Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse

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Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse

by Bob Kobres

An earlier version of this article, without some of the illustrations, was published by theSociety for Interdisciplinary Studies in the CHRONOLOGY AND CATASTROPHISMWORKSHOP 1992, number 1, pp.6-10, ISSN 0951-5984. This version is underGFDL

. . . andfrom heaven a great star shall fall on the dread ocean and burn upthe deep sea, with Babylon itself and the land of Italy, by reason of whichmany of the Hebrews perished,

. . . Be afraid, ye Indians and high-hearted Ethiopians: for when the fiery wheel

of the ecliptic(?) . . . and Capricorn . . . and Taurus among the Twins encirclesthe mid-heaven, when the Virgin ascending and the Sun fastening the girdleround his forehead dominates the whole firmament; there shall be a greatconflagration from the sky, falling on the earth;

Are these lines from Book V of the SIBYLLINE ORACLES eschatologicalnonsense? Contemporary astronomical evidence suggests a historic basis for wordsdescribing cosmic calamity. British astronomers, Victor Clube and Bill Napier, inTHE COSMIC WINTER (1990) and other recent works, provide students of thepast with newly discovered celestial clues which indicate that Earth has been

periodically pelleted with comet fragments throughout the Holocene period. Theevidence for the break-up of a large (> 50 km), short period (approximately 3.3

years), Earth-orbit-crossing comet is substantial and should be considered as hard

as anything a trowel might turn up. What astronomical information cannot conveyis the actual effect these periodic bombardment episodes had on human culture;

only further digging and sifting will illuminate that aspect.

Some of what can be uncovered has been buried by prior premise and so can be broughtto light by review of literature published over the years. For instance, the oracles quotedabove are from a 1918 translation of the "Sibylline" by H.N. Bate. Further into Book V

these lines appear:

And then in his anger the immortal God who dwells on high shall hurl fromthe sky a fiery bolt on the head of the unholy: andSUMMER SHALLCHANGE TO WINTER IN THAT DAY.

Bate notes that Book VIII contains a parallel passage with winter being changed tosummer--fortunately he did not feel compelled to "correct" the lines above as others have.

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For example:

And then the imperishable God who dwells in the sky in anger will cast alightning bolt from heaven against the power of the impious. INSTEAD OFWINTER THERE WILL BE SUMMER ON THAT DAY.

This comes from OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA (vol. 1) published in 1983.Not only has the passage been rationalized (If God throws down fire it should get hotter,right?), but, a fiery bolt now has become a lightning bolt.

Evidence of impact induced cold is valuable in gauging how energetic a past fallwas. Based on nuclear winter studies, a cosmic collision would need to impart at

least the energy equivalent of a thousand megatons TNT into the environment toproduce such an effect.

A number of cultures retained stories of impact induced winter. Most telling of such lore

this author has read are these amazingly informative tales of the Yakuts: [note that the

CH in brackets below is printed in the reference as a "c" with a diacritic "v"]

[CH]OLBON . . . is said to be "the daughter of the Devil and to have had atail in the early days". If it approaches the earth, it means destruction,

storm and frost, even in the summer; . . .

[CH]OLBON, the daughter of the Devil is a beautiful girl ... she is the brideand the sweetheart of Satan's son RGEL (Pleiades). When these two stars

come close to one another, it is a bad omen; their eager quivering, theirdiscontinuous panting cause great disasters: storms, blizzards, gales. Whenthey unite, fathom deep snow will fall even in the summer, and all livingbeings, men, animals and trees will perish . . .

Both folk memories were recorded by ethnographer V.L. Serosevsky, the first in 1877,the next in 1885. The Yakuts identified Venus as colbon; however, as a later student ofthis culture, G.V. Ksenofontov, observed:

The Yakuts have two words for the "star": SULUS and [CH]OLBON.The first means simply "star", the second refers to stars that change their

place in the sky, sometimes appearing and disappearing. Nowadays,however, it no longer--or very seldom--refers to other planets than Venus andhas almost become its name. Yet, as we have seen, in legends also other [CH]OLBONS (i.e. planets) are mentioned.

