The Mammoth Extinction

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EnlargeMore than 30 North American species, including the wooly mammoth, died out about 12,900 years ago






By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
A swarm of comets that smacked North America 12,900 years ago wiped out the wooly mammoth and early Native American cultures, according to a soil study released Thursday.
The report in the journal Science focuses on tiny "nanodiamonds," crystals tied to past comet impacts, at six sites across the continent in a soil layer dated to the start of a 1,300-year-long ice age.

Geologists and archaeologists have long argued about what caused the extinction of dozens of large North American "megafauna" species, such as saber-toothed cats and mammoths.

"What we're reporting is consistent with a major cosmic impact that had major consequences for the environment and Earth's climate," says study leader Douglas Kennett of the University of Oregon in Eugene.

"A swarm of comets" or carbon-rich meteorites either delivered or created the nanodiamonds in a fiery impact, the study suggests. The report relies on photomicrograph analyses of soil samples from Arizona, Minnesota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and two Canadian sites. Photomicrography captures images seen through a microscope.

"This is the 'smoking gun' evidence for a massive impact event 12,900 years ago that triggered the (ice age) and the extinction of the megafauna," says nuclear scientist Richard Firestone of the Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) National Laboratory, who was not part of the study.

If true, the impact date coincides with the abrupt halting of deposits of "Clovis" Native American artifacts, distinctively fluted tools and arrowheads. Dozens of large animal species vanished then in North America. Kennett and other impact researchers have suggested a continent-wide wildfire may have contributed to the extinction of large North American creatures. In Europe, there were disruptions to the prehistoric culture and the demise there of species such as the cave bear and Irish elk.

Some scientists urge caution.

"We simply do not have conclusive evidence that nanodiamond materials aren't everywhere at many times," says geologist Nicholas Pinter of Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. "Tons of meteorite dust falls to Earth every year, after all."

Although more than 30 North American species died out about 12,900 years ago, about 50 large species died out a few centuries later in South America, and on some unpeopled Caribbean islands, species such as sloths survived an additional 6,000 years, says archaeologist Stuart Fiedel, author of Prehistory of the Americas. "Humans, not extraterrestrial objects," best explain the staggered extinctions in the New World, he says.
Kennett says future studies will show evidence of the nanodiamonds from Europe and further afield 12,900 years ago. Impact shock waves, debris and wildfires sparked by comets breaking apart in the atmosphere would have hit North America hardest, he says, but the effects would have been felt worldwide.

 

The story fails to add that during this event,the Earth's oceans rose three hundred feet overnight (hence Noah's Ark), and fails to reference that the Earth's axis tilted (the North Pole was then at the southern tip of James Bay in Canada), which is why we have wooly mammoths flash frozen in Siberia-their stomachs filled with greens.

 

It is one possible explanation however I might take issue with Lias referencing Noahs arc on the basis that the story in Genesis dates back to the 10th century BC and is a fairly common story in many cultures however the Jewish tradition probably dates back to 17th Century BC Sumeria. To claim that the Noah's arc story dates back to an event that happened around 13, 000 years ago doesn't make sense to me, much more likely it refers to the flooding of an area of the middle east far more recently though the precise area escapes me.

Also, I am no expert but logically if the north pole were to move to James Bay surely it would actually be moving away from Siberia? Being almost precisely the opposite side of the world?

Finally, I heard a fantastic comment the other week, a female journalist was talking to a scientist about the possibility of using mammoth DNA and breeding with elephants to make a similarly hairy animal. The journalist said 'ahh, like a gorilla?' The scientist replied 'yes, but bigger and elephant shaped...'

 

Wasn't the last Ice Age ending 12,900 years ago? Scotland was certainly ice-free enough for it to be resettled starting around 8000BC.
Although there were temporary relapses (like the Loch Lomond interstadial), the ice was definitely on the way out. Or is the article referring to an ice age in America?
Human Occupation of the British Isles Project
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/hosted_sites/ahob/index_2.html
The second link contains a good story about an 18,000 year old Polar bear's remains being found in Scotland.

 

There is no indication in the archeological record that I've ever heard of that the world oceans rose anywhere near that height over night. There is some thought that Noah's Ark story along with other flood stories from that area came from the formation of the Black Sea. apparently a depression had formed there with a barrier between it and the Med. The current thought is that this barrier failed catastrophically. Even this I don't think comes up to 300 feet though.

