Cosmic Lessons: The Day of the Dead – Part 3

In the two previous articles I have been writing about the connection between the ancient Festival of the Dead, our modern Halloween and certain cosmic events associated with the Pleiades star cluster. Prior to that I contributed a series of articles delving into the extraordinary Tunguska cosmic event of June 30, 1908. In the October, 2015 contribution to this series I wrote

“Having studied meteorite and impact phenomenon for a number of decades now, my impression is that the frequency of major impact events on the scale of Tunguska, and larger, has, with some exceptions, been grossly underestimated by most of the scientific community.”

To the reason I believe this to be true I will return directly. But before I do I would like to call the reader’s attention to another connection that provides a powerful clue to understanding past events that led to the observation all around the planet of a festival in remembrance, not only of departed ancestors, but to the nameless masses that succumbed to a great world destroying flood. And this festival was universally held in late October through early November, which, coincidentally is the peak of the autumn Taurid meteor shower. I referenced the work of Robert Grant Haliburton and Stansbury Hagar, who both recognized the central role of the Taurid meteors in motivating ancient peoples to annually celebrate the memory of a profound event that terminated one world and inaugurated another at the time of year when the Pleiades rose at sunset and culminated at midnight − an event whose memory was preserved in the story of a mighty flood that left only a few survivors to repopulate the world.

So here is the connection: Earth, in her orbit about the Sun, twice crosses the Taurid meteor stream. The crossing in late October and early November occurs as the stream is coming in towards the Sun, and about 8 months later the Earth crosses the stream in late June as the stream is traveling away from the Sun out to the orbit of Jupiter. This means that you can see the meteors striking the Earth’s atmosphere during the Fall, because an observer would be looking away from the Sun, towards the constellation of the Bull and the Pleiades, which occupies the location of the Taurid streams’ radiant point. The meteor stream in the summer is generally invisible as one would have to look toward the Sun to see the meteors arriving. The exception would be if a meteor happened to be of substantial size. And this is probably what happened on the morning of June 30, 1908, at the peak of the summertime Taurids, when the Tunguska Cosmic object was seen emanating from the SE, from behind the rising Sun! This makes the most likely explanation for the origin of the Tunguska object to be that it was a member of the Taurid meteor stream, since it made its’ appearance both in the right place in the sky and at the right time of year.

Isaac Asimov, in his introduction to the 1976 work The Fire Came By, by John Baxter and Thomas Atkins, marveled at not only the timing of the Tunguska event, as did Fred Whipple as I described earlier, but the geographic placement of the event as well. He pointed out that “It was an amazing fall. On the one hand, it did enormous damage, for it fell in a forest and knocked down every tree for scores of miles in every direction. On the other hand, it did very little damage, for it killed not one human being. Consider how unusual that had to be.” (We do know now that perhaps several people were killed, or at least died later from their injuries. But that does not negate Asimov’s point.) He discusses how some 70 percent of Earth’s surface is water and would not have preserved evidence of the event, but possibly could have triggered a destructive tsunami. He further points out that some 15 percent of the land surface of the globe is occupied by humans and the products of our civilization and that it could have caused considerable devastation and death had it exploded over any of this area.

Another 10 percent of the planet is covered by ice and had the explosion occurred over the great glaciers of Greenland or Antarctica there could have been major melting and seismic fracturing of the ice leading to regionally catastrophic consequences. Had the event occurred only somewhat farther north than it did, it would have been over permafrost and then there would have been no forest blowdown for scientists to study. Asimov concludes his introduction with a rather interesting thought: “Perhaps not more than 5 percent of the surface of the Earth could have received that 1908 blow without any damage at all being done to human life and property. And, with the odds twenty to one against it, that fall took place safely (from the human standpoint). By the same token, though, the place in which the fall occurred was inaccessible (else it would have been populated) and it was years before the vicinity could be examined. It was only then that the real mystery began . . . consider that the fall managed to find a one-in-twenty place where it would do no damage, almost as though someone was humanely trying to avoid―” For now I’ll not follow the implications of Asimov’s train of thought other than to emphasize that we have a double coincidence here. First, as Fred Whipple pointed out, had the event occurred even a few years earlier there would have been no seismometers or barographs in place that have since conferred so much additional insight and understanding into this phenomenon and second, the unique location on the planet as pointed out by Asimov.

And now we learn that the great bolide was most likely a member of a great cosmic meteor system that once may have severely affected the Earth, giving rise to myths, legends and celebrations about the end of the world!

Let us now to return to the question of the frequency of such events and the reasons I believe that the number of major cosmic impacts in recent Earth history has been underestimated.

The evidence that I am going to present in this and several subsequent articles reveals what I believe to be the greatest underappreciated and unrecognized driving force in human history – the impact of the cosmic domain on the world here below.

[pullquote]The evidence that I am going to present in this and several subsequent articles reveals what I believe to be the greatest underappreciated and unrecognized driving force in human history – the impact of the cosmic domain on the world here below.[/pullquote]

Let us go back in history to the 1850s. At that time the great British archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, author, politician and diplomat Sir Austen Henry Layard was excavating the ruins of the royal palace at Ninevah, now in present day Iraq. While engaged in these excavations Layard discovered the huge, lost palace had 71 rooms and massive bas reliefs. He also discovered the vast library of Ashurbanipal with its 22,000 inscribed clay tablets. But what interests here was his discovery of a clay tablet that is now housed in the British Museum. This approximately 6 inch in diameter circular tablet contains strange markings which have long mystified scholars. However, in 2008, two scientists may have succeeded in deciphering the meaning of the strange glyphs inscribed on this stone. The UK Telegraph of March 31, 2008 broke the story. Science correspondent Nic Fleming writes:

“British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago . . . Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilization includes notes on a mile wide asteroid that later hit Earth – which could have caused tens of thousands of deaths. The tablet, on display at the British Museum, shows drawings of constellations and pictogram-based text known as cuneiform – used by the Sumerians, the earliest known civilization in the world. Now Alan Bond, the managing director of a space propulsion company, Reaction Engines, and Mark Hempsell, a senior lecturer in astronautics at Bristol University, have cracked the cuneiform code and used a computer programme that can reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago to provide a new explanation. They believe their calculations prove the tablet – a copy made by an Assyrian scribe around 700 BC – is a Sumerian astronomer’s notebook recording events in the sky on June 29, 3123 BC.

I hope every reader of these articles will instantly recognize the significance of the date June 29. While at this point we cannot prove that this object was a member of the Taurid meteor stream it certainly does seem plausible. It must be appreciated that if an object one mile wide did, in fact, strike the Earth sometime around 3123 BC it would have been an event with worldwide implications. But if a cosmic object did strike Earth some 5100 years ago, where did it occur? To that question I will return.

To be continued . . .

– Randall Carlson

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