What is remarkable about these particular tales is the conjunction of several pieces ofinformation. From these lines we gather that a comet ([CH]OLBON with a tail) cameclose enough to influence weather on Earth--i.e. deadly storms, frost and deep snow




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in summer. Also, we are told that this is most likely to occur if the comet appearsclose to the Pleiades. In short, these legends accurately describe what can now beinferred from astronomical data on comet Encke and the ring of debris itsprogenitor strew about the Sun.

As the above example suggests, contemporary researchers need to be wary of

assuming our predecessors' folk memories of astral events relate to bodies familiarto our time. There is considerable reason to suspect that the majority of the planetsnamesakes were comets--probably of the Encke family.

A conventional view comes from W.M. O'Neil's TIME AND THE CALENDARS(1975):

The word planet comes from the Greek PLANETES, the wanderers; theseseven celestial bodies moved among the fixed stars. The Babylonians had amore picturesque name, BIBBU, the wild sheep, as these bodies broke through

the fixed formation in which the tame sheep crossed the sky.

To call into question Greek continuity of planet identity I refer to Leonardo Taran's workon the "Pseudo-Platonic" Epinomis (1975) where in commentary on lines 986 A 8-987 D2 Taran states:

Having previously proved to his own satisfaction that all the heavenly bodiesare the greatest divine living beings and having pointed out that they are notyet honored as gods, the author explains who these visible gods are and whythey are not honored in Greece. They are the eight interrelated sidereal

revolutions and the heavenly bodies which travel on them, for they are all godsof the same kind. And the contemplation of this divine cosmic order is whatwill make a man happy both in this life and in the next. But the lack of thiswisdom in Greece is due to ignorance of the true paths of the planets, aknowledge which comes from the Orient and which must be incorporated intoour laws. That the knowledge of the planets comes from the Orient is to beseen in the very fact that the planets lack proper names and are called after the(traditional) gods, for this kind of appellation is due to the barbarians who firstdiscovered the planets.

The Epinomis, which dates from around the 4th century BCE, is the earliest extant recordof Greek planet names; each is given as "the star of": Cronos, Zeus, Aphrodite, etc.Clearly the planets did not inspire the earlier stories which championed these gods.

The mythology associated with these names certainly better describes the break-upof a comet with an orbit that crossed Earth's path than the monotonous behavior ofplanets.

As for the BIBBUS, as well as the Oriental influence alluded to above I call attention to




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J.K. Bjorkman's article in METEORITICS (1973) which deals with much earlier texts:

We move now to a discussion of a word which probably refers to comets,BIBBU. . . BIBBU has a variety of astromantic and non-astromantic meanings.There is a lengthy omen text, the 56th tablet of Enuma Anu Enlil, which dealswith various features of the BIBBU, and some of these seem to describe

comets. For example:

If a BIBBU continues one day, two days in the sky and does not disappear:

If three or four BIBBUS rise one after the other at sunrise

The latter text might refer to a comet which has broken up into three or fourcomets . . . .

There are many more references to BIBBU, but in them the translations

"unspecified planet" or "meteor" could be proposed.

Confusion of planet terminology is also evident further to the east as can be demonstratedby James Legge's translation of a passage concerning the emperor Kwei in the ANNALSOF THE BAMBOO BOOKS:

In his 10th year, the five planets went out of their courses. In the night,stars fell like rain. The earth shook. The E and Loh became dry.

With astronomical evidence in mind a simplified, but testable, hypothesis of Bronze

Age collapse would involve accepting the legend of Phaethon as an event inspiredmyth, as Plato contended it was, and also giving credence to stories of protractedwinter in the aftermath of celestial "battles," such as the Ragnarok.

During a close approach to a massive object like our planet a comet would begravitationally disrupted (Phaethon's disentegrating chariot) independent fragmentswould then further break to pieces as they entered Earth's atmosphere. This debris, ofvarious shapes and sizes, would scatter widely along the path of the fall, each pieceharboring energy in proportion to its mass. The "footprint" of this event could haveincluded some of: southern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, and Northern

Africa. Damage, however, would not be uniform throughout this area. If thedisintegrating objects were traveling south of east, as the Phaethon story implies, themore massive fragments would travel farther and release their greater energy,explosively, lower in the atmosphere toward the southeast end of the elliptical areadirectly affected by the fall. In other words, the Near East would be more heavilydamaged than southern Europe. A survey scaling intensity of site destruction mightreflect this aspect, i.e., vitrification of soil and building materials might occur belowlower altitude multi-megaton blasts.