The effects of the axis tilting that much would have been a round of earth quakes and volcanoes that would still be shaking the earth. The magnetic pole may have been their but it's not clear how it moving would flash freeze anything.

As to the original something as catastrophic as is mentioned would tend to leave a lot of other clues that would likely have been picked up before now.

 

It's known that the third Storegga tsunami 7000 years ago helped flooded the Northwest European plain and reached as far inland as modern-day Inverness, but it still took a few thousand years for the North Sea to be created though.
Sea levels have risen 300' since the end of the last Ice Age, but certainly not overnight.
Here's more on the original story-
http://www.stonepages.com/news/index.html#3102

 

1) When the comet hit 13k years ago, the North Pole was in James Bay. The North Pole has been moving towards Siberia ever since, and even today it still moves towards Siberia, an inch or two every year.

2) When the last mommoth was found frozen in Siberia (several years ago), scientists did a slow thaw on it, hoping to extract precious DNA from it's sex organs so tat they could do a splicing/cloning thing in order to create modern day mammoths. The experiment failed because the DNA was too damaged to do such a thing. Perhaps future technology will overcome this problem.

 

1)Actually, the ark story transcends cultures all over the world. It seems that 13k years ago, luminous beings told indigenous peoples everywhere that there was going to be a flood. Since stories in North and South America pre date European contact with ancient Americans, the assumption that the ancient flood only refers to the Black Sea lacks strength.

2) A similarity between New Mexico and Egypt is an arid climate. An arid climate doesn't weather the terrain. One need only look about to see that something traumatic happened there 12-13k years ago. For instance, a fault line opened up about five miles west of Rio Grande river (the river is a very active fault line). The temporary fault line gave birth to nine volcanos stretching from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, with another popping up ten miles south, just west of Los Lunas (although the river is seismically active, there hasn't been an active volcano in New Mexico in 250k years). Near Alamogordo, an area called the malpais (prounced mel-pie) exists. The malpais was super thick lava that flowed from a hole in the ground, meandering here and there. The black lava is so unweathered that it looks like it flowed out of a Hawaiian volcano last week.

 

First off, the Grand Canyon isn't formed by the river wearing DOWN into the surface, but the opposite. The surface has risen slowly which allowed the river to slowly stay at its own level (flowing to the sea) while the land around it got higher, following the minor fault line is of course also proper by simple well understood geologic process.

Now let's not ignore the creation of the Black Sea previously mentioned (confirmed by Ballard years ago), which is probably the formation of both the Sumerian Gilgamesh and Biblical "flood story". One must not neglect that this occurred in approximately the same time period this occurred on the North American continent as well. "Luminous beings" were likely NOT part of anything more than folk-lore to explain something beyond their "ken", when "wise-men" have no rational answers they attribute the incident to "gods". You can believe what you wish sir, I chose not to.

To think similar natural occurances wouldn't happen globaly is just silly since the geologic evidence supports it; i.e. floods devastate the civilizations in the area, shammans and "wise men" explain the event as outside of human control. Gods/god are given credit for the event, humans are given the blame for it happening as the wrath of the god/gods over human mis-deeds. Better than shrugging your shoulders and going; "I dunno" I suppose.

Here is a good one on the last massive North American land-mass flood:

"In the most recent advance, glaciers reached their maximum extent 15,000 years ago and had almost completely melted by 10,000 years ago. It was during this glacial advance that a finger from the glacial ice sheet moved south through the Purcell Trench in northern Idaho, near present day Lake Pend Oreille, damming the Clark Fork River creating Glacial Lake Missoula."

"The water began to build up behind the 2,500-foot ice dam filled the valleys to the east with water, creating a glacial lake the size of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario combined. The water continued to rise until it reached its maximum height at an elevation of 4,200 feet. As the water rose, the pressure against the ice dam increased, ultimately, causing the dam to fail catastrophically. The failure occurred when the water reached a depth of 2000 feet. The water pressure caused the (blocking) glacier to become buoyant, and water began to escape beneath the ice dam by carving sub-glacial tunnels at an exponential rate."

"It is estimated that the maximum rate of flow was equal to 9.46 cubic miles per hour (386 million cubic feet per second). This rate is 60 times the flow of the Amazon River, the largest river in the world today. At this rate, the lake probably drained in a few days to a week. Water moving at speeds between 30 and 50 miles per hour raced across eastern Washington."

