[extropy-chat] Holocene Period Cosmic Impacts?

[Damien Broderick]

http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/events/abstract/204

Seminar Abstract
Monday, July 19, 2004 • 12:15 PM • Medium Conference Room
Bruce Masse
Los Alamos National Laboratory, RRES-ECO Ecology Group
Was Chicken Little Right??? The Archaeology and Anthropology of Holocene 
Period Cosmic Impacts
Astrophysicists and geologists claim there have been no “globally 
catastrophic” cosmic impacts­i.e., an asteroid or comet impact whose force 
and effects would today be capable of killing a quarter of the Earth’s 
human population­for at least the past 100,000 years, with such impacts 
occurring on the average of about once every 500,000 years. Scientific 
literature emphatically states there is no historical record of a human 
being ever being killed by a cosmic impact. Because of such messages from 
the physical sciences, few archaeologists and anthropologists have become 
engaged with this topic. Recent anthropological and historical research by 
the author in Polynesia, the Americas, and with Old World Bronze Age 
civilizations demonstrates that mythology represents the supernatural 
encoding of those observed major natural events and processes most 
profoundly affecting cultural groups. Myths were transmitted as sacred 
knowledge handed down by specialists to successive generations during 
annual festivals by means of mnemonic aids including chant, dance, and 
story repetition. Imbedded within worldwide mythology are a number of 
witnessed cosmic impacts, including events causing human death and 
suffering. These range from myths about small meteorite impacts similar to 
those reported during the past century, to that of the Campo del Cielo iron 
meteorite impact in northern Argentina perhaps 4,000 years ago which likely 
caused mass fires and significant mortality, to that of a hypothesized 
globally catastrophic deepwater oceanic comet impact about 4800 years ago 
which arguably altered human history and may represent a boundary event 
between the middle and late Holocene climatic regimes. The archaeology of 
Holocene cosmic impacts is discussed, and reasons are provided for why the 
hypothesized oceanic comet impact was not earlier recognized by science. 
These data suggest current models of risk are based on an incomplete 
understanding of the cosmic impact record.