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Secondary effects of a large impact event would include: a spottily enhanced C-14environment, making this means of dating unreliable to confirm or refute simultaneousdestruction of disparate sites; a large production of oxides of nitrogen yielding dangerousozone depletion, perhaps giving a survival advantage to darker skinned people in theaftermath, particularly in equatorial regions; acidic precipitation from the above-mentioned atmospheric chemistry; and, in the higher latitudes, impact winter, caused by

suspended dust and soot.

All of these phenomena would leave evidence which careful field work could reveal.Some indicators may already be evident, such as the abandonment of many long settledsites, a large southward movement of people from the higher latitudes, anda steep, long-term (1159-1140 B.C.) decline in the annual growth of Irish bog oakthat stands out in the7,272 year long dendrochronological record, based on this species of tree. [Baillie andMunro (1988)]

Definitive evidence of impact, however, can only come from a detailed analysis of debris

directly overlying destruction sites.

I urge archaeologists working on this time period to diligently collect dust and debrisfrom cracks and crevices where violent destruction is apparent. In 1992 the currentGreenland ice coring project should be complete. If a large impact occurred around 3200years ago a significant nitric acid spike will be evident in these ice core samples. Severalcores are being drilled simultaneously, so the chance of finding debris in association withthe nitric acid signal should be good. An element profile on this material could then becompared with results on debris extracted from terminal Bronze Age sites. If these match,not only will there be confirmation of a violent natural catastrophe, we will also have

gained a rather precise gauge of when the disaster took place.

Astronomical evidence indicates our ancestors viewed a much more active sky than we.A seemingly nonsensical notion, such as Athena being born fully formed from the headof Zeus, becomes understandable as a description of comet fragmentation. Human beliefsystems have been greatly influenced by the phenomena attending the progressivebreak-up, over thousands of years, of this large comet. The idea of a wrathful sky

god or star positions influencing events on Earth are legacies of this influence.

Many astronomers believe the 1908 Tunguska impact was from a small piece of Comet

Encke. This 15 to 30 megaton event leveled 2000 sq km of dense Siberian forest, but leftno crater. Certainly there have been many damaging falls witnessed by people during the15,000, or more, year period of the comet's fragmentation history. The terminal BronzeAge event was probably just one of several very energetic impacts which likely occurredin this time span.

Our less than seven hour separation from a collision with a near-Earth asteroid(1989FC) in March of 1989 underscores the fact that contemporary civilization




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could be thrown into a dark age by natural catastrophe. Had 1989FC encounteredEarth it would have introduced the energy equivalent of more than 2,000 megatonsTNT into the environment, with little or no warning. The object was discovered onphotographs days after the close pass. In 1937 an even larger object, Hermes, camealmost equally near Earth. Neither of these asteroids is likely to be related to the break-upof the recent large comet referred to above. The estimated population of Earth-orbit-

crossing objects greater than half a kilometer in diameter is over 2,000 and its membersare from various sources. Obviously our planet gets hit fairly often. What the recentlarge comet did was increase the likelihood of collision and establish a visible

cause/effect relationship in the minds of our ancestors.

The association of disaster (etymologically, dis - evil; aster - star) with comets eventuallybecame generalized beyond direct causal links, giving science oriented investigatorsreason to classify this ubiquitous notion as mere superstition. Scientific efforts tounderstand the past were thus rendered purblind to a highly influential natural

phenomenon.

It is technically feasible to prevent future impacts by altering the orbits of

threatening objects. Unfortunately, there is little widespread support for such anEarth Defence Initiative (EDI) due, in part, to the general belief that humanity hasnot, in the past, been harmed by impact events.

Archaeologists can play a key role in justifying an EDI by digging in to set the recordstraight.