See:

Glacial Lake Missoula and the Ice Age Floods

Today we KNOW this happened, there is physical evidence to support it. Biblical and other histories are reporting the same or similar events, but putting the "blame or credit" on the supernatural rather than the natural.

 

About five years ago, there was a geologist who put forth the theory that a comet hit the North Pole, flash boiling millions of tons of ice-water, throwing it into the atmosphere, causing the equivalent of a nuclear winter, and causing the Earth's axis to tilt.

This makes sense because of anomalies-like Wooly Mammoths flash frozen in ice in Siberia. After the Mammoths were thawed, their stomachs were found to contain greens. Something very quick and traumatic happened to cause this. To hypothesize that a wooly mammoth ate greens, which miraculously stayed put while the mammoth then did a two hundred mile trek into frozen Siberia is just plain silly.

Then, there are the matters of the sunken cities. Sunken cities have been found off of Okinawa, India, and in between Florida-the Bahamas, and off the coast of South America. There is the tale of Atlantis, but looking at the sites below, "Atlantis" could any one of a dozen or more sites. Again, that something quick and traumatic happened, is obvious.

Ooparts & Ancient High Technology--Underwater Cities; Noah's Flood Proof?

April 9

Sunken City off India Coast - 7500 B.C.

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Lost city found off Indian coast

View topic - Ancient Underwater City-scapes, Visible with Google Earth? - ArchitectureWeek DesignCommunity

Although I respect Ballard for his connection to the Titanic, I very strongly feel, in light of the sunken city evidence, and the mammoths, that his thinking the Black Sea is the one answer for an Earth wide riddle is amateurish on his part. I think he found one piece of a thousand piece puzzle and he thought that one piece was the whole puzzle. I'm surprised at his lack of understanding, I expected so much better for a man of his caliber.

Yes, the glacial lake happened-the evidence says so, but so did the sunken cities and wooly mammoth riddle. Science has been reluctant, at best, to try to explain the extinction that occured 12-13k years ago. This confirmation of the comet layer is part of an explanation.

The geologist I mentioned, he was hounded out of the profession and discredited for forwarding the idea that a comet was to blame for the extinction. Looks like his idea was spot on.

 

I disagree, there are pleanty of examples of people who have been found frozen still with food in their stomachs etc, it doesn't necessarily mean they flash froze, simply that they died and froze very rapidly. Taking the Mammoth, what is there to say that it didn't wind up somewhere particularly cold, die of something other than the cold and then freeze?

There are towns in Britain that flooded too, hundreds in fact. That doesn't mean they were massive floods, simply that people built somewhere and then hundreds of years later they were swallowed by the sea. People aren't particularly far sighted when it comes to that kind of thing.

As I understood it didn't Ballard argue that the Black Sea explains Gilgamesh and Noah but not necessarily stories on the other side of the world. That seems sensible to me. It is however foolish to claim that just because similar stories appear in various cultures it means that they all refer to a particular event, it is simply not true.

all civilisations have had their own myths and stories based on what they saw around them, this doesn't mean they are true, simply that there is a lot of commonality in human experience. Does the fact that so many peoples have told stories of dragons mean that dragons must have once existed? No, it means that they looked at animals and things that scared them and magnified them into what we now think of as a dragon. Many peoples talk of floods, all that means is that they had some experience of flooding, not that they are all harking back to some biblical event.

It is also worth mentioning that once you get out of the cultures around Europe the stories vary widely. Meso-American stories talk about the destruction of the world by fire or tsunami (both events that would have been familiar in various forms to the peoples who came up with the story). Some Polynesian accounts talk of sinking islands and tell of small scale floods which again make sense. Interestingly enough very few stories talk of 'luminous beings,' in fact the majority seem to have people and animals being saved either by luck or by friendly gods.

Another thing that strikes me as odd is this, this 'event,' whatever it may be, happened around 13,000 years ago. The first 'civilisation' is generally accepted to be that of the Sumerians around 8000 years ago. That means that the story would have to have been passed on for 5000 years to make it as far as the first true civilisation. That seems pretty unlikely to me.

