appointed attack dog on behalf of academia. But no one with any self-respect would be so stupid as to walk into this ambush.
He will, therefore, attract those who don’t know what they are doing.
15-20 minutes in HIS classroom is a joke. No one trying to elucidate on any theory could not possibly be able to present his/her evidence adequately in so short a time. The whole thing is set up to hamstring the “fringe” people and then devour them.
Anyone accepting his invitation is walking into a trap and doing alternative research a great disservice.
David – In reading further, in the comments on that “invitation” post, it seems clear to me that this guy is a dick who wants to ridicule alternative researchers, who he denigrates by continually referring to them as “pseudoscientists”. He further continually characterizes them as “fringe”. Add to that he also keeps saying that the “fringe” are making big claims about “science freezing them out”. He is evidently referring to a small contingent of alternate researchers who are ill-informed and what I often call “sloppy thinkers”.
Those “researchers” are not researchers, but only idiots who latch onto the somewhat solid ideas of others and misunderstand them – and who gives a CRAP about such idiots? They don’t represent serious alternative researchers, and the serious researchers need to separate themselves from those “sloppy thinkers”, who give the entire field a bad name.
So, this guy wants to do like wolves do – select the weakest of the herd and devour them, and thereby taint all alternative researchers, based on his cherry-picking of the stupidest and weakest research.
He is, of course, free to do such a pathetic thing, as a self-appointed attack dog on behalf of academia. But no one with any self-respect would be so stupid as to walk into this ambush.
He will, therefore, attract those who don’t know what they are doing.
15-20 minutes in HIS classroom is a joke. No one trying to elucidate on any theory could not possibly be able to present his/her evidence adequately in so short a time. The whole thing is set up to hamstring the “fringe” people and then devour them.
Anyone accepting his invitation is walking into a trap and doing alternative research a great disservice.
The peer review process has been showing itself to be a terrifically flawed system. For alternative researchers to even consider participating in THAT system makes no sense. The world is moving past peer review as they do it. So, participating with THIS dodo is even a WORSE idea, because he is setting himself as sole “peer reviewer” – sole judge and executioner.
What a nasty, nasty person this asshole is.
Steve; I read Andy White’s invitation and had the immediate urge to run far and fast, and that’s almost impossible for me. That sounds a lot like an ambush waiting to happen. It’s definitely a no-win situation for anyone. You have to wonder when there’s a guillotine in the doorway, a noose hanging at the podium, large cobwebs hanging all over and all the “students” seem to have fangs: Did I make a Mistake here???
It is a setup but I was also wondering for the benefit of doubt if this is what he had to do just to get by the inquisition patrol. AND then they wonder why no one comes out. He said he will look at all the material but then turns around and says he needs to review the material before the 20 min show. I wonder how much prep is done before the class. Like being g asked to dive into unknown water. He seems serious but the title just kills me.
Steve; I sent you an e-mail link to an article I found about the age of the great pyramids. In it the author stated that the pyramids were already built when the fourth dynasty Pharoahs came to power. There are stells written requesting repairs to be made on the great pyramid not requests for construction. All three pyramids and the Sphinx all show signs of water damage and submersion. Dating has been performed and the dates correspond to the YDB for the flooding. Ancient texts refer to the Niles flooding being 1000’s time greater than normal causing the Nile to back up with sea water. If found to be verifiable this could be another feather in the cap for YDB.
Jim, thanks for the link, but how about popping the link in here, too, for the other CT folks?
It was great meeting up with you. It was a such a cool discussion with you and your wife. She is one intelligent woman. And you are no slouch, either. I had a great time.
http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_2_4.htm Steve; If this doesn’t take you directly to the article about the water marks on the pyramids, then click on age of pyramids on the side bar. There I’ll share. The wife and I both had a great time. Hope to do it again soon, Your place or mine doesn’t matter. I can’t possibly believe you actually have the wife thinking about going to Mexico. I usually have a hard time to get her to go to an auction out of the county. I still think we should poll the tuskers as to their locations and see if there would be any interest in a Tusk get together some in the future. Would need to find a somewhat central location and go from there. Any Tuskers interested???
