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Pastimes : R. Harmon's Earth 101 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D.Lu who wrote (161)	5/16/2000 11:09:00 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 183

I watched the better part of that very interesting. So, yes, near "planet killer" volcanos have happened in more recent history - & will again.

To: D.Lu who wrote (161)	5/16/2000 8:27:00 PM
From: .Trev	Respond to of 183

At the tail end of the program there was further mention of CALDERA WHICH IS WHAT WE'VE BEEN CALLIN SUPER V Yellowstone was mentioned as having done considerable damage to N. America several times, and another one near Naples in Italy was mentioned with fear and trepidation.

To: D.Lu who wrote (161)	5/17/2000 9:42:00 PM
From: Lilian Debray	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 183

Don't you find some big leaps in David Keys' theory? "... it is necessary to recognise and discount the common tendency among archaeologists and historians to assume a causal link between the distant and widely separated events of which they may have knowledge. An eruption here, a destruction there, a plague somewhere else - all are to easily linked in hasty surmise" Renfrew, Colin. 1979. The eruption of Thera and Minoan Crete. Volcanic activity and human ecology. Academic press. p. 582 The Krakatoa was ninety for first united Ireland By MICHAEL LAVERY A VOLCANIC eruption 7,000 miles away triggered a plague epidemic which helped give birth to the Irish nation, a leading historian claimed yesterday. British author David Keys believes that the ultimate trigger for evolution of the Irish people was a giant early eruption of the Indonesian volcano, Krakatoa. He has spent the past four years analysing the relationship between ancient volcanically-induced climatic problems and worldwide political change. He outlines his findings in a new book, Catastrophe, an investigation into the Origins of the Modern World, which is the basis of a two-part Channel Four documentary to be shown tomorrow night and on August 3. ``Some of the key evidence for dating the worldwide catastrophe emanates from Ireland, from Lough Catherine in Co Tyrone,'' Mr Keys said last night. The Krakatoa eruption set off a series of plagues in the 6th century which destabilised Ireland and ultimately created the first united Ireland in the 9th-11th centuries. He used evidence from ancient tree rings and modern plague research, archaeology and the Irish Annals to assess the volcano's climatic and epidemiological impact on Ireland. ``The worldwide climatic chaos of the mid-530s AD led in Ireland to crop failure and famine,'' Mr Keys said. In the mid-540s a terrible epidemic, possibly smallpox, broke out. Some Irish population centres, like Lough Shinney in Dublin and the royal fortress of Garranes, near Cork, ceased to function in, or immediately after, the mid-6th century. In 550AD a second epidemic, almost certainly plague, engulfed Ireland. ``The disease must have wiped out a substantial proportion of the population.'' Three years later, a third plague epidemic broke out. The plagues destabilised Ireland. ``Before the plague, things had been relatively peaceful only 11 battles in 45 years. ``But immediately afterwards, all hell broke loose, with 27 battles in 45 years.'' The long-term effects of the plagues and wars could be seen also in religion (Christianising the mass of the population), lifestyle (70,000 ring forts built by farmers to protect themselves) and even language (Irish words became shorter and a new accent evolved). ``Proto-modern Ireland had been conceived, along with its language, popular religion and even aspects of its literature,'' Mr Keys said. independent.ie

To: D.Lu who wrote (161)	8/1/2001 8:31:18 AM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 183

Thursday, 26 July, 2001, 12:12 GMT 13:12 UK Disaster that struck the ancients Fekri Hassan has built up a picture of what happened Ancient Apocalypse is a new BBC series that investigates the dramatic collapse of great civilisations. Here, the series producer Jessica Cecil relates the climate disaster that struck the Egyptian Old Kingdom All of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children Hieroglyphs in Ankhtifi tomb Four thousand two hundred years ago, the first great civilisation in Egypt collapsed. The pharaohs of the Egyptian Old Kingdom had built the mightiest legacy of the ancient world - the pyramids at Giza. But after nearly a thousand years of stability, central authority disintegrated and the country collapsed into chaos for more than a 100 years. What happened, and why, has remained a huge controversy. But Professor Fekri Hassan, from University College London, UK, wanted to solve the mystery, by gathering together scientific clues. His inspiration was the little known tomb in southern Egypt of a regional governor, Ankhtifi. The hieroglyphs there reported "all of Upper Egypt was dying of hunger to such a degree that everyone had come to eating their children". The Nile is at the heart of everything Dismissed as exaggeration and fantasy by most other Egyptologists, Fekri was determined to prove the writings were true and accurate. He also had to find a culprit capable of producing such misery. Stalactites and stalagmites "My hunch from the beginning was that it had to do with the environment in which the Egyptians lived." Fekri felt sure the Nile, the river that has always been at the heart of Egyptian life, was implicated. He studied the meticulous records, kept since the 7th Century, of Nile floods. He was amazed to see that there was a huge variation in the size of the annual Nile floods - the floods that were vital for irrigating the land. But no records existed for 2,200BC. Then came a breakthrough - a new discovery in the hills of neighbouring Israel. Mira Bar-Matthews of the Geological Survey of Israel had found a unique record of past climates, locked in the stalactites and stalagmites of a cave near Tel Aviv. After a thousand years of stability, central authority disintegrated What they show is a sudden and dramatic drop in rainfall, by 20%. It is the largest climate event in 5,000 years. And the date? 2,200 BC. As Israel and Egypt are in different weather systems, Fekri needed evidence of some worldwide climate event to link this to the collapse of the Old Kingdom. And the evidence came out of the blue. Geologist Gerard Bond, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, US, looks for climate evidence in the icebergs of Iceland. As they melt on their journey south, they leave shards of volcanic ash on the ocean floor. Dry lake How far they travelled before melting tells him how cold it was. Cores of mud from the ocean floor revealed to him regular periods of extreme cold - mini ice ages - in Europe every 1,500 years, and lasting 200 years. And one mini ice age occurred at 2,200 BC. Fekri Hassan: Looked at lake-bed cores Gerard's colleague, Peter deMenocal, looked at climate records for the rest of the world at exactly the same time. From pollen records to sand, the story was the same - a dramatic climate change from Indonesia to the Mediterranean, Greenland to North America. Scientists were confirming everything Fekri believed - severe climate change causing widespread human misery 4,200 years ago, misery we are only now learning about for the first time. Back in Egypt, Fekri wanted to put the last piece of the puzzle in place. He wanted direct evidence of this severe climate change in the Nile. And he found it drilling cores in a large lake that had been fed by a tributary of the Nile in ancient times. He discovered in the critical period, as the Old Kingdom collapsed, the lake had dried up completely - the only time in the whole history of this lake that this had happened. At last, Fekri felt he had proved that the writings on Ankhtifi's tomb were really true. It was nature that had driven people to desperation. The Ancient Apocalypse series begins on BBC Two on Thursday, 26 July, at 2100 BST news.bbc.co.uk