Even if it is true though, for anyone to start using this prehistoric flood as evidence for any kind of biblical story is laughable. The bible is maybe 5000 years old, even in it's earliest forms, by the time it has reached us it has changed so much and in so many details that any similarity it bears to an event 10,000 years before it was written can be little more than coincidence.

Anyhow, I am slowly getting confused, it just struck me that even if these cities did sink at various points, these things seem to have happened after the catastrophy 13,000 years ago and be lots of isolated incidents (the island off Japan seems to have sunk between 8 and 10 thousand years ago, the Indian one around 5 thousand years ago) rather than being the result of a single catastrophy. So far from luminous beings appearing we seem to have several examples of cities sinking in different areas at different times. Does it not seem logical therefore to conclude that the 'deluge mythos' that is common in so many societies results from those societies experiencing quite separate floods at different times and in different areas and telling stories?

 

Stefan,

I guess we can only agree to disagree. It's just that I've seen a lot of things which just don't fit, and scientists don't even want to try to explain it. Science made up it's mind a while back, and decided:"This is our story, and we're sticking with it." I'm more open minded.

On that dormant volcano in Los Lunas New Mexico, there is a rock with an inscription on it. It is written in Phoenician. No one wants to admit how it happened. Phoenicians, as we know, lived 3k years ago, but only roamed the Mediterrainean Sea??

Los Lunas Decalogue - Introduction

For the longest time, the inclusion of the Amazons in the Iliad was thought to be just a myth, a fable, until a very determined scientist found that one time a race of tall fair skinned female warriors did exist.

Archaeological Finds Pertaining to the Amazons

Phoenician artifacts have been found in the Americas and as far away as Australia, but scientists would prefer us to think that Phoenicians only roamed the Mediterranean.

ARCHAEOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA

In a Egyptian pyramid, a jar with copper electrical leads were found. Why would ancient Egyptians need electricity? What was going on in the pyramid? Take a jar, pour in fruit juice, place a couple of copper leads and you have a primitive battery. Where did the Egyptians get this intelligence?

ARCHAEOLOGY IN AUSTRALIA


Which leads me back to the subject we've been debating. 13k years ago, there was a mammoth (in size) extinction. Besides animals, over 90 percent of the human race was wiped out. Science would have us believe that humans 13k years ago were only one step up from cave men. Seeing the amazing structures and seeing all the other evidence that just doesn't add up, I have my own theory, and I'm sticking to it.

It works like this: 13k years ago, human civilization was actually quite advanced (I could go further to explain why, but I digress). They built great structures, like pyramids, and some structures that resemble ancient Greek buildings. Suddenly, the comet hit. In a day and night of unfortunate circumstances, most human life was wiped out. Only a few wise men, surrounded by some fearful superstitious people, survived the event.

A comet is composed of snow and small rocks. Flash boil a few billion tons of moisture, and the humans, most of them living along ocean shores, were wiped out in either a gigantic tsunami, a fireball, a shock wave of fire, a deluge, or a combination of the preceeding.

The fearful and superstitious would, of course, think the event was God's punishment for some transgression. Generations of technology was lost and man did regress into a cave man like existence to survive the ice age that followed the event.

Eventually, man recovered to become what we are today. My biggest problem with science is that I find some scientists to be like fundamentalist religious folk-they know what they know, and you can't tell them otherwise. That science is so very close minded is actually scary. Scientists would like us to believe that the only facts are the facts found in beakers in laboratories, nothing else exists, and yet science proved just last year that people who are prayed for heal faster than people who aren't prayed for.

Can you put some prayer in a beaker and warm it over a bunson burner? No, but, guess what? It exists, and it works. It can't be seen, can't be touched, can't be measured, but somehow it exists.

Science, hah!! Truth is stranger than fiction.

 

All very interesting, suggesting that people travelled a lot, hardly a surprise there then really. Doesn't have much impact on this debate. I would also argue that the Egyptians got this intelligence we get all our intelligence from, by messing around and experimenting. They probably noticed that the copper leads in a jar of fruit juice produced a particular affect, this 'power' would have been special to them and so it would only make sense that it would have had a place in a pyramid with their pharaoh.

There aren't any amazing structures, lost cities or anything of that nature dating back 13, 000 years. There is evidence that there were civilisations up to 8,000 years ago (around the same time as Sumeria and the sunken city near Japan) however there are no 'great cities' that predate that. Maybe I am missing something but to my way of thinking the existence of cities 8,000 years ago doesn't suggest anything like what you seem to be saying about civilisations 13,000 years ago.