Though gaining a detailed understanding of the effects such episodic impacts had on

humanity will take some time, incorporating recent astronomical evidence can provideimmediate boons to our comprehension of past cultures.




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The fortunate find in the seventies, at Mawangdui, China, of a Han dynasty silkcomet atlas sheds considerable light on earlier enigmatic motifs. Most illuminating

is the drawing, described by text on the artifact as a long-tailed pheasant star. This

rendering of a jetting comet viewed down its axis of rotation has a considerable history,and, as a motif, appears on artifacts found in most areas of the world. The artist whoillustrated this silk twenty-two hundred, or so, years ago was not likely a first-handobserver. What is produced here is a schematic of received comet caricatures withclaims that specific things will happen if a represented type appears. The pinwheel-likeimage is unique to the compilation in that an omen is given for an appearance ineach of the four seasons, implying that this comet was seen more often than theothers represented. This may illustrate a frequently viewed aspect of comet Encke

which has a 3.3 year orbit and rotational axis that occasionally points towardEarth. [Whipple, F. 1985]

Important in understanding ancient oriental lore is learning that thismotif was associated with the pheasant (divine bird in China)which is frequently mentioned in the Chinese classics. The link

between the spinning cross and birds is evident on artifacts frommany cultures. Perhaps the association of the Sanskrit term"svastika" with this symbol can be linked to the Astika Parva in theMAHABHARATA which relates the birth of a cosmic bird par




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The bird-comet connection is even more obvious in the Jamva-khanda Nirmana Parva ofthe MAHABHARATA which describes a fierce fowl with but one wing, one eye, andone leg, hovering in the night sky. As this bird "screams" and "vomits blood":

All the quarters of the earth, being overwhelmed by showers of dust, lookinauspicious. Fierce clouds, portentous of danger, drop bloody showers duringthe night. Rahu of fierce deeds is also, O monarch, afflicting theconstellation Kirtika. Rough winds, portending fierce danger, are constantly

blowing.

The mention of Rahu, the demon of eclipse, which originally had four arms and atail that was severed by Vishnu to become Ketu (comet) is interesting in that thedemon is here darkening Kirttika (the Pleiades) in the month of Karttika (latter halfof October, through mid November), for the tale goes on to relate that:

. . . in course of the same month both the Moon and the Sun have undergoneeclipses on the thirteenth days from the day of the first lunation. The Sun andthe Moon therefore, by undergoing eclipses on unusual days, will cause a greatslaughter of the creatures of the earth. Meteors, effulgent like Indra'sthunder-bolt, fall with loud hisses . . . People, for meeting together, coming

out of their houses with lighted brands, have still to encounter a thickgloom all round . . . From the mountains of Kailasa and Mandara andHimavat thousands of explosions are heard and thousands of summits aretumbling down . . . Fierce winds charged with pointed pebbles are blowing,crushing mighty trees. In villages and towns trees, ordinary and sacred, arefalling down, crushed by mighty winds and struck by lightning.

This is, without doubt, a mythological record of an intense meteor storm from the stillactive Taurid stream which presently peaks around the first of November and appears toradiate from near the Pleiades star cluster. The un-airworthy bird associated with thismeteor bombardment could have been comet Encke which until recently was thought to

be the sole source for the Taurid meteors. However, the discovery of other largecontributors which are now dark but were once active comets rules out a positiveidentification.

excellence--Garuda. This fabulous winged deity had a radiancelike the Sun, could change shapes at will, and destroyed othergods and kings by casting down fire and stirring up storms of

reddish dust which darkened the Sun, Moon and stars. ClearlyGaruda was symbolic of an Earth approaching comet.

Another interesting aspect of this folk memory which mightshed some light on why the rolling cross motif is linked to




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In a less artificial environ animal tracks speak strongly to people and convey much

about the creature which left them. Thus a bear, bird or any animal which madeimpressions on the ground could be symbolically represented in total by drawingthese marks. I suggest that the jetting comet, to some cultures, looked like a bird'sfoot and, as a motif, represented a divine fowl. This can explain why the not very bird-like drawing on the Han silk is captioned as a pheasant star. Chinese lore upholds such aninterpretation as Ts'ang Chieh, the four eyed legendary inventor of writing, derived hisinspiration to create written symbols from noticing the marks of birds' feet in the sand.His ancient style is known as niao chiwen--"bird foot-prints writing." [MacCulloch,C.J.A. 1928]

birds is the image of a one-legged fowl. This is also acharacteristic of the Chinese divine pheasant which wasclosely associated with the fabulous, lame, raven-beak-nosed emperor, Yu, who could transform himself intothis pheasant or a bear. One of Yu's enemies, the Owl,who invented thunder and lightening was also one-footed.