Sounds good to me, Jim. I think I’d need plenty of lead time. I am centrally located in central Mexico… does that count?…lol
I guess we’re now looking at central Texas for now. George is out east and Dennis is in Calif. I’m not sure about Cevin Q or Trent Telenko. I believe Dave Ulrich is from Wisc. Any one I missed please don’t take it personally you’re definitely invited, Just pass on a general location so I can centralize a meeting place if possible. Who knows this might just work out!
Jim – Thanks for another piece of the puzzle : (dedicated the account to Isis, who he called the “Mistress of the Western Mountain,” “Mistress of the Pyramid,” and identified the Pyramid itself as the “House of Isis.”) This adds up, because I contend the Sphinx is a composite creature that specifically designates both Virgo (A woman’s face.) and Leo which is when the Sun came back and man began to recuperate from the -13K Event, thus making it 10,500 years old. See the chalk board https://sites.google.com/site/fromthedeepoceanabove/ In the most ancient texts the female Tiamat [Virgo/Virgin/Ishtar/Isis/Inanna/Electra/Venus-Velikovsky mistake] is closely associated with the Sky Mountain. The one everyone saw before a part of it hit the planet, the causation of the fire from the sky and deluge stories, thus the world wide pyramids. It is interesting that ‘Western Mountain” is used because in Egyptian texts ‘West” is associated with death. But the majority of cultures say it hit up North.
The article also reminds me of http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/675069 wherein the Tempest Stela (the tomb chambers collapsed, the funerary mansions undermined, and the pyramids fallen [fallen – topple/fell/injure]). This ‘weather report’ when one reads it sure doesn’t sound like a thunder storm. Could it be talking about the casing stones falling from the 2300BC Event ?
Bard –
I read Tiamat as the ocean goddess/goddess of the abyss, and it still applies for ocean impacts. Just sayin’…
I also rad in the Egyptian Book of the Dead the symbol for ‘Amenti’ as strongly suggesting ‘the land beyond the western horizon’/’the land that sank below the waves’ – Atlantis, if you will. And by doing that I suggest also that the Book of the Dead is not talking about some afterlife, but the destruction of that land in the ocean, its gos, its people, and that they are gone forever. Osiris – ripped into pieces, which can either/and/or rad as the island itself or the peoples, who dispersed all over the world. Thus Isis in trying to piece Osiris together again would instead of putting his corporeal body back together would have been trying to reconnect the colonies. …Nobody’s thinking but my own…
Steve – There seems to be a dual image in all long lasting myths. To me it is obvious that Tiamat upset the order of the inner solar system and came from the deep as in the Pleiades. The ancient stories say it explicitly that the Sea, Ocean, and Deep are above. Later corruption or lost knowledge is all I can give you. I didn’t pick up on ‘Amenti’ and that is an interesting way of reading the parts of Osiris. Like I think I’ve said, there is much more to be done, when I got into it I figured an easy lifetime and still not figure it out perfectly with such scant information. I need more access. From what I gather Ptah was the original Sun then the -13K impact and then Osiris was the Creation of the dead Sun and then Isis replaces him cause he grew sick and old with her son Horus… then there is Ra which would be the 4th Age of Man somewhere… Anyhow, the Great Pyramid is said to be a monument to Osiris (the Sun), but in that article is stated it was Isis’s Mountain which makes it more plausible with the corroboration of other ancient sources. More and more I’m trying to get beyond the antediluvian stage, but there isn’t much to go on except the Lion Man, the Mother Goddess, and cave art. Oh, and astronomers that say its debris suggest past the -13K strike, which means is sailed [note: water]
around for sometime before contact which leads me to believe that is the genesis of the Mother Goddess. Alike the fake butter commercials in the ’70s and how capricious Ishtar is and flipflops from war to bounty.
http://phys.org/news/2015-09-analysis-yields-human-expansion-north.html
I’m actually living in East Bay (Delta) Area of Ca.