There isn't any evidence of these 'advanced cities' 13,000 years ago, as discussed the sunken cities date from long after this period.

It is an interesting theory, my argument is against the 'advanced' societies you seem to think existed, the evidence suggests that mankind was in the process of advancing, beginning to cultivate animals and so on but not that there were civilisations that were advanced technologically.

Is that not a very ironic thing to say so recently after saying 'I have my theory and I'm sticking to it.' You are guilty of the same closed mindedness as the scientists you rail against.

Again, where is this 'proof'? I have seen evidence which suggests that people who pray heal quicker, however this can be fairly easily explained by the physiological impact of the act of praying, often lower blood pressure and so on. The same could be said of meditation which has been shown to have a positive affect on the healing process. Intercessory prayer is a different matter, the 1988 Byrd study showed that in a small group of subjects 85% of those prayed for scored 'good' on the patient recovery scale as opposed to 73% of those not prayed for. The Harris study in the 90's gave 67.4% of those being prayed for scoring good as opposed to 64.5% of those not being prayed for. This is hardly proof of anything, particularly when you consider the STEP experiment along similar lines using coronary bypass patients, 52% of those who were prayed for (but were unaware of it) developing complications as opposed to 51% who weren't, strangely the group with the worst results were those who knew they were being prayed for, 59% of whom developed complications. An MIT study in 2005 on the subject proved pretty much inconclusive.

So no, it can not be shown that intercessory prayer has any real impact on recovery at all.

Sorry, what is wrong with wanting to understand the world in terms of what we can see and measure? Of course there will always be things we don't understand but it is very dangerous to say 'this is the case, there is no evidence for it, it just is.'

 

Plus, praying soothes the mind and it can have very real physical impacts. Still not supernatural hogus pocus. All perfectly documented. You might want to check out the cristalization properties of water under the influence of individual states of mind. Now that's a good ol experiment!
Oh and 13K years ago, there were no great civs in the brewing. We were barely leaving the Nomadic way of life.



Cheers...

 

Ive read this thread over and over again. Reasoned with myself, for that is what I do...

And weighhed science against Darwin. Darwin being a quantifiable physical thing. if not now then at one time in known history....Science being a mixture of practicalities and experimental means to conclusions...Stop me when ive rabbited on too much...I have to say that my small pea like Darwinian brain has come to the following weighty conclusion on Mamoths and indeed the whole story of global warming.

The answer as always, is indeed 2.

 

actually 42



Cheers...

 

I'm 52.

 

No it doesn't make sense. If a comet had hit the North pole within the last 100,000 years it would be pretty apparent. Polar strikes are particularly unlikely. One by a comet would require it to be a very large comet and I suspect the impact would be a lot more obvious than something that was just postulated 5 years ago and rejected.

Interesting but in regards to this irrelevant as far as I can see. Note that the one of the Indian cost is dated to less than 10,000 years BC. IE not consistent with 13,900 BP.

Where did he calim it was? I'm not sure that he would even agree that there is a "Earth wide riddle".

That you even suggest this says you haven't been reading much in the way of the archeology that deals with this. It's been one of the more contentious areas for at least the last 30+ years.

Where was that confirmation again?

Does it? I haven't seen much to indicate that.

 

Science is far from a single individual or monolithic. If the establishment as a whole doesn't agree with something they're usually right. I've never met a person involved in science that didn't want to try and explain something that didn't fit in. It looks a lot more to me like you've decided what the explanation is and are going from there.

Maybe because nobody is sure how it got there? Except possibly the fraudsters if it is a fraud which is possible.

That's not what I've read at all. Forays by the Mediterranean peoples into the Atlantic are pretty well documented in both historical and archological circles. IE you've set up a starwman.

That's not what the above referance states. There was no "race of tall fair skinned females warriors". There was a population that included female warriors.

There you go with the stawman again. Note that the presence of artifacts from a culture does not require a visit by anyone from that culture.

How was that determined?

Source please.

"shock wave of fire"? Do you make this up as you go along. A north pole strike would hardly produce a fireball or shock wave that would impact even a significant percentage of the people on earth at the time.

 

Like I said, I have my theory, and I'm sticking to it.