[Lonsdale, S. 1982, Barnard, N. 1972, 1973]

Symbolic birdtracks,unrecognized as

such, appear onobjectsunearthed byHeinrichSchliemann fromHissarlik in Asia

Minor.Artifactualsupport for thiscontention comesfrom petroglyphsfound in thesouth-western United States which Pueblo

people identify as roadrunner (a type ofcuckoo) tracks andidentical renderings found




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by Schliemann. [Morphy, H. 1989] The closeassociation of these two distinctive crosses onartifacts from Schliemann's Troy could beconsidered coincidental and not necessarilyavion-inspired were they found out of context,however, in Schliemann's words:

In treating nowof the variouskinds of

potteryof thisthird city, Ibegin with theowl-faced idolsand vases, and Iwouldrepeatedly callvery particularattention to thefact, that theidols, of which Icollected about700, are all ofthe same shape;that theyrepresent in the

rudest possibleoutlines a femaleform; and that,therefore, they cannot but becopies of the ancient Palladium,which was fabled to have fallenfrom heaven with joined feet.




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Another aspect of comets which is evident in ancient lore involves shape shifting. Acomet is three dimensional and could appear as quite a different animal whenviewed from a different angle. For instance, allowing that a foot-print signifies thecreature, the fabled ability of Yu (mentioned above) to transform into a pheasant orbear can be easily understood as a radial view distinguished from an axial view of

the same comet.

Comets can also change spontaneously; a gas emitting area could become dust covered

and extinguish a jet, a piece of the comet could break away, creating another comet,perhaps initially more flamboyant than its parent. Our ancestors' stories speak of theseweakening gods and fantastic births; however, until now, our ears heard only gibberish.

Another motif which is found around the world is the concentric circle. Astronomers,with the aid of a telescope, have reported, and drawn pictures of, comets which exhibitconcentric rings, so it is likely that some of these ancient renderings, often pecked instone, represent comets. There is, however, probably another phenomenon more oftenrepresented by these ancient bull's-eyes--a bolide storm.

Fred Whipple, the astronomer who theorized in 1950 the now proven structure of comets,calculates that the night time Taurids have been a feature for 5,000 years. It now takesEarth about three months (mid-September to mid-December) to traverse this band ofdebris. Earlier in its history, as the progenitor of comet Encke was creating it, this debrisring had to have been more dense. As Earth passed through the mess, it no doubtcollected a considerable amount of dust. The night time Taurids are known for frequent

bolide activity. Large, vaporizing meteoroids (bolides) in an atmosphere loaded withcomet dust will produce unusual visual effects. Refraction, reflection, and possibly

secondary emission come into play as a sizable object splashes into an aerosol laden

From Mari

Owls, like cuckoos, have zygodactylous orsemizygodactylous (outer toe reversible) feet.Obviously these "Trojans" had an elaborate

belief system which focused on the activitiesof a non-terrestrial bird of the night. With thisin mind, a re-examination of artifactsrecovered from Hissarlik could be quiterevealing.




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atmosphere compressing molecules of gas against motes of dust in its bow-shockwave until--BOOM -- the object vaporizes, illuminating the multiple layers of

compression separated gas and debris. From the ground this might look as if a godthrew a pebble in the sky pond. Quite likely a large sector of the sky would be filledwith such phenomena. Though the intensity would vary from year to year our ancestors,no doubt, expected a rather disconcerting light show on an annual basis.