David – I really liked the video because I’ve spent 1/3 of my life in central Texas and noticed the population growth. One time I was sitting next to a river in the South West Texas area and one could find numerous flint tools as big as one’s hand within reach and all around is sage brush and savanna which suggested to me that the climate had changed dramatically. Also, in central Texas artifacts are all over the place. Another time I ran across a number of charcoal mounds full of flint shards from just poking around. I’ve heard it is getting dryer and sand dunes are moving in that area. When I was watching the video I was thinking of changes in the climate that would spur the population growths in different areas. I have one of those large flint tools somewhere…
Bard; I had never heard or read about the sphinx having a woman’s face. I did read about one of the pharaohs putting a chin piece (beard) on the sphinx as a repair. Apparently even the pharaohs didn’t know what the sphinx was or represented. So the sphinx is so old there was no oral or written history for the pharaohs to go back to for guidance. When the sphinx was found by the pharaohs it was buried to it’d neck in sand. The feeling was that it was blown in by the winds but it could very well have been washed in by the deluge that flooded the pyramids 14ft in sediments.
Jim – Yeah, I know, but I have read that it is associated with the two constellations so it must be a woman. After reading tons of esoteric literature it becomes clear how Man thought way back when. There are many accounts of acidic or lye rain plus mud and constant moisture at the beginnings of creation myths which could explain partly the water runoff aging of the Sphinx cut back. To me the sphinx looks like its was head was an out cropping and man carved it from there before the pyramids. It is way more than plausible that it is indeed symbolically representing the spring equinox at the transition between Virgo and Leo. I understand that it being a woman will not go over to well, mostly because the mainstream thinks it is 40% that age and their sticking to it, must be a king.
The other day I grabbed a printed image of Ishtar off my chalk board that I was using to practice drawing the female body to tone down things. Then I compared the face with straight on shots of the Sphinx and it sure looks similar…
Bard; I went and looked at some images of Ishtar and in some I can see the resemblance. My question is: If they were depicting a female goddess, Why did they adorn her with a Pharaonic headdress? The pics I looked at do not show that the headdress was an add on, but appears to be carved out of the same stone as the original body. Steve, if you’re out there could you please give some insight or impression? You’ve been there, seen it etc. etc. etc.
Jim – On this one I honestly don’t know enough to contribute… sorry ’bout dat.
Jim –
(Here I guess is as good a place as any to post this…)
I was visiting with a high school friend last night, one I had not seen in nearly 30 years. He is a retired biologist who worked for and with the University of Illinois on crops and plants and bugs for the better part of 4 decades.
At one point he mentioned that he liked to go out walking in fields and perhaps find arrowheads and hand axes, etc. That all perked me up, and I asked if I could see some. He took me to his living room and on a shelf he had some beautiful hand axes about 4-5″ (100-125mm) long. But my son had seen something I’d missed…
My friend has a HUGE Clovis spearhead, broken off about 4-5″ (100-125mm) from the tip. It is WIDE – perhaps 5″ (125mm) wide. It is THIN – maybe only 3/8″ (10mm). It appears to be made of a metamorphic grey stone material, sort of granite-looking. The tip and side edges are fabulously well done – ending with a very consistent and straight edge starting from the break on one side and wrapping around to the end of the break on the other side. Whoever napped it knew what the hell they were doing.
He said he found it in a farmer’s field in the 1980s. He’s had it ever since and has had no idea what he has.
I was shocked at the SIZE of it. I knew Clovis points are big, but I had never held one before. It was overall the size and thickness of, say, a smart phone, but shaped differently, of course. He’s never heard of Clovis.
My son took several photos, and perhaps George would be interested in posting pics of it. I don’t ASSUME I am correct about it being Clovis. But I am pretty sure it is. My friend pulled out a Folsom point (or perhaps later), and it was a very typical arrowhead, and it was TINY – hardly an inch wide and an each wide, and quite thin, with the two notches near the base for attaching to an arrow shaft. The other point was perhaps 100-150 bigger mass-wise, even with most of the ‘Clovis’ artifact was missing.
George – are you interested?
