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NEWS October 2024
OCTOBER 2024 The recent cyber attack on the Internet Archive is deplorable and can be reasonably compared with the repeated burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. I have used the Wayback Machine extensively, but, until the full extent of the permanent damage is clear, I am unable to assess its effect on Atlantipedia. At […]Read More »
Joining The Dots
I have now published my new book, Joining The Dots, which offers a fresh look at the Atlantis mystery. I have addressed the critical questions of when, where and who, using Plato’s own words, tempered with some critical thinking and a modicum of common sense.Read More »
Kevin Curran
Firestone, Richard *
Richard Firestone together with his co-authors Allen West and Simon Warwick-Smith has written one of the most impressive accounts[110] of a cosmic collision that led to the extinction in North America of large mammals such as the mammoth and sabre-toothed tiger and the concurrent disappearance of the Clovis people at the end of the last Ice Age.
Before what has become known as the Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis (YDIH) was formulated, Firestone and William Topping speculated that North America was impacted by intense cosmic rays from a supernova in a 2001 paper entitled Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times(l).
The YDIH also offers a credible explanation for the Carolina Bays. However, they propose that this collision had catastrophic global consequences. The three scientists are prepared to consider the possibility that Plato’s Atlantis story, however garbled, is related to the same episode[0110.328].
Since the publication of their book, some evidence(a)(k) has emerged that would appear to conflict with their core thesis. This criticism appears to be gaining support according to a May 2011 report(b)(d). However, in September 2012 it was reported that further intensive investigation has revealed flaws in the evidence gathering of Firestone’s critics(f). The interdisciplinary team of scientists from seven U.S. institutions concluded that “a disregard of three critical protocols, including sorting samples by size, explains why a group challenging the theory of a North American meteor-impact event some 12,900 years ago failed to find iron- and silica-rich magnetic particles in the sites they investigated.”
Strong resistance to the Firestone claims continued into 2013 when the Royal Holloway and the Sandia National Laboratories along with 13 other universities across the United States and Europe mounted further challenges(g).
The waters were muddied further when it was revealed that Allen West formerly known as Allen Whitt, who was convicted in California of posing as a state-licensed geologist(b) and fined $4,500! He legally changed his name in 2006. His respected co-authors were apparently unaware of his history and as a consequence of West’s central role in the data gathering, the hypothesis is considered by some to be tainted. This may be a case of shooting the messenger instead of the message, a view discussed at length on the Internet(e). A spirited defence of both West in particular and the theory of the team, in general, has also been written(c) and should be read in order to get a more balanced view of this particular controversy.
The core debate has rumbled on ever since. In July 2015 the University of California, Santa Barbara, released the results(h) of research, led by James Kennett, which again supported the impact theory and “has narrowed the date to a 100-year range, sometime between 12,835 and 12,735 years ago.”
The battle has continued, apparently inconclusively, with more papers being published by all sides. July 2018 saw an update of the controversy published on the Science News website(i), with no sign of the war ending.
Nevertheless, in late 2019, further evidence emerged that appears supportive of Firestone’s theory. Where previously nanodiamonds were an important feature in the presentation of his ideas the latest studies focus on platinum as an important marker(j).
2019 also gave us a paper that included an extensive bibliography and overview of the YDIH debate(m).
Inspiration resulting from an interview with Firestone led Kevin Curran to a study that ended with the publication of Fall of a Thousand Suns[1113], in which he investigates the effect of extraterrestrial encounters on the development of early religious beliefs.
(a) The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis – Scientific American Blog Network (archive.org)
(b) Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth – Pacific Standard (archive.org)
(c) https://www.sott.net/article/229835-Real-Science-Under-Attack-The-Dirty-Tricks-of-Rex-Dalton
(d) Wayback Machine (archive.org)
(e) https://www.sott.net/articles/show/229835-Real-Science-Under-Attack-The-Dirty-Tricks-of-Rex-Dalton
(g) Prehistoric humans not wiped out by comet, say researchers — ScienceDaily (archive.org) *
(h) https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015778/cataclysmic-event-certain-age
(i) https://www.sciencenews.org/article/younger-dryas-comet-impact-cold-snap
(k) https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uob-cit012609.php
(l) https://www.osti.gov/biblio/776650-terrestrial-evidence-nuclear-catastrophe-paleoindian-times
(m) YDIH: Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis | Thongchai Thailand (tambonthongchai.com)
Encke’s Comet
Johann Franz Encke
Encke’s Comet has the shortest orbital period of just over three years and was the second comet after Halley’s to have its period determined. It is named after the German astronomer Johann Franz Encke (1792-1865) who announced its periodicity in 1819. More information about Encke’s Comet is available on Kevin Curran’s website(f), which promotes his book, Fall of a Thousand Suns[1113], in which he analyses the effects that cometary encounters have had on religious beliefs.
One website(c) suggests that Encke was only part of an even larger comet, proto-Encke, sometimes identified as Tiamat in Babylonian mythology and that Encke gave birth to the Taurid meteor shower.
Victor Clube and Bill Napier published their groundbreaking book in 1982[290] in which they identify Encke’s Comet or more correctly its larger progenitor as having had catastrophic close encounters with the earth in the past. They expanded their book in 1990[291].
Martin Sweatman is a University of Edinburgh scientist and the author of Prehistory Decoded [1621]. Building on the work of Clube & Napier he believes that around 10,900 BC an encounter with a fragment of Encke that led to catastrophic climate change of the Younger Dryas and kick-started the Neolithic Revolution. After an in-depth study of the carvings at Göbekli Tepe he believes that they record astronomical events and in a 2017 joint paper with Dimitrios Tsikritsis, published in Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry, (Vol. 17, No 1) offers an illustrated outline of this theory.(g)
A number of investigators, including Frank Joseph have adopted their findings and have attributed the destruction of Atlantis, among other disasters, such as the eruption of Thera, to the repeated near misses by proto-Encke. In his latest literary recycling[1535] Joseph claims that Comet Encke in 1198 BC “scores a number of meteoric hits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and possibly on Atlantis itself, which perishes ‘in a single day and night’, according to Plato. The catastrophe is global, encompassing the destruction of the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.” Joseph bases this claim on the conclusions of two Swedish geologists, Thomas B. Larsson and Lars Franzén.
Another writer, Martin Gray, claimed that in 3113 BC proto-Encke collided with asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter causing extensive meteor showers that punctuated the Bronze Age, including the partial destruction of Atlantis(a) . Without hard evidence we must treat this as nothing more than interesting conjecture.
A fully illustrated article detailing an encounter with Comet Encke is offered by Stuart Harris(b) who dates this event to 8366 BC and which led to catastrophic destruction across Europe. Harris also offered the possibility of a return visit during August-September 2012, if the Cluster still exists. He added further data in 2013(d).
Graham Hancock has gone further and suggested that 2030 will possibly have another catastrophic encounter with Encke, hidden in the Taurid meteor shower. This ‘prediction’ in his Magician of the Gods(e) will do no harm to sales figures!
(a) https://www.knowth.com/sacred-geography-1.htm
(b) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2012&id=327
(c) https://drakenberg.weebly.com/atlantis.html
(d) https://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?year=2013&id=354
(f) https://web.archive.org/web/20200727082523/http://www.fallofathousandsuns.com/comet-encke.html