America's Clovis people mysteriously disappeared 12,000 years ago. It now appears a meteorite helped wipe them out
It is sort of amazing that this subject keeps bouncing from "this did it" to "ridiculous" back to "this did it", and yet the correlation of either a meteorite or a comet impact is undeniable from a data perspective. The platinum theory may indeed be correct but there is a much larger body of evidence that says the comet theory is a better fit. Same results in the end, but also fits into the "cataclysm" stories present in almost every major culture around the world.
As you know The comet theory for this event was written in a scientific paper back in 2007 or so and the establishment has been blowing back ever since . The resistance to hard evidence has gone on for a hundred years almost. The event melted vast unimaginable amounts of ice releasing a wall of water 100's of meters high instantly.
J Harlan Bretz was ridiculed and ostracized for
50 + years .
Starting in 1923 paper Bretz decided to stir up his fellow geologists just a little bit. In the second paper Bretz presented his theory that a truly huge catastrophic flood was in fact the creator of the most prominent features of the Scabland region. 2
Bretz's remarkable work was built painstakingly
over many years, but he had to fight great opposition for many decades for its final acceptance. Finally, in 1979, the geological establishment publicly acknowledged Bretz's work by awarding him the prestigious Penrose Medal - the most prestigious honor in the field of geology.
The thing is all these prominant geologists almost drove him out of his profession for 5 decades when they had never even bothered to see the sight for themselves.
I learned from a climate warmers website about the breaking of an ice wall that drained the St. Lawrence and changed the salinity of the Atlantic.
Re the Mississippi and the Colorado and the wider discussion including global warming, 150 to 100 years ago and up to today, there was an argument between Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism, as there was before that between Vulcanism and Neptunism (great land masses formed from volcanoes or drying oceans). Myself, I understand those all as false dichotomies.
Even the distinction between a comet and a planetoid ("meteor") can be arbitrary. One is different from the other conceptually, but not every object falls exclusively into one class or the other.
Reading about platinum is a first for old dino.
I consider the Clovis disappearance with an It Came From Outer Space coincidence a theory worthy of more research.
In the days of the Roanoke Colony, relations with the local Native Americans were mixed.
Roanoke was geographically located in the crux of sociopolitical friction between the Secotan—who held sway over Roanoke—and the Chowanoke, who controlled the nearby waterways.
Tensions were especially high between the colonists and the Secotan tribe.
"There is no doubt that there was a lot of hostility," Klingelhofer said. "Not all the tribes were hostile, but some of them were hostile. They felt imposed upon. There was fighting between [the groups]"—both among the tribes, and between some of the native peoples and the English settlers.
settlers, who arrived in 1587, disappeared in 1590, leaving behind only two clues: the words "Croatoan" carved into a fort's gatepost and "Cro" etched into a tree.
Theories about the disappearance have ranged from an annihilating disease to a violent rampage by local Native American tribes. Previous digs have turned up some information and artifacts from the original colonists but very little about what happened to them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger...
Here is an article on Space.com that says essentially the same thing as this "new paper" and it was in 2012:
http://www.space.com/14793-comet-eart...
So, this just makes me wonder, how much science is actually "new" and how much is just "recycled" as "new"? How much is original anymore? Seems strange how things are being presented nowadays.
Thanks for the link. With several meteorites in my collection, I should think differently about platinum.
In Suspect Terrain reviewed here.
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...
"Collecting Meteorites" here:
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/20...