Jim – maybe the Pharaohs are wearing antedated Sphinx headdresses. There was found a sphinx at Nevali Cori, so the concept is older than the mainstream consensus age for the Egyptian Sphinx. Later depictions of sphinx are typically women, the idea must have come from somewhere.
I’ve been meaning to mention that when I read the paper above that what struck me was a layer of fresh water diatoms, makes me wonder if the muddy Creation stories are connected.
From what I’ve read about the Constellations they are extremely ancient and are even said to be connected to the ten antediluvian Kings. At Gobekli Tepe there are twelve pillars around the two Heros and another with ten pillars. Could it be that there were factions, one with the hoary cult that held onto the ten Signs and the neo cult with twelve Signs? From what I see at Gobekli Tepe it is obvious they knew about the Taurid Stream.
If one believes that progenitor of the Encke Comet struck the Earth thirteen thousand years ago and caused all this “mystery” then it seems self evident that the Sphinx was made at the transition between Virgo and Leo. The symbolism of the composite creature begs a connection to the Stars and happens to be a match for a thousand years of global upset afterwards. They would have carved it to commemorate the return of the Sun.
Bard; Never thought of it that way. I just was reading up on the sphinx and the Giza structures including tunnels when I came across an item stating that the Sphinx is sitting atop a large temple. Now I may be misinterpreting what I read but I thought the Sphinx was cut out of solid bedrock, I guess the temple could be too. It’s hard to keep track of what’s under the sand and what’s in the bedrock.
Jim – The head seems to be a different type of rock and then the body is carved out of limestone. Like the Sumerian story that the tablets of the wise before the deluge were buried, the Sphinx would be a key marker on where to look for underground information. I watched one video wherein they figured the Nile was up against the Giza plateau and then migrated Eastward over the millennia. I would think if one dug down following the bedrock to where the Nile used to be one would find many clues as in people tossing in sacrificial articles to the waters of the Nile or just the progression of floods and their carbon dating.
Steve – I want to see it. Are you prodding for a image drop box? I have one of those crude flint objects from SW Texas somewhere… I looked and can’t locate it, it must be in a safe place. The time I was there I was traveling by plane and only took one. If I was driving I would have had buckets. Nothing like you are describing.
I’ve found some REALLY cool ones when I was a kid and all have been stolen. I’ll have to search for the one I have.
Jim –
The Nile valley greenery comes up to within a VERY short distance of the Sphynx. And vertically the base of the Sphynx is barely above what the Nile floods would have been. Because of these, I personally doubt the possibility of a temple either under the Sphynx or behind it and under it. Any such chambers would have been flooded annually – not something any intelligent designers would have wanted.
Bard –
The Sphynx’s head is made of an outcrop of the bedrock. It is not a separate piece. Whoever wrote that is incorrect. The “sphynx enclosue was carved out as a “U” around the rock that became then carved to make the Sphynx. The Sphynx is a single stone carving.
This is not to say that visitors cannot see the MUCH later repairs done to the Sphynx. Those are patently obvious.
There is plenty of speculation that the Sphynx’s head was carved a SECOND time, and there is much to support this idea. The head is WAAAAY out of proportion to the body – which is much longer than one might expect. (At the same time, many photos show the Sphynx in the foreground and the GP in the background, making the Sphynx look much bigger than it really is.
It might not be possible anymore to get a good sense of the Nile waters vis-a-vis the Sphynx’s paws, because dammit they don’t let anyone get close to it anymore. I visited when it was NORMAL to walk right up to it and touch it, and to walk all around the Sphynx enclosure. Thus, I was able to stand right at the paws and look around at relative elevations. (I even meditated in between the paws of the Sphynx. You can’t do THAT anymore!)
One very ODD reality there is that the line of demarcation between the desert and the vegetation area is extremely abrupt. You can literally stand with one foot in lush greenery and the other in stark desert sand. There is NO gradual change from one to the other.
I could be wrong about no temple under the Sphynx, but I think the odds aren’t very good of that.
Bard –
I will try top post the photos of the possible Clovis spear tip soon. If not here on CT, then on my blog. I am on vacation right now, so I have my mind mostly on other things… Soon…
BTW, the possible Clvis spear tip weighs about the same as a pint of beer. I could have my froend weigh it, certainly.
