Background from Smithsonian Magazine
Breakdown from Archeothoughts
Erudite Tusk commentor Stuart Hamish below refers accurately to this Neuheuser and Neuheuser paper responding to Tankersley et al., as “hair splitting.” I’d agree.
Stuart also includes some juicy tidbits about other modern impacts that are worth sharing. Incidentally, I plan to take Stuart up on his suggestion that I post on the obscure but profoundly important Bonilla Event of 1883.
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“However the material evidence ……… does not speak for a comet compared to an asteroid….”
So what? That statement right there is the giveaway for “splitting hairs” dissembling on the authors part …..The Ohio Valley Hopewell culture was destroyed either by an air-bursting cosmic object that may have been a random asteroid , an inert comet fragment indistinguishable from an ‘asteroid’ or a chunk that cleaved from a passing active comet An extraterrestrial impact nonetheless …Tankersley et al did not contend the Ohio Valley airburst was ’caused by an airbursting comet entering the Earth’s atmosphere ” [otherwise we would not be here to debate matters] but rather a comet fragment .aka Tunguska …..So Neuheuser ‘s rebuttal incorporates a Straw Man fallacy as well as “splitting hairs’ ruse …”In sum the claim that human communities ……were at a heightened risk …. by a comet airburst in those centuries is unsubstantiated ”
Not at all. I presented the Franzen and Cropp Cobalt / REE index 300 – 400 AD ‘ H8’ peaks in their peat mire time series [Correlated values much like the 3700 – 3500 BP sequence] as complementary, substantiating evidence for the Tankersely et al Hopewell airburst hypothesis. This data is speculative evidence for one of Clube and Napier’s enhanced risk of bombardment episodes approximate to the time of the Roman Empires unravelling, climatic instability and barbarian incursions.
Neuheuser’s discussion pertaining to Comet IP Halley is essentially meaningless. Three of the worlds most destructive 20th century airbursts occurred close to the peaks of three cometary stream intersections : Tunguska June 1908 [ the Beta Taurids ] the December Rapanui event British Guyana bolide [ the Geminid stream ] and the August 1930 Curuca River triple airburst over the Amazon coinciding with the Perseid shower perigree……It is plausible the August 1930 Curuca River impacts were a recurrent clump of the 1883 ‘Bonilla sighting’s ” – a speculative stream of cometary debris spotted by Mexican astronomers in 1883 that may have missed Earth by a few hundred to a few thousand kilometers if retrospective calculations are correct …..Note the August 1930 Curuca River bolides struck close to the August 12 -13 1883 Bonilla sightings dates and close to the same time in the morning [just after 8.00 am]. Isn’t that intriguing ? ….The disintegrated comet stream telescopically detected in 1883 may not have been related to the Perseid stream progenitor but rather another ‘mystery ‘ relic comet swarm brushing past the Earth approximate to the same date as the Perseids . Have you considered publishing an article on the 1883 Bonilla Sightings George? https://uk.pcmag.com/news/115344/did-a-giant-comet-barely-miss-the-earth-in-1883