On Sep 2, 12:42*pm, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Tue, 2 Sep 2008 10:17:31 -0700 (PDT), LarryG
wrote:

For the past week or so, I have been reading "The Cycle of Cosmic
Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World
Culture" - by Richard Firestone, Allen West, Simon Warwick-Smith. *The
authors attribute the extinction of the wooly mammoth, and other north
american megafauna, and the paleo-american Clovis culture, to a
probable comet strike at what is now Lake Michigan...

The science is generally poor. A few people claim to have found evidence
of a Holocene impact, but this is weak and not well supported. Most of
the events the authors attribute to external influences have simpler and
more widely accepted possible causes. Their approach reminds me a lot of
Velikovsky: start with the assumption of an event, and then try to make
history (and prehistory) match it- even if the fit is often poor.


Have you actually read the book and examined the authors' thesis, or
are you pontificating and conflating their theory with the sensational
pseudoscience of the past?

You and other readers may be interested in the news conference on the
impact evidence. Video can be found on Youtube.com:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1GCgOI3B1o

The book is divided into three parts.
I. The mystery of the Clovis layer - traces the steps the investigator
made from being faced with the inexplicable black mat just above
Clovis culture layers through to the formation of the explanation.
(Note: The researcher did NOT start with the cosmic intervention as
his premise or assumed cause.)

II. The Event - A technically accurate rendition of what the authors
believe happened in association with this series of events. (Very
good descriptions of the catastrophes and their mechanisms.)

III. The Evidence - An in depth presentation (for scientifically
literate lay people) supporting the authors' hypothesis. Included are
sections on radioisotope concentrations at the clovis sites, ice
cores, and tree rings; chemical analyses of the black mat and the
glassified carbon; the location and axial orientation of Carolina Bays
and other shallow, elliptical craters, the changes in and migrations
of the human genome as traced through the time periods in question;
and a number of paleoamerican accounts of the event in myth and
legend.

It should be noted that some of the evidence presented in the first
section involves the imbedding of small grains of iron in mammoth
tusks and clovis spear points (made of flint). The researcher tried
to blast small iron pellets into the tusk material using a shotgun at
close range. The pellets only dented the tusk, but did not
penetrate. From this the authors calculate that the iron which did
penetrate, was traveling at 2,000 to 3,000 miles per hour at the time
of impact. (High speed iron is not a generally recognized hazard of
ice age environments! It had to come from a rare circumstance, or
similar special event.)


That said, it is obvious that we are vulnerable to the effects of
supernovas, comets, and any number of other extraterrestrial events.
What we don't really understand yet is the actual frequency of these.
They have probably had significant influence on the path life has taken,
but most likely not on the immediate evolution of humans.
_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatoryhttp://www.cloudbait.com