…More to come…
I had never expected to see a Clovis point. If this is one, I am gobsmacked. My friend has had it since the 1980s and had no clue what it was.
Steve; I came across an image of a tunnel under the Giza Plateau and the side walls were scored vertically much like a rough torch cut on metal. Are those the striations you were talking about? If not, was the arcing horizontal or vertical? I cant see how a round blade ( arcing chatter marks) would not be tangent to the corners unless the corners were pitched out (chiseled) when finishing the cuts. I’m going to see if I can find the article with the inference to the temple under the sphinx. I also watched the video about the tunnel complex at Hawar. If they can to a small bore hole and drop in a camera that would be totally fabulous. I don’t understand why the Egyptian government won’t allow the Giza Plateau to be scanned the same way as Hawar? The knowledge gained would be spectacular, though it might throw all that is now known into chaos.
Steve,
It sure sounds like a Clovis point, the over shot flaking is a good clue as is it’s size.
Do you remember if the base was ground and fluted?
I personally think that the larger blades are not killing weapons but are butchering knives and razors, for harvensting mammoth hair, imagine how much cordage you could make from a mammoths amount of hair.
CevinQ –
Sorry. The back end of the tip is not there. It broke about 4″ from the tip, so the fluted part isn’t with it. I think the overall original point was perhaps 8-11″ long. I base that on the LxW ratios I’ve seen on Clovis point photos.
I would think that the fluting on the back end of Clovis points rules out them being used as butchering tools, because of the way one holds each; the fluting is an unnecessary and (IMO) probably even counterproductive. That is just my opinion, so don’t take it as any final thing.
Jim –
The arced tooling marks I saw were absolutely NOT tangent to the corners. In fact, that was the thing that drew my attention to them. They dead headed into the corner at a downward angle I would estimate (at this late date) to be about 40° or so, after arcing from the other side of the vertical shaft. I would estimate their total angular travel at ~80°.
What I saw: Looking straight across the vertical shaft, and looking at the left-hand corner, the arcs ended there. They stopped without being tangential to the vertical corner (at the left-hand wall). They STOPPED. Each arc began on the right-hand side of the center-line of the shaft. It did NOT go to the right-hand wall. Each arc had a center that was 1/2-3/4″ directly above the one below it – meaning that the arcs ere NOT concentric to each other. Each arc was on a singular and unique center. It was clear that the spacing was greatest at the top dead center position.
The pattern I saw was as if they swept the cutting tool though the 80°, then shifted the mechanism up about 1/2-3/4″, and then swept the cutting tool again through 80°, again and again.
Also, Jim, it was DEFINTELY NOT a circular saw type of cut. I was totally perplexed looking at those cuts WHY and OW they could do that.
One more point was the depth of the cuts, as I think I mentioned. HOW did they cut limestone 1/8″ deep in EACH sweep? Even Chris Dunn won’t know the answer to that.
I would like to rain on NASA’s parade a bit…
Martian salt streaks ‘painted by liquid water’ http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34379284
Please open a separate tab and view the article…
The first image’s caption is: “Dark streaks: Recurring slope lineae can be hundreds of metres long”
I look at that image and see small avalanches typical of rubble piles or ore piles or gravel piles. There is a thing called “Angle of Repose” which I have (I believe) mentioned before. On Mars the angle of repose will be steeper, because of the lesser gravity… And this is exactly what I see in the image.
One can see the same sort of tumble-down effects on cliff faces all over the world, but on Earth the gravity is higher, and so the rubble collects at the base of the cliffs. With Mars’ lesser gravity such materials will need higher Angles of Repose, and they will be less forceful in their falling and more likely to only make it partially down to the base of the cliffs/hills. This should be the first expectation of NASA, not “OH! LOOK! PROXY EVIDENCE OF WATER!” Until NASA shows that they have done DUE DILIGENCE in ruling out such landslides, I see only attention grabbing headlines.
Definition: Angle of Repose – “…the steepest angle at which a sloping surface formed of a particular loose material is stable.”
I see rubble or other loose material that has simply slid down the slope.
If the newness of this article/study is that the materials detected are:
So, once again – as always it seems – NASA is INFERRING water from other – proxy – materials.
I read the assertions in the article as very IFFY and wishful thinking.
I honestly don’t even KNOW why they are so hot to trot to find water on Mars. Water is such a ubiquitous compound and one that falls out from so many chemical reactions that it seems almost a certainty that it is there, if there has been ANY chemical activity on Mars at all. And why WOULD’T there be?
But this neurotic NEED, this insecure and seemingly ENDLESS need to post “NEWS” about water on Mars (has it gone on for centuries or is it just my imagination?) – how many times do they have to assert it and how many studies are necessary? Don’t they believe their own earlier assertions/”findings”?
[…Links are on the article page…]
And WHO the hell CARES?
To me it is just NASA trying to keep their public face in the news – so that Congress won’t pull even MORE funding. IOW, it seems like a VERY insecure agency using PR to stay afloat.
As to the science of this article (as presented in the article), it seems very sketchy and weak, and with a happy face put on it, (in a never-ending campaign to convince the public – for whatever reason – that “NASA is on it!” “NASA is your Agency in Space, Folks! Doing What No One Else Can DO!”
Now to the particulars…
Wikipedia – SURFACE TEMPERATUE OF MARS: “While the average temperature on Mars is about 218° K (-55° C, -67° F), Martian surface temperatures range widely from as little as 140° K (-133° C, -207° F) at the winter pole to almost 300° K (27° C, 80° F) on the dayside during summer.”
One would think that the 287°F temperature range itself would cause a lot of expansion-induced fracturing of exposed rocks on the surface of Mars. On Earth such effects happen with only about 100°F variations. Over sufficient time this would lead directly to the “rubble-ization” of the materials on the surface – turning them more and more into powders/regolith.
Color me unconvinced. Even though I STARTED from the premise long ago that water IS on Mars.
I’ve always liked the precision rock work and never could figure why it wouldn’t be in the forefront of Mans’ past. The inside corners and flatness plus finish quality of the Great Pyramid box should be easily documented. Is there no mention of the lid? Why would the corner of the “box” be destroyed if there was no lid? I would LOVE to see some of the world wide stone work up close. Also, the rounded fitting stones of South America look every similar to Hittite stone work. Drilling parallel evenly spaced holes and in a straight plane in granite wouldn’t be easy, if I gather what your talking about.
They said the poles have frozen water long ago… Didn’t you hear the BUZZ and have to wait till Monday to hear the great news? I was really hoping they found something COOL. Never did see the comet from Mars as close as they hyped. I think their site needs much more openness and intermediary news language to draw in interest instead of suspenseful drama. I want to know why the tracks of the rovers seem like they have an “oily” compaction in the earliest images and dusty in others.
Found that flint artifact.
this came across the facebook by Ralph Ellis (noted researcher on the bible mysteries, etc)
he has taken a step in the direction of “explanations of the ice ages”.
I would start a new thread on this one. Link is below. I notified him of the link at this site. I’m sure he is looking for input…..
https://www.academia.edu/16866736/Albedo_regulation_of_Ice_Ages_with_no_CO2_feedbacks
David –
Yes, Ralph Ellis is a bit of a friend of mine. He and I even went out to an Indian mound together several years ago. A very astute researcher (if a bit focused on the religious aspects).
And, in beginning to read the link, I DO recall seeing something Ralph had out about the Milankovitch cycles and ice ages, this same subject. He is totally not the first to try to invoke the Milankovitch cycles, and all of them suffer from the same problems – TIME and too much gradualism.
I WILL go on record as saying that with a 100,000 year cycle (which means very, VERY slow and gradual changes to the underlying causes), the Milankovitch cycles cannot be the cause of short term ice ages. Especially they cannot explain the suddenness of either the YD onset or ending, nor the relatively fast ending to the Last Glacial Maximum at about 22,000 ya. Uber slow changes cannot cause rapid results. The concept of “tipping points” is a fine and dandy concept for climate in general, but even on a scale of decades, tipping points is only a hypothetical mental concept, never shown to be a real thing. In global warming they are invoked a lot, but with nothing behind them but mental images.
Ralph also loses me when he asserts anthropogenic global warming caused by industrial CO2 emissions. The science behind that claim is simply not well done and speculative, at best. I began looking into that well over 10 years ago and I was shocked at how BAD the science was. So, I agree with the well-respected scientist Dyson Freeman, that the science is crap.
The Greenland ice cores do not show slow and gradual changes, but extremely sudden and severe changes. Now, I don’t accept the ice cores from those few locations as representative of the whole world as most do, but they DO show that some essentially instantaneous changes occurred about ten times in the last 50,000 years. That is only HALF of a Milankovitch cycle. Half of a cycle cannot necessarily even cause the full spectrum of effects – and yet the full spectrum of effects happened about 10 times! No, Milankovitch cycles are inadequate to explain such things.
(In addition I will argue that 99.99999999999999999999999999% of the energy received by the Earth comes from the Sun, so why would the super-gradual changes in the tilt of the solar equatorial plane relative to the galactic center, or the extremely tenuous changes in the already tenuous density of various parts of the galaxy make any difference to our climate on the degree that the planet actually experiences? They argue for galaxy-wide influences in our tiny neighborhood, which as self-contained as you can get – like all individual star systems. It is what is happening LOCALLY that matters.)
Invoking super slow processes to try to explain rapid changes is merely gradualists trying to fit the YD and other sudden changes into a gradualist meme. What ELSE can one expect from them? Once one abandons gradualism as the ONLY reality, all sorts of things become much more clear. Yes, gradualism operates most of the time, but when a catastrophe strikes gradualistic thinking simply fails to deal with what happens.
Think of it like a human body and a bullet. The body has all of its processes that go on, second by second, for years and years, and the changes that occur can be studied by biologists and doctors. Now, when a bullet enters the body at something like 2200 ft/sec, it does things that simply aren’t covered in biology, and if someone tries to explain the wound effects by normal bodily processes, well, of course that is not going to give adequate answers.
Like that analogy
I’m sorry to interrupt all of your pontificating but just a little heads up.
2015 TB145
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_TB145
I guess all this demonstrates is that something like this is possible, a highly eccentric, highly inclined burnt out carbon and volatile rich cometary fragment, of the order of several hundred or more meters across. Onto the ice sheet that would be a bad scene. Into the ocean I don’t even want to think about it.
Still waiting on those nanodiamonds. I think I’ll be waiting a while.
Hmmmm… I am putting this comment here because it relates to dating.
For those who haven’t run across it, there is a terrific magazine named Mammoth Trumpet, put out by a group of academics called the Center for the Study of the First Americans. For those who maybe want to peruse their archives (up to the year 2013 at this moment), the link is at http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/MT-archives.php
The archives go back to 1984-1985 (Volume 1), with four issues a year (but sometimes more). All of them up to that time are available as pdf files.
I am reading something on Carbon 14 from 2001, Volume 16,, Number 2. http://www.centerfirstamericans.com/mammoth/issues/Volume-16/vol16_num2.pdf
It is about Carbon 14 dating and how it sometimes seems to REALLY be off the mark. There is an article by none other than Richard Firestone, with Topping, and is entitled “Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times”, starting on page 9.
There is also an article preceding that one, titled “Carbon, and Radiocarbon dating: A Primer”, on pp 7-9.
On page 8, this is said:
This is pertinent to the YDIH in more ways than one. First, according to Richard Firestone in his 2005 book “The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes”, he got going on the YDIH orginally because of strange anomalous C14 dates in the 30,000-40,000 ya range. He also was THE main driver of all of the early YD impact hypothesis, even when his supernova conjecture was dropped in favor of the impact event possibility.
Secondly, ANYTHING having to do with C14 dating can cast a light (or confusion) on the dating of any or all of the YD C14 evidence. That 12,440 date just above here, for example, is just 360 years younger than the YDIH evidence as shown in THIS post on CosmicTusk.
If some dates test out at thousands of years younger, then the whole C14 dating method may not be reliable for ANY dates. Hopefully NOT.
This caught my eye especially because some C14 dates may show dates far too young, IN GENERAL, without anyone suspecting that they are not dating artifacts or bones as much as 77% too young.
It is strange that the 2880 date is somewhat close to the ages we currently have for such sites as Stonehenge and the Giza pyramids, while the 12,440 age is so close to the YDIH evidence date of 12,800 ya. Especially when Göbekli Tepe is in some tests dated at 11,600 ya, and MOST especially when geologist Robert Schoch says that the date given for Giza’s Great Sphynx is at least 5,000 years older and perhaps much older than that. The Sphynx and the Sphynx Temple are considered the oldest things on the Giza plateau, no matter what date happens to be given at present.
I am going to read the entire Firestone-Topping article within the next day. If any of it adds to the pertinence of the subject, I will add it in a comment.
In one specific (and to me, terrific) way, this article and this subject shine new light on something that has stumped me.
Specifically IN Michigan – the place where Firestone said the C14 readings seemed to be most in eror – there have been found bones of mammoths and other now extinct animals. They are only found up to a certain almost straight line across the Lower Peninsula, called the Mason-Quimby Line.
Hahaha – the main reason I am stumped is because many dates for bones south of the the Mason-Quimby Line is because I want the Saginaw impact to be at 12,800 ya, but the mammoth and other bones seem to show that Michigan was unaffected by anything like an impact at that time.
IF, however, the dates are wrong, it is possible that the inmpact DID happen and THEN animals started moving into the area swept clean of ice by the impact – swept clean right up to the Mason-Quimby Line. Michael Davias, especially, puts the impact IN Saginaw Bay, and interprets the evidence to show that the impact threw ejecta out to the Carolina bay arc, on the eastern seaboard. (He now puts the date at 780,000 ya, concurrent with the dates given by the AA Tektite field, in and offshore of SE Asia. I am hoping to show at some point that that date is not correct.)
If the quartz sand materials in and draped over the CBs came from Saginaw Bay (something no one hsa been able to do yet), then the ice MUST have been somewhat thinner than many think, but also Davias says the impact also removed the sand material – meaning that the impactor obliterated the ice, and ALSO was able to remove material from BELOW the ice sheet. If so, then the Mason-Quimby line would represent not just the forward edge of the Laurentian ice sheet in Michigan, but perhaps the very edge of the crater in the ice.
There are SOME geomorphological features in Michigan that ARE dated to the 13 kya time period, one of which is the evidence of the Kanakee Outwash. Some are not.
But in addition, there is the VERY curious geological structure known as the Michigan Basin, about which I’ve talked here from time to time. It is most certainly is not currently dated to the time window near the YD. Some aspects of the Michigan Basin, though, DO point to the possibility, though.
(The whole Lower Peninsula area is VERY peculiar, geologically speaking. And I DO mean the whole peninsula.)
So, these Firestone-Topping findings and interpretations may make resolvable for me something that I didn’t know could possibly be resolved. Basically, if the dates aren’t so solid, THEN WHAT? Does it work FOR me? Or perhaps in the opposite direction?
And the AMOUNT/DEGREE of possible mis-dating opens up a WHOLE lot of possibilities that did not seem likely yesterday, for me..
I have to work on all of that…
Thanks Ulrich. I have also written this article, on the Younger Dryas period.
https://www.academia.edu/17274053/The_Carolina_Bays_and_the_destruction_of_North_America
Steve……
Just to be clear, I have never asserted that CO2 causes warming. I have been 100% agaiinst that ever since 2002, when I found out there had been no global warming since 1998 (now 18 years).
Cheers,
Ralph
>>Greenland cores do not show slow gradual changes.
And neither do they in my Ice Age analysis. Because the Interglacial warming is assisted by very strong dust-albedo feedbacks, the warming is very rapid. The Ice Core record shows just a few thousand years, and that is entirely possible with albedo feedbacks (but not with CO2 feedbacks).
Ralph