Striking evidence for this contention comes from well-preserved Neolithic observatoriesin Ireland. Martin Brennan (1983), who spent over a decade investigating thesestructures, published a wonderful documentation of their features. Though he assumesthem to be a product of solar worship, his research is thorough and includes mythologicalreferences to these megalithic works--most intriguing from the standpoint of thisdiscussion is Tara. Brennan states that:

Tara lies 10 miles southwest of Newgrange and, like Newgrange, it is steepedin ancient myth and tradition. It has always been associated with Samhain, the

Celtic observance of the year's turning in November, and this event is welldocumented. Mythologically, the mound also has associations with theTuatha De Danann, or the "Lords of Light." They arrive from the air andcast a darkness over the sun for three days.

This neolithic observatory is aligned, according to Brennan, to cross-quarter daysNovember 8 and February 4. The carved stone within this megalithic structure depictsconcentric circles similar to the earth works evident in the aerial photograph ofTarashown.

Incorporating astronomical evidence of a recent giant short period comet into ourattempt to understand past cultures is essential for an objective interpretation.

Bobk 91

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Armstrong, Edward A. (Ed.) THE FOLKLORE OF BIRDS. Dover Publications, Inc. NY,1970.

Baillie, M.G.L. & Munro, M.A.R. "Irish tree rings, Santorini and volcanic dust veils."NATURE vol. 332 24 March 1988 (pp. 344-346).

Barnard, Noel (Ed.) EARLY CHINESE ART AND ITS POSSIBLE INFLUENCE IN




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THE PACIFIC BASIN. vol. 1 Intercultural Arts Press, NY, 1972 (pp. 118-121, 150-151).

Barnard, Noel. THE CHU SILK MANUSCRIPT (Translation and Commentary, part 2)Australian National University, Canberra, 1973 (pp. 122-156).

Bate, H.N. THE SIBYLLINE ORACLES Books III-V MacMillan Company, NY 1918

(p. 107).

Bjorkman, J.K., "Meteor and Meteorites in the Ancient Near East" METEORITICS 1973vol. 8, (pp. 91-132).

Brennan, Martin. THE STARS AND THE STONES. Thames and Hudson Inc., NY 1984(pp. 14-15, 120-121).

Charlesworth, James H. OLD TESTAMENT PSEUDEPIGRAPHA (vol 1) Doubleday,Garden City, NY 1983 (p. 400).

Clube, Victor and Napier, Bill. THE COSMIC WINTER Basil Blackwell, Inc.Cambridge MA 1990.

Dioszegi, V. POPULAR BELIEFS AND FOLKLORE TRADITION IN SIBERIA(English translation by Dunn, S.P.) Indiana University,Bloomington, 1968 (pp. 485-496).

Kobres, Bob. "Meteor Defense" WHOLE EARTH REVIEW No. 56 Fall 1987 (pp. 70-73).

Legge, James. THE CHINESE CLASSICS (vol. 3) Hong Kong Univ. Press, Hong King1960 (p. 125).

Lonsdale, Steven. ANIMALS AND THE ORIGINS OF DANCE, Thames and HudsonInc., NY, 1982 (pp. 169-181).

MacCulloch, C.J.A. Canon, John A. (Ed.) MYTHOLOGY OF ALL RACES. vol. 8("Chinese Mythology" Ferguson, John C.) Marshall Jones Co. Boston, MA 1928 (p. 31).

Morphy, Howard (Ed.). Animals into Art (ONE WORLD ARCHAEOLOGY; vol. 7)Unwin Gyman Ltd., London, 1989 (chapt. 11 Schaafsma, Polly).

O'Neil, W.M. TIME AND THE CALENDARS. Sydney Univ. Press, Sydney 1975.

Roy, Pratap Chandra. THE MAHABHARATA, Munshiram Manoharlal, New Delhi,1973 (vol. 1 section 13-58, vol. 5 section 2-3)

Schliemann, Henry. ILIOS Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, NY, 1881 (pp. 334-353).




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Taran, Leonardo. ACADEMICA: PLATO, PHILIP OF OPUS, AND THE PSEUDO-PLATONIC EPINOMIS American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 1975 (p.294).

Whipple, Fred L. THE MYSTERY OF COMETS Smithsonian Inst. Press, Washington,DC 1985, (pp. 163-